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Putting the cab at the front makes the most sense for visibility and driver experience, but the way most steam locomotives worked is by humans scooping solid fu
by blamazon 5y ago
Putting the cab at the front makes the most sense for visibility and driver experience, but the way most steam locomotives worked is by humans scooping solid fuel out of a hopper car behind the locomotive called a tender, into a furnace located in the cab of the locomotive.
If you put the cab at the front, getting the solid fuel to the furnace becomes a more complex operation since the cab and the tender are now separated by the length of the engine. Once liquid fuels became a thing and the need for shoveling solid fuel waned, the cab could be moved to the front much more easily.
- jonnycomputer 5y agoI'm not sure I understand this explanation. Does the location of the furnace matter with respect to the direction the train is moving, i.e. the direction in which the wheels are turning? I mean, trains can go backwards, right?
- blamazon 5y agoBut then it would be tenderforward, not cabforward :)
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- stickfigure 5y agoThe locomotive can go either direction. But if burns coal, the tender needs to be next to the firebox. And the fireman needs to be able to attend the fire, which puts him on that side of the engine too. Why not just put the tender in front? I'm speculating here, but probably due to visibility. To get adequate visibility, you'd have to narrow the tender (reducing capacity).
- jonp888 5y agoThe tender is much lighter, and shorter, so it is at increased risk of derailment when running right at the front of the train. Locomotives can of course run backwards for long distances if required, but generally they have two top speeds - a higher one for forward running and a lower one for backwards.
- stickfigure 5y agoDo you have some reference you can point me at? It seems pretty common these days to run commuter trains at fairly high speeds with the engine pushing at the end of the train. And a (not-empty) tender is much heavier than a passenger car.
- jonp888 5y agoThe German BR01 Lokomotive can travel 75mph forwards but only 30mph backwards: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DRG_Class_01 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DRG_Class_01 The difference with a passenger car is that the wheels on a car are mounted on a bogie which can swing independent of the car body. The front wheels of a steam loco are also usually able to swing from side to side. This helps it enter and exit curves without derailing. A tender(at least in the Styles used in Europe) is too short for this.
- jonnycomputer 5y agoAh, that makes sense too.
- jonnycomputer 5y agoI wonder how much of a risk wind (from the locomotion) blowing into the tender/firebox would be.
- jonp888 5y agoThis is not a problem, it won't put the fire out. The real danger is when going through a tunnel, the backdrauught from the exhaust hitting the tunnel causes a surge of flame into the cab. The crew must keep the fire doors closed.
- dredmorbius 5y agoThere can be consequences. In the November 19, 1941 Hassan Tunnel fire accident between Los Angeles and Santa Barbara northbound Southern Pacific #4193 entered the tunnel on an uphill grade. The locomotive involved was an oil-fed steam engine and had a cab-forward design (AC-8) which meant, among other factors, that oil lines ran forward of the drive wheels, and leaked onto the rails. Part-way through the tunnel, the locomotive lost traction. There was an attempt to back out of the tunnel, but a passenger applied brakes such that the train could not proceed backwards. A fire was ignited and the train ultimately burned with loss of 5 lives, 4 injured. There's an extensive accident review I've found previously but cannot locate at the moment. The incident is listed here for November, 1941: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rail_accidents_(1930%E2%80%931949)#1941 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rail_accidents_(1930%E... http://espee.railfan.net/trainwrecks.html http://espee.railfan.net/trainwrecks.html Contemporaneous news story: http://www.gendisasters.com/california/15629/hassen-tunnel-ca-train-burns-in-tunnel-nov-1941 http://www.gendisasters.com/california/15629/hassen-tunnel-c...
- jonnycomputer 5y agoAwesome info. Thanks.
- dredmorbius 5y agoNP. I don't recall how I first ran across that, but the incident stuck with me. I'm glad I had the opportunity to look it up again.
- dredmorbius 5y agoThe accident record seems to be here: https://dotlibrary.specialcollection.net/Document?db=DOT-RAILROAD&query=(select+0+(byhits+(eq+DATE+%601941%2F11%2F19) https://dotlibrary.specialcollection.net/Document?db=DOT-RAI...)) Note that spellings vary: "Hassan", "Hassen", and, in the document above, "Hasson". INTERSTATE COMMERCE COMMISSION WASHINGTON INVESTIGATION NO. 2543 THE SOUTHERN PACIFIC COMPANY REPORT IN RE ACCIDENT NEAR HASSON, CALIF., ON NOVEMBER 19, 1941
- donarb 5y agoIn the roaring days of the railroad, most railroads had dispensed with manually shoveling coal out of the tender. They used mechanical stokers to move the coal from the tender to the firebox.
- Symbiote 5y agoMaybe in the USA, but they were barely used in the UK. From these discussions, it seems the (much) larger American locomotives and lower quality of coal required it. https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/mechanical-stokers.33744/ https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/mechanical-stokers.3374... https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/manually-shovelling-coal-on-a-steam-engine-is-there-another-way.142322/ https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/manually-shovelling-coa...
- bluGill 5y agoThere were engines with the cab in the middle. But then the fireman was out in the open (no cab) so it wasn't popular with them.