Civil and Mechanical Engineering.

THE LOCOMOTIVE ENGINE, AND PHILADELPHIA'S SHARE IN ITS EARLY IMPROVEMENTS.

BY JOSEPH HARRISON, JR., M. E.

(Continued from page 174.)

Philadelphia mechanics, following the lead of their predecessors in the same field, entered with zeal into the Baltimore contest. An engine was built by a Mr. Childs, who had invented a rotary engine which in a small model promised good results, and an engine of about fifty horse-power on this rotary plan was built and sent to Baltimore for trial. A record of its performance cannot now be easily reached, but it is known that it was never heard of as a practically useful engine after this time.

The second locomotive built in Philadelphia, to compete at Baltimore, was designed by Mr. Stacey Costell, a man of great originality as a mechanic, and the inventor of a novelty in the shape of a vibrating cylinder steam engine, that had some reputation in its day, and has come down to our time in the little engine now sold in the toy shops for a dollar. The Costell locomotive had four connected driving wheels, of about thirty-six inches in diameter, with two six-inch cylinders of twelve-inch stroke. The cylinders were attached to rightangled cranks on the ends of a counter shaft, from which shaft spur gearing connected with one of the axles. The boiler was of the Cornish type, with fire inside of an internal straight flue. Behind the bridge wall of this boiler, and inside the flue, water tubes, were placed at intervals, crossing each other after the manner of the English Galloway boiler of the present day. The peculiar arrangement of this engine made it possible to use a very simple and efficient mode of reversement by the use of a disc between the steam pipe and the cylinders, arranged with certain openings, which changed the direction of the steam and exhaust by the movement of this disc against a face on the steam pipe near the cylinder, something after the manner of a two-way cock. It is not known whether this locomotive of Costell went to Baltimore or not. It is known, however, to have been tried on the Columbia road in 1843 or 1844, but its success was not very striking, and it was subsequently broken up. The boiler of the VOL. LXIII.-THIRD SERIES-No. 4.-APRIL, 1872.

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Costell locomotive had very good steam-making qualities. It was used for a long time as a stationary engine boiler.

The third engine begun in Philadelphia for the Baltimore trial was after a design of Mr. Thos. Holloway, an engineer of some reputation forty years ago as a builder of river steamboat engines. This engine was put in hand, but never was completed.

Something was gained even by the failures that are here related, and these early self-reliant efforts show with what tenacity Philadelphia engineers clung to their early idea of building an original locomotive, and it will be seen hereafter that a type of locomotive essentially American was ultimately the result.

Whilst these movements towards the improvement of the locomotive were going on amongst us, the desire to have the railroad in every section of the country became more and more fully confirmed. The railway from New-castle to Frenchtown, sixteen miles in length, was finished in the winter of 1831 and 1832, and two locomotives, built by Robert Stephenson at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, were imported to be run upon this line, which made then an important link in the chain of passenger travel between New York and Washington. In this case, as in several others in the early history of the railroad in the United States, this new element came in as an adjunct mainly of the river steamboats, and was considered most useful in superseding the old stagecoach in connecting river to river, and bay to bay.

That the railway would supersede the steamboat for passenger travel, and the canal for heavy transport, was not dreamed of in the early day of the new power.

When the English locomotives were landed at New-castle, Delaware, it became necessary to select a skilled mechanic to put them. together as speedily as possible. Through the agency of Mr. Wm. D. Lewis, a most active Director of the Newcastle and Frenchtown Railroad Company, this task was assigned to Matthias W. Baldwin. These engines were of the most improved English 'type, and greatly superior to any that had then been made in this country. In putting these engines together Mr. Baldwin had all the advantage of handling their parts and studying their proportions, and in making drawings therefrom. This proved of great service to him when he received an order, in the Spring of 1832, to build a locomotive for the Philadelphia, Germantown and Norristown Railroad. This engine, called, when finished, the "Ironsides," was placed upon the above road in November, 1832, and proved a de

cided success. Mr. Franklin Peale, in an obituary notice of M. W. Baldwin, writes, "that the experiments made with the 'Ironsides' were eminently successful, realizing the sensation of a flight through the air of fifty or sixty miles an hour." The " The Ironsides," in its general arrangement, was a pretty close copy of the English engines on the New-castle and Frenchtown Railroad, but with changes that were real improvements. The reversing gear was a novelty in the locomotive, although the same mode had been long used for steam ferry boats on the Delaware. This arrangement consisted of a single excentric with a double latch excentric rod, gearing alternately on pins on the upper and lower ends of the arms of a rock shaft. This mode of reversing was used in the Baldwin locomotives for many years after the "Ironsides" was built. It is creditable to Mr. Baldwin as an engineer that the "Ironsides" was the first and last of his imitations of the English locomotives. He, following the bent of all the Philadelphia engineers and mechanics that had entered the field, aimed too, at making an American locomotive.

Following the success of this first locomotive, other orders soon flowed in upon Mr. Baldwin, and on these later engines many valuable improvements were introduced, of which mention will be made hereafter. Col. Stephen H. Long, nothing daunted or discouraged by the unsuccessful results of his first engine in 1831, renewed his efforts, and under the firm of Long and Norris, the successors of the American Steam Carriage Company, commenced building a locomotive in 1832, subsequently called the "Black Hawk." This engine, when finished, was run for some time on the Philadelphia and Germantown Railroad, and did good service in the summer of 1833, in competition with Baldwin's Ironsides." The "Black Hawk" burnt anthracite coal with some success, using the natural draft only, which was increased. by the use of a very high chimney, arranged to lower from an altitude. of at least twenty feet from the rails, to a height which enabled it to go under the bridges crossing the railroad. In all of Col. Long's experiments he seems to have discarded the steam jet, or exhaust, for exciting the fire. The "Black Hawk" had several striking peculiarities beside the one just mentioned. The boiler was unlike any that had preceded it, in having the fire-box arranged without a roof, being merely formed of water sides, and in being made in a detached piece from the waist or cylindrical part. The cylinder portion of the boiler was made up of two distinct cylinders, about twenty inches in diameter, and these lying close together, were bolted to the rear

waterside and thus covered the open top, and their lower half-diameters thereby became the roof of the fire-box. A notch was cut half way through these two cylinders on their lower half diameters about midway of the length of the fire-box, directly over the fire, and from these notches flues of about two inches diameter passed through the water space of cach cylinder portion of the boiler to the smoke-box. These flues were seven or eight feet in length. Besides passing through the flues, the fire passed also under the lower halves of the cylinder portions of the boiler, a double sheet iron casing filled between with clay, forming the lower portion of the flue and connecting it with the ́smoke-box.

The "Black Hawk" rested on four wheels, the driving wheels about four and a half feet diameter, being in front of the fire-box. The guide wheels were about three feet diameter. Inside cylinders were used, and these required a double crank axle, and the latter, forged solid, could not easily be had. Col. Long overcame this difficulty by making his driving axle in three pieces, with two bearings on each, and with separate cranks keyed on to the ends of each portion of the axle, with shackle or crank pins arranged after the manner of the modern sidewheel steamer shafts. Flanged tires of wrought iron could not then be had easily, and this was overcome in the "Black Hawk," by making the tread for the wheels of two narrow bands, shrunk side by side on the wooden rim, with a flat ring, forming the flange, bolted on the side of the wheel. Springs were only admissable over the front axle, and to save shocks in the rear, the after or fire-box portion of the boiler was suspended upon springs. The Camb cut-off, then much in vogue on the engines of the Mississippi steamers, was used in the "Black Hawk." With some slight alterations this locomotive was sent to a road in New England in 1834. Other locomotives, mainly after the design of the "Black Hawk," were built by Long & Norris, and by William Norris & Co., in 1834, but they were not greatly successful. With the firm of William Norris & Co. Col. Long retired from the manufacture of locomotives in Philadelphia, and his name was not thereafter heard of in connection with its improvement. On the retirement of Col. Long, William Norris, a gentleman then with no acknowledged pretensions as a mechanic or engineer, brought other skill to his assistance, and after several not very successful efforts with engines of a design more like those that had succeeded of other makers, brought out an engine, in 1836, called the "George Washington," the success of which laid the foundation of the large

business done for thirty years thereafter at Bushhill, Philadelphia, by William Norris, and subsequently by his brother Richard Norris. The "George Washington" was a six-wheel engine with outside cylinders, having one pair of driving wheels, 4 feet in diameter, forward of the fire-box, with vibrating truck, for turning curves, in front. This engine weighed somewhat over fourteen thousand pounds, and a large proportion of the whole weight rested on the single pair of driving wheels. This locomotive, when put upon the Columbia road (now Pennsylvania Central), did, apparently, the impossible feat of running up the old inclined plane at Peter's Island, 2,800 feet long, with a rise of one foot in fourteen, drawing a load of more than nineteen thousand pounds above the weight of the engine, and this, too, at a speed of fif teen miles per hour. This was no doubt impossible, if the simple elements of the calculation are only considered. But there was a point in this experiment, well known to experts at the time, which did make it possible, even by calculation; and this point consisted in the amount of extra weight that was thrown upon the drivers by the action of the draft link connecting the tender with the engine,-the result being that about all the weight of the locomotive rested upon the drivers, less the weight of the truck frame and wheels in front. This most extraordinary feat, a writer on the subject says, "took the engineering world by storm, and was hardly credited." The "George Washington, an outcrop of the earlier efforts of Col. Long, was unquestionably a good and well made engine, and greatly superior to any that had preceded it from the Norris Works. The fame this engine earned led to large orders in the United States, and several locomotives of like character were ordered for England and for Germany.

Improvements were made from time to time in the Norris locomotives the establishment fairly holding its own with its rivals until the Norris Works ceased to exist about 1866 or '67. Mr. William Norris, the founder of the works at Philadelphia, at one time commenced the building of locomotives at Vienna, Austria, but with no very great success; and after his return ceased his connection with the Norris Works. At the epoch from 1833 to 1836, the Norris and Baldwin engines had each their advantages and defects.

"The Norris engine, as it was at the commencement of 1837, may be described as follows: The boiler was of the dome pattern, known in England as Bury's, and used by that maker in 1830; the framing was of wrought iron, the first made entirely of this material in this country; the cylinders were placed outside of, and were fastened