Steam engine question

I was recently re watching the movie "Michael Collins" when I noticed something I thought strange. There is a scene with a shot of a steam engine pulling a train (that Collins is riding), and the front of the boiler has a definate up and down motion. It almost has a galloping look. The motion is quite evident (especailly using the "frame step" feature on my DVD player) and is only the boiler, not the trucks or the chassis. The engine in question is black and has the number 461 on the front of the chassis. There is not a clear shot of the side, but it looks as if it might be something like a 4-4 or 4-6 arrangement. This is supposedly set in 1918, although I have no idea if the engine in question is authentic for that period.Anyone ever see this sort of thing before? It looks almost as if the boiler is absorbing some of the reaction to the drive rods. Would the boiler be attached to the chassis with some kind of suspension to absorb this motion?Brad "doesn't know landased steam" Meyer

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RE: Steam engine question, BlakeTyner, Oct-24-02, 00:12 AM, (1) RE: Steam engine question, sn00py, Oct-24-02, 11:52 AM, (2) RE: Steam engine question, BNSF_Dash9, Oct-25-02, 08:57 AM, (3) RE: Steam engine question, sn00py, Oct-26-02, 09:53 PM, (4) RE: Steam engine question, MikeF, Oct-27-02, 07:57 PM, (5) RE: Steam engine question, Brad 110, Oct-29-02, 07:04 AM, (6) RE: Steam engine question, sn00py, Oct-29-02, 03:52 PM, (7) RE: Steam engine question, I_totally_love_trains, Oct-29-02, 05:10 PM, (8) RE: Steam engine question, MikeF, Nov-01-02, 05:43 PM, (9) RE: Steam engine question, I_totally_love_trains, Nov-02-02, 05:11 PM, (10) RE: Steam engine question, sn00py, Nov-02-02, 08:54 PM, (11) RE: Steam engine question, I_totally_love_trains, Nov-02-02, 09:09 PM, (12) RE: Steam engine question, sn00py, Nov-02-02, 09:23 PM, (13) RE: Steam engine question, I_totally_love_trains, Nov-02-02, 09:31 PM, (14)

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Hmmm...sounds odd...Actually, the boiler itself is confined to the area just around the firebox. Usually they're about half-in, half-out of the cab. From that point on it's the smokebox all the way to the stack. (this is where the tubes run) The locomotive might have had angled pistons. Quite a number of them are at about a 45 degree angle to the tracks, and looks kind of bizarre. Other than that I couldn't hazard a guess...but the boiler/smokebox shouldn't move independantly of the frame. I suppose it could be some special design, but from what I've seen that's the case.Odd, I might have to rent the movie.Blake Harris
Engineer/fireman, Jefferson and Cypress Bayou Railroad

Vice Dean, Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies

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Could be any number of things. Bad track, or the best thing I could guess is vertical pistons.I'll hace to check that movie out myself.

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LOL - any x-files fans here?? - there was the stupidest thing on one episode - they were investigating a secert autopsy room on board a RCD rail motor (that was cool)they completly blew it when they were saying they were in washington and they wanted to check out this rail yard...what was it filled with??? - BC Rail Geeps, SD's and Dash9's!!!
lolcheers
mike

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Heh. I saw that. If I remember right, they kept talking about how that RDC was only a Car and didn't have an engine of its own. If you looked closely, they'd even removed the cab to make the show. I wonder if any railroads ever did that with their old buds.

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I would disagree about the length of the boiler. The tubes that run from the firebox forward to the smokebox run *thru* the boiler. The boiler is usually 3/4 the length or more. Quite a bit of the steam generated is formed around those tubes. Usually all the pressure containing vessel is considered the 'boiler'.As far as the odd motion, it does seem strange. I've seen videos of articulated's where the front of the boiler seems to move from side to side as the front frame goes around a curve. The boiler is rigid and is attached to the back frame, so the front frame slides sideways underneath it. Articulated's have a sort of bearing plate so some of the boiler weight is supported by the front frame yet can slide side to side.But up and down motion sounds like extremely uneven track. But as the pilot moves up and down with gross track unevenness, the front of the boiler would tend to follow. Of course, there is some vertical movement in the springs. Don't know if that would be enough to show up in the movie though.Mike F

Mike F

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>I would disagree about the length of the boiler. The tubes
>that run from the firebox forward to the smokebox run *thru*
>the boiler. I was not specific through ignorance. It would be the smoke box I should have been reffering to. The very front of the cyclandrical portion at the front of the engine.>As far as the odd motion, it does seem strange. To me too. We have to live steam lines nearby where I have seen them running steam engines, and I have seen several steam locos from the same era in movies (Dr Zhivago and Larence of Arabia come quickly to ming) and never seen anything like it.
>But up and down motion sounds like extremely uneven track. Another person suggested perhaps vertical pistions. What I could see of the drivers in the shot (several seconds duration) looked like a conventional rod setup with smaller wheeled trucks forward. the "bounce was only in the front of the loco, it was not visible in the cab area or along the rest of the train. That would seem to rule out track. My only other idea is that it is a photographic illusion of some sort. Since I don't think they made the loco for the movie, and the bulk of the shooting was in Ireland, it was my hope that someone reading here might know of an English/Irish built engine that still existed in someones collection (or otherwise knew enough about the move to know something about the engine used) and knew something. >Of course, there is some vertical movement in the springs.
>Don't know if that would be enough to show up in the movie
>though.That's what the movement looks like to me, like the engine had suddenly hit something on the track or accelerated or something, and the smokebox was still bouncing up and down. I didn't know there were springs of any kind, but the motion lookes like (and had the speed/frequency of) undamped bouncing on some sort of spring.Brad Meyer

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I had another thought, remembering something I saw rl once. We were taking a tour of a railroad near where I lived. There was one bridge that had had a minor accident some years back, and left a small dent in the rail. Literally only about an inch drop.Well, they didn't figure how it would affect the long passenger cars, so while watching from the vestibule between cars (they afforded the best view) we watched the car behind us dip so far that you could see around the vestibule (the walkway part above the coupler). Everyone in that car screamed like they thought the train was derailing and the crew had a good laugh. They've since fixed that part of track.
I wonder if this movement came from a dip in the track, or even the locomotive derailing all together.

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On Steam Engine's car the front cab window be exited/entered to get out to the side walkway on a steam locomotive or does a guy have to get off, go to the front, and then get up on there?Why have I saw steam locomotives with a small metal block welded to the front of the cow plower?Adam-------------------------------Operation Lifesaver Organization -- http://www.oli.org/
Striving to save lives at railroad crossings

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>On Steam Engine's car the front cab window be exited/entered
>to get out to the side walkway on a steam locomotive or does
>a guy have to get off, go to the front, and then get up on
>there? Generally, there are no doors. One has to get off the engine, walk to the front and climb back on. The walkway is used to get to things for maintenance like washout plugs, the sand dome, the top of the compressor etc... Not much to do out there when running down the road >
>Why have I saw steam locomotives with a small metal block
>welded to the front of the cow plower?
>Not sure what you mean there. Maybe some sort of push-block or coupler for pushing/working cars from the front??

Mike F

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Well possibly but at the Johnstown Train Station I saw a old photo of a guy standing on this block.I also saw some trains with a cow plower almost like a flat platform. How can that work?Adam-------------------------------Operation Lifesaver Organization -- http://www.oli.org/
Striving to save lives at railroad crossings

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Let's see if I can help you out here.You asked if there was a door? Well, there used to be. Back in the very early days of steam, the days of the 4-4-0's and so on, inorder to oil most of the running gear correctly, it needed to be in motion. That meant that while the fireman also had to maintain boiler pressure, he was required to get out and move around the locomotive, oiling the moving parts as the train chugged down the track. These early trains rarely went over 45 mph, but you can still imagine the danger.In order to facilitate this, there was a door on the fireman's side, though it tended to be a tad small; given its location.In later locomotives, the door was often kept, if nothing else to allow a way for a crewmember to reach the upper parts of the boiler when working on the train. (It wasn't moving then however)As the cow catcher's (that's their true name) go, the differences usually told you what area the train came from. For example,During the 1800's, most southern locomotives had a cow catcher made of wood, angled at about a 45 degree angle, and painted a nice red color. The reason was to nudge cattle out of the way should one wander across the tracks. Given that the south wasn't industrialized as much as the north, there was believed to be more of a chance of a train/cow incident.However, in the north, where trains ran between major cities for the most part, there were more farms that had fences, so there was less chance that a cow would wander onto the tracks. For the most part, the north developed locomotives with no cow catcher, or a minor one. If anything, they needed snow plows more, and it wasn't uncommon to see the kind of cowcatcher I described for the south, sheathed in metal to deal with snow.The block you ask of is one of two things.Early trains used a kind of coupling known as Link and Pin. It worked very simply. Just a box with a pin, and a single large link from a chain suspended in it. Coupling was....dangerous at best, and deadly at worst.The other thing it could be, is something known as an anticlimber. Anticlimbers are steel blocks, usually cut with horizontal grooves. These grooves mesh with other grooves on cars, preventing something known as "Telescoping."Basically, telescoping is when one car climbs up over the sill of another and compresses in on it.

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But I saw a cow catcher that looked kind of like a flat platform sticking straight out, at least I saw a picture of it I think.Also on telescoping, this has been bothering me for a while. How do cars telescope? The cars have to pass the trucks somehow, right?Adam-------------------------------Operation Lifesaver Organization -- http://www.oli.org/
Striving to save lives at railroad crossings

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Somehow yes.Depends on the train and the forces involved actually.Little known fact, but some trains trucks are not held on the bolster by anything other than sheer weight. That is to say, it's not like a toy train where you have a screw holding the truck on. In those cases, it's pretty simple to telescope a train.In the other cases, you have to figure speed, mass, inertia, and resistance forces in. I forget the formula, but basically it works out to something like. S x M + E=X Or Speed multiplied by Mass plus Energy expended to mantain equals Total over all force in Newtons. If X > T then Y (If Total Force is greater than Structural integrity breaking force, then total failure occurs.)In layman's terms. Move something fast enough and with enough weight, and you will break the bolster and smear the car ahead of you. Gimme some time and I can find that real formula.

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I learned inertia and all that in physical science two years ago in school but I forget it all already, geez, lol.So you're saying if the car telescopes the pin holding the truck on will basically rip through the car like a knife through hot butter with enough force put to it?On some coil cars how's come on the sides in between the inside wheels of the trucks are big panels? Is that so no one can crawl under the cars?Adam-------------------------------Operation Lifesaver Organization -- http://www.oli.org/
Striving to save lives at railroad crossings

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