WORLD'S MOST POWERFUL LOCOMOTIVE.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XLVII, Issue 7718, 21 January 1905, Page 3

WORLD'S MOST POWERFUL LOCOMOTIVE.

The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad's latest design heads the list of locomotives owned by the cbmpanv, for it isi not only the biggest locomotive yet built, but it is also the most powerful in existence, arid it is, besides, of a type unique in America. The engine alone, without tender, weighs 119J tony, nil of which is utilised for adhesion, as all the wheels arc drivers. This engine, which is now at the St. Louis Exhibition, is lintended for service on the mountain section of the railroad, to obviate, as far as possible, the use of "pusihing" and "banking" engines f o r heavy freight trains in the steep gradients. Apart from its dimensions the engine is' the first in the t.'nitcd States to be compounded on the "Mallctf system, though there 'are hundreds of engines of that type, large and small, now in use on various European railways. Essentially the Mallett system of compounding, as applied to url.lculalod locomotives, consists in the employment of .two high-pressure cylinders ■driving one set of coupled wheels, and carried by the main frames", and in the use of two lowpressure cylinders for driivrog another set of coupled wheels, these cylinders and wheals heing mounted in a pivoted bogie frame. In the American engine there are two sets of six-couploci wheels-, making twelve drjving wheels in all. The engine is, moreover, nearly twice as large as any "Mallett" engine previously built. Tho cylinders have tlfc- following diameters : Hign-pness!uro, 20 inches ; low-pressure, 32 inches ; stroke, 32 inches, The wheels are

5G inches in diameter, and the coupled wheel bast—the actual right whcol base of the engine—is only 10 feet, though tho total wheel base is 30 feet 8 inches. The boiler pressure is 235 pounds to the square inch.