Once again, I try to do justice to items from a little box of CPR steam locomotive prints I purchased in the 1980s. The images are all smaller than 2 x 5 inches, but they are generally quite sharp and yield interesting historical details with computer-based enlargement.
Out there on the internet ... are historians who could expertly interpret the features and history of these engines, and these classes of engines, based on years of careful study.
My first task is to make copies of these images available for people to see, download, use, etc.
My second task is to provide a little information to make the images more interesting.
My third task is to avoid presenting information which is incorrect. I use Omer Lavallee's books.
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| "Digby, Nova Scotia about 1928" |
Dominion Atlantic Railway engine 26 ('Kent') is shown on the wharf at Digby. The engine came into the CPR roster at the time of the CPR lease of the Dominion Atlantic Railway in 1912. It was built by Baldwin in March 1901 and scrapped before 1941. The fireman is checking his 'news feed' and the engineer might be napping ... as they both await the CPR ferry's arrival from Saint John.
The DAR names were decoration and were not used to identify the engines in train orders:
- Edward, Duke of Kent was the father of Queen Victoria and Commander-in-Chief of the military forces stationed in British North America circa 1800.
- Previously, the engine had been decorated with the names: President, Governor Cox and Wolfeville.
- On Governor Cox ... there was a British military officer, Nicholas Cox (1724-1794), who participated in the expulsion of the Acadians and who was appointed lieutenant governor of the district of Gaspé. You know, we can think too much about these details sometimes.
Built by Rogers in August 1883, the CPR 100 is seen at an unknown location between 1907 and 1913 - the period when this number was in use. It was scrapped as 7013 in September 1921.
A box car is spotted at the platform of a freight shed on this light-railed country branch line.
Left to right: We may be looking at the engineer, headend trainman and the fireman. The air pump is working away in front of the fireman's open cab door.
This engine was built at the CPR New Shops ('Delorimier') in September 1889, numbered 438.
Now, with its third road number, the 203 sits on a track in Winnipeg in September 1932. Its stack is capped and winter cab curtains are installed.
I think it is missing one of its rods. It will be scrapped in August 1935.
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Ten Years of Fun!
Before its conversion to a 'Camelback' this engine would have had a conventional and pleasing appearance. It was built by Richmond (in Virginia) in March 1899.
The most plausible explanation for this type's 'Mother Hubbard' (a nursery rhyme from before 1800) nickname is the observation that the engineer was cooped up in a glorified cupboard.
This photo would have been taken between 1902 and 1906 - the period when the engine was numbered 1026.
This engine started out as a 'compound' >> Running the steam through a (21 inch diameter) high pressure cylinder, then a (33 inch diameter) low pressure cylinder. Both cylinders were 26 inches in length. Compounding was an evolutionary improvement in the never-ending quest to increase the power and fuel efficiency of steam locomotives.
It was converted to a Camelback with a Wootten firebox in 1902 to burn anthracite, but was later rebuilt to burn bituminous coal in March 1911, as this experiment was deemed unsuccessful (so about a decade as a Camelback).
Then in 1912, the compound cylinders were replaced with identical 20 inch cylinders.
The engine was scrapped in April 1935.
In terms of effective 'crew resource management' ... having the fireman located at his normal position at the boiler backhead, and the engineer isolated in that cab - perched on the boiler, would not have been optimal for the sake of maintaining a 'watch out' for signals and the track ahead ... or for the verification/reminders of train order instructions (eg. meets). Nor would it have been helpful when an engineer was working with a less-experienced fireman who required instruction.
... However, this may not have mattered as much on assigned runs where the same engine crew always worked together. Both crew members would usually be working in miserable conditions on this type of locomotive, so they probably would not feel like chit-chat anyway.
There is an amazing amount of AI-generated slop being generated for YouTube. Search for 'Camelback' if you want to see some. I was looking for old amateur films of Camelbacks in use on fast passenger trains on the CNJ and similar roads. Eric gave me an excellent set of DVDs a long time ago showing these operations and I was hoping you could see them too.
... On YouTube, if you are patient, you will see the odd case where a rod failed under load and punctured the floor of the engineer's 'cab'. Consequently, on some American roads, these engines were known as 'snappers'.
The building of new Camelbacks was definitively prohibited by the Interstate Commerce Commission in 1927 for safety reasons.
Of trivial interest in the photo above are the two flags being used (in compliance with the rules of that era) as end of train 'markers'.
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| from: A Locomotive Engineer's Album; George B Abdill; 1965; Bonanza. |
A Wootten firebox shown in a Baldwin photo (undated).
As we look at the back of the firebox, you can see the drawbar for the tender. This seems to be a smaller Camelback. The very wide grate area gives the firebox a roughly triangular shape. The fireman attended to those two firebox doors. You can see the engineer's controls through the cab window. The centrally mounted air pump and the locations for tender water supply and the trainline can be spotted. It seems possible that the fireman does not have his own injector or gauges in this set-up.
Two types of coal for two different applications ...
Generally, Canadian steam locomotives burned bituminous coal. Locomotive fireman training books circa 1900-1930, caution the fireman not to make smoke, as incomplete combustion can lose up to 50% of the coal's heat content. Flammable components which were produced in the firebox's heat from this coal included volatile gases such as methane, and combustible tars and oils. These made the coal easy to ignite and easy to keep burning.
In Pennsylvania and other north-eastern coal mining states, anthracite was being produced. A harder coal which contained more carbon and produced fewer volatiles it when it was heated, it was highly desired for applications in cities such as home heating and home stoves. It burned almost without smoke.
On the other hand, the smoke and soot produced by bituminous coal would deposit flammable chemicals on the inside of stove pipes. These deposits stayed there, waiting for the day when a hot fire would ignite them, creating a very hot rocket-like chimney fire up through the centre of a dwelling. This would probably cause the stove pipe to become red hot in the process. Anthracite was the safer, cleaner coal for city use.
Free Fuel !
There was no market for the large quantities of small anthracite particles (culm) which were left after the marketable coal had passed through the coal breakers in Pennsylvania and had been shipped to the cities. But if you say 'free fuel' ... someone is bound to take an interest in the material.
The Wootten firebox was designed to efficiently burn the pea-sized to grain-sized anthracite which was not marketable as 'city fuel'. The firebox provided a large burning area for a steady, hot fire. It also decreased the disruptive effect of the locomotive's draft on the small anthracite particles - again, through the use of this oversized grate.
Here is detail from the photo above.
You can see the fireman's 'cab' - it is not necessarily more exposed than other regular cabs of the same era. You can also see the particle size of the anthracite in the tender. With Montreal anthracite being imported mainly from Pennsylvania by ship ... there was probably enough small particle waste created during handling for the CPR to buy cheaply from city coalyards.
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A quick look at Pennsylvanian anthracite ...
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| from: Growing Up in Coal Country; Susan Campbell Bartoletti; 1996; Houghton Mifflin. archive.org |
In Pennsylvania, breaker boys picked out slate and rock for wages of 70 cents for an 8-12 hour day. In 1885, the minimum age was 12 to work here. In 1902 it was raised to 14 ... but with no mandated state birth registry, parents could fill out a company form, get it notarized and their boy was then legally the desired age.
As the coal was shaken down the breaker chutes, the boys stopped the flow with their feet, and using their bare fingers (a job requirement), fished out slate and rock and put these into the culm chute at the side. The unmarketable small particle anthracite would fall through screens at the bottom of the chutes. Each coal breaker facility produced up to 10 million tons of culm and other waste per year.
Making that kind of money, children could look forward to a promising career in the same town as a coal miner, with a permanent account at the company store. Then, if they became too old or injured to work in the mine, they could again possibly find employment picking coal.
This model was international ... Canadian boys in places like Cape Breton worked in similar conditions above and below ground.
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| from: Anthracite Culm and Silt; Sisler, Fraser, Ashmead; 1928; Pennsylvania Geological Survey. archive.org |
The small particles of coal which resulted from coal mining and handling operations had become a major feature of the Pennsylvania countryside by 1928 - the year after new Camelback production was prohibited by the ICC. On the map above, you can barely see the short sections of watercourse marked by a solid line, signifying the coal mining areas which actually produced the silt.
This study documented the locations of the huge piles of culm and silt across the mining region, calculated the volumes of material they held, and considered how they could be valuable and marketable if reclaimed and sold ... for example, as briquettes. (At certain points in history, large coal briquettes were used to fuel steam locomotives in Europe.) The study also looked at the rate of flow of coal particles down rivers and documented watercourse blockages resulting from all of the 'clean, beautiful' coal silt.
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My images for the previous two engine photos come from 2.25 x 4 inch prints. However, both of these photos appear in Lavallee's various works on CPR motive power. If you own a few railway books, you'll often notice the same photos appearing again and again.
Before I found the image positively identified in his ultimate and definitive work on motive power, I spent an hour trying to identify the particular engine shown to calculate its scrapping date ... because there were duplicative renumberings for engines built at Angus and having the serial numbers 1433 and 1436.
This is serial # 1436, built in May 1906 and scrapped in October 1957.
These engines were heavily rebuilt over the course of their lives. The unusual-looking valve chest was another experiment which was not preserved for long.
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| from: A Treasury of Railroad Folklore; (article, George Zabriskie,1953); 1953; Bonanza. |
George Zabriskie (1868-1954) was the descendent of early Polish settlers and was a native of New York City. He entered the flour business and worked for Pillsbury among others. Herbert Hoover appointed him national administrator of sugar and flour ... with domestic and possibly foreign aid responsibilities. He was an avid amateur historian and was eventually elected to the American Antiquarian Society.
... His article A Century of American Locomotives and Their Builders goes on for pages. He mentions that the Camels were distinct from the later, and more successful, Camelbacks. In the Camels, the fireman's work station was known as the 'kitchen' as many firemen were 'cooked' there when trapped as the result of collisions.
... He says that the Canadian Pacific's 548, built in 1891, and rebuilt in 1901 with a Schmidt smokebox superheater, 'settled the hash' of all the compounded locomotives.
The superheater was a more elegant solution to increasing locomotive efficiency than compounding.
