1.
Swiss locomotive and railcar classification
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It started out as a uniform system for the classification and naming of all rolling stock, powered and unpowered, but had been replaced and amended by the UIC classification of goods wagons. The Swiss classification system was created by the Swiss federal railways department, in 1902, when the Swiss Federal Railways was founded as a government railway, that new railway also became bound by the system. The Swiss system is less precise than those other systems in the way it deals with axles, because it refers only to numbers, rather than to arrangements, of powered axles. The Swiss system is more a method of classifying locomotive. The classifications for which the Swiss system provides have always been adapted to new requirements. The last modification to the system occurred in 1968, with the publication of the Directory of the Rolling Stock of the Swiss Private Railways by the Swiss Federal Agency for Transport. For carriages and wagons, the system was progressively replaced from 1968 by the UIC international wagon classification system. However, all of Switzerlands powered rolling stock initially retained its Swiss type classification or class designation, the standard gauge private railways of Switzerland soon followed the example of the Swiss Federal Railways, and agreement was reached as to the allocation of number ranges. The narrow gauge railways have largely retained the old system for locomotives, railcars and passenger carriages, here is a description of the classification system as it operated up to 1989, and as it still operates in respect of narrow gauge private railway motive power. There is no provision for combining the codes A, B, C, D, E, G, R and T, the combination of H and G is possible. HG would therefore be a narrow gauge locomotive, with a mix of adhesion, since 1966, in respect of railcars and tractors, he or hm has meant pure rack rail drive, and eh or mh has meant a mix of adhesion and rack rail drive. Steam powered tank locomotives were given an E, and the maximum speed of the locomotive was designated with a lower case letter. Thus, an Ea 3/6 was a locomotive with vmax >80 kilometres per hour. With steam locomotives, separate driving mechanisms were displayed, so, for example, a Mallet locomotive was named G 2x2/2 or G 2/3+2/2, and not G 4/4 or G 4/5. Up until 1920, standard gauge locomotives were given the letter F. The class later designated as Be 5/7 was therefore originally named Fb 5/7, the designation R was originally intended for locomotives with an axle load of under 16 tonnes. These lightweight locomotives exert less stress on the rails when they negotiate curves, with the introduction of the Re 4/4II, the axle load limit was dropped following extensive testing. Several locomotives were given approval for higher cornering speeds, to which their type designation had not yet been adapted
2.
Baltimore and Ohio Railroad locomotives
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On the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, locomotives were always considered of great importance, and the railroad was involved in many experiments and innovations. The name Tom Thumb is forever associated with the B&O, as the first steam locomotive built in the United States for an American railroad. It was built strictly as a demonstrator, but it was succeeded by a series of locomotives designed by Ross Winans. Early B&O designs were quite unlike those used on roads, due to in-house design. 4-2-0 locomotives from Norris were the anomaly on a railroad which was already building eight-coupled locomotives well before the Civil War, by the beginning of the war, new power on the railroad had become more conventional, though many of the older, unconventional designs remained. Up until 1884 locomotive numbers were reused when locomotives were retired, in 1884, in order to reduce confusion, all locomotives were renumbered to group like locomotives together, and thereafter numbers were retired along with the locomotive to which they referred. John W. Garretts desire to have a line to New York led to the construction of the Baltimore Belt Line in order to bring the railroad across Baltimore. The most important feature of this was the Howard Street Tunnel, objections to use of steam led, in 1895, to the first main line electrification in North America. Trains in one direction were pulled through the tunnel, by a series of locomotives that lasted until the end of steam, in the other direction. Dieselization made the electrification unnecessary and it was discontinued in 1952, another innovation was the introduction of Mallet locomotives. Economies in haulage could be achieved by reducing the number of locomotives and trains needed, in 1900 #2400, a 0-6-6-0 design, was introduced, and quickly became known as Old Maude after a mule in a cartoon. Old Maude was renumbered to #7000 in 1915, and it boasted an impressive 71,500 pound tractive effort and was a success at a Maximum speed of only 21 mph. It was the first Mallet in North America, Mallets were built in large numbers for the B&O, culminating in the huge EM-1 2-8-8-4. In the presidency of Daniel Willard, the power department, headed by Col. George H. Emerson. Particular emphasis was placed on the water boiler, as opposed to the fire tube boiler used from the earliest days of steam. The culmination of these experiments was the duplex #5600 George H. Emerson and it was to be succeeded by a visionary locomotive of a unique design, of which very little was built before the whole project was cancelled. Many other trials were conducted of steam locomotive appliances, very few of which had any lasting impact, at the turn of the 20th century various compound locomotives were tried, particularly of the Vauclain and tandem patterns. As on other roads, they presented problems, and only the Mallets were repeated
3.
Baltimore and Ohio Railroad
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The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad is one of the oldest railroads in the United States and the first common carrier railroad. At first this railroad was located entirely in the state of Maryland with a line from the port of Baltimore west to Sandy Hook. At this point to continue westward, it had to cross into Virginia over the Potomac River, adjacent to the confluence of the Potomac, from there it was extended to the Ohio River at Wheeling and a few years later also to Parkersburg, West Virginia. It is now part of the CSX Transportation network, and includes the oldest operational railroad bridge in the USA, the B&O also included the Leiper Railroad, the first permanent horse-drawn railroad in the U. S. In later years, B&O advertising carried the motto, Linking 13 Great States with the Nation, the B&O Warehouse at the Camden Yards rail junction in Baltimore now dominates the view over the right-field wall at the Baltimore Orioles current home, Oriole Park at Camden Yards. At the end of 1970 B&O operated 5552 miles of road and 10449 miles of track, not including the Staten Island Rapid Transit or the Reading and its subsidiaries. The fast-growing port city of Baltimore, Maryland faced economic stagnation unless it opened routes to the western states, as New York had done with the Erie Canal in 1820. In 1827, twenty-five merchants and bankers studied the best means of restoring that portion of the Western trade which has recently been diverted from it by the introduction of steam navigation and their answer was to build a railroad—one of the first commercial lines in the world. Two men — Philip E. Thomas and George Brown — were the pioneers of the railroad and they spent the year 1826 investigating railway enterprises in England, which were at that time being tested in a comprehensive fashion as commercial ventures. Their investigation completed, they held a meeting on February 12,1827, including about twenty-five citizens. Thomas was elected as the first president and Brown the treasurer, the capital of the proposed company was fixed at five million dollars, but the B&O was initially capitalized in 1827 with a three million dollar issue of stock. Virtually every citizen of Baltimore owned a share, as the offering was oversubscribed, construction began on July 4,1828, when Charles Carroll of Carrollton did the groundbreaking. The initial tracks were built with granite stringers topped by iron rails. The first section, from Baltimore west to Ellicotts Mills, opened on May 24,1830. Developers decided to follow the Patapsco River to a point near Parrs Ridge, a later compromise allowed the two companies to share the right of way. The State of Maryland granted the B&O a charter to build a line from Baltimore to Washington, D. C. in 1831, and the Washington Branch was opened in 1835. This line joined to the mainline at Relay, Maryland, crossing the Patapsco on the Thomas Viaduct. This line was funded by the state, and was operated separately until the 1870s
4.
Driving wheel
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On a steam locomotive, a driving wheel is a powered wheel which is driven by the locomotives pistons. On diesel and electric locomotives, the wheels may be directly driven by the traction motors. Coupling rods are not usually used, and it is common for each axle to have its own motor. Jackshaft drive and coupling rods were used in the past but their use is now confined to shunting locomotives, on an articulated locomotive or a duplex locomotive, driving wheels are grouped into sets which are linked together within the set
5.
Fairlie locomotive
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A Fairlie is a type of articulated steam locomotive that has the driving wheels on bogies. The locomotive may be double-ended or single ended, Fairlies are most associated with the Ffestiniog Railway in Wales. The Fairlie was invented and patented by the Scottish engineer Robert Francis Fairlie in 1864, furthermore, the standard locomotive had a front and back, and was not intended for prolonged driving in reverse, thus requiring a turntable or wye at every terminus. Fairlies answer was a steam locomotive, carrying all its fuel and water aboard the locomotive. The double-ended part was accomplished by having one double-ended boiler on the locomotive, with one firebox in the centre, the locomotive looked fairly conventional until the observer realised that the locomotive was two-faced, Janus-like. Fairlie was not the first person to devise a double-ended steam locomotive, the Seraing, built by John Cockerill for the Semmering Trials in 1851 was very similar in design to a double Fairlie. The first loco was The Progress built for the Neath and Brecon Railway, however, having the draught from both halves of the boiler through one firebox was unsuccessful. There was a tendency for most of the hot gases from the fire to go through one half of the boiler, the first Ffestiniog Railway Fairlie - Little Wonder - had separate fireboxes and proved far more successful. The locomotive driver worked on one side of the locomotive, and the fireman on the other, the regulators for both power bogies were located above the centre of the fireboxes, with the steam brake valve at one end. Underneath, the locomotive was supported on two swivelling powered bogies, with all wheels driven, smaller locomotives had bogies, while larger had six-wheel. The cylinders on each power bogie pointed outward, towards the locomotive ends, couplers and buffers were mounted on the bogies, not on the locomotive frame, so that they swivelled with the curvature of the track. Steam was delivered to the cylinders via flexible tubing, initially, this was a coiled copper tube but this would fracture after a period of use. Later locomotives had rigid connecting tubes with the necessary flexibility provided by metal ball-and-socket joints similar to those used in laboratory glassware, fuel and water were carried on the locomotive, in side tanks beside each boiler for the water, and bunkers for the fuel above them. In 1869 Fairlies company built a locomotive, named Little Wonder for the Ffestiniog Railway, a slate hauler in north Wales, the Ffestiniog was the first locomotive-hauled narrow-gauge railway, with a gauge of 1 ft 11 1⁄2 in. The Ffestiniog went on to own a total of six Fairlie locomotives and this sold his invention around the world. Locomotives were built for many British colonies, for Imperial Russia, the only really successful uses of the Fairlie locomotive, other than on the Ffestiniog Railway, were in Mexico, New Zealand, and Russia. The locomotive sold in the US was ordered for the newly built Denver and Rio Grande Railroad in 1872 and this was a smaller locomotive with four-wheel bogies, giving it a 0-4-4-0 configuration. At least one double Fairlie 0-6-6-0 was built by the Mason Machine Works in Taunton, five narrow-gauge Fairlie Patent locomotives were built by Avonside of Bristol in the early 1870s for use by Canadian railways
6.
Canadian Pacific Railway
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The Canadian Pacific Railway, also known formerly as CP Rail between 1968 and 1996, is a historic Canadian Class I railroad incorporated in 1881. The railroad is owned by Canadian Pacific Railway Limited, which began operations as legal owner in a restructuring in 2001. Headquartered in Calgary, Alberta, it owns approximately 20,000 kilometres of track all across Canada and into the United States, stretching from Montreal to Vancouver, and as far north as Edmonton. Its rail network also serves Minneapolis-St. Paul, Milwaukee, Detroit, Chicago, the railway was originally built between Eastern Canada and British Columbia between 1881 and 1885, fulfilling a promise extended to British Columbia when it entered Confederation in 1871. It was Canadas first transcontinental railway, but no longer reaches the Atlantic coast, the CPR became one of the largest and most powerful companies in Canada, a position it held as late as 1975. Its primary passenger services were eliminated in 1986, after being assumed by Via Rail Canada in 1978, a beaver was chosen as the railways logo because it is the national symbol of Canada and was seen as representing the hardworking character of the company. The company acquired two American lines in 2009, the Dakota, Minnesota and Eastern Railroad and the Iowa, Chicago, the trackage of the ICE was at one time part of CP subsidiary Soo Line and predecessor line The Milwaukee Road. It is publicly traded on both the Toronto Stock Exchange and the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker CP and its U. S. headquarters are in Minneapolis. The creation of the Canadian Pacific Railway was a task undertaken for a combination of reasons by the Conservative government of Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald. He was helped by Sir Alexander Tilloch Galt, who was the owner of the North Western Coal and his company went through several name changes during the process of the construction of the railway. British Columbia, a sea voyage away from the East Coast, had insisted upon a land transport link to the East as a condition for joining Confederation. The government however proposed to build a railway linking the Pacific province to the Eastern provinces within 10 years of 20 July 1871, Macdonald saw it as essential to the creation of a unified Canadian nation that would stretch across the continent. Moreover, manufacturing interests in Quebec and Ontario wanted access to raw materials, the first obstacle to its construction was political. The logical route went through the American Midwest and the city of Chicago, to ensure this routing, the government offered huge incentives including vast grants of land in the West. Because of this scandal, the Conservative Party was removed from office in 1873, surveying was carried out during the first years of a number of alternative routes in this virgin territory followed by construction of a telegraph along the lines that had been agreed upon. The Thunder Bay section linking Lake Superior to Winnipeg was commenced in 1875, by 1880, around 1,000 kilometres was nearly complete, mainly across the troublesome Canadian Shield terrain, with trains running on only 500 kilometres of track. With Macdonalds return to power on 16 October 1878, an aggressive construction policy was adopted. Macdonald confirmed that Port Moody would be the terminus of the transcontinental railway, in 1879, the federal government floated bonds in London and called for tenders to construct the 206 km section of the railway from Yale, British Columbia, to Savonas Ferry, on Kamloops Lake
7.
Big Hill
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The Big Hill on the Canadian Pacific Railway main line in British Columbia, Canada, was the most difficult piece of railway track on the Canadian Pacific Railways route. It was situated in the rugged Canadian Rockies west of the Continental Divide, even though the Big Hill was replaced by the Spiral Tunnels in 1909, the area has long been a challenge to the operation of trains and remains so to this day. The essential problem was that the railway had to ascend 1,070 feet along a distance of 10 miles from Field at 4,267 feet climbing to the top of the Continental Divide at 5,340 feet. The narrow valleys and high mountains limited the space where the railway could stretch out and limit the grade. To complete the Pacific railway as quickly as possible, a decision was made to delay blasting a lengthy 1,400 feet tunnel through Mount Stephen, instead of the desired 2. 2% grade a steep 4. 5% grade was built in 1884. This was one of the steepest railway lines anywhere and it descended from Wapta Lake to the base of Mount Stephen, along the Kicking Horse River to a point just west of Field, then rose again to meet the original route. Seen as a solution, this grade was twice the percentage normally allowed for a downhill train track. The first construction train to go down the pass ran away off the hill to land in the Kicking Horse River, the CPR soon added three safety switches on the way down to protect against runaway trains. Speed was restricted to eight miles per hour for passenger trains and six for freight, nevertheless, disasters occurred with dismaying frequency. Field was created as a camp solely to accommodate the CPR’s need for additional locomotives to be added to trains about to tackle the Big Hill. Here a stone roundhouse with turntable was built at what was first known simply as Third Siding. In December 1884 the CPR renamed it Field after C. W. Field, a Chicago businessman who, at that time, standard steam locomotives were 4-4-0s, capable enough for the prairies and elsewhere, but of little use on the Big Hill. Baldwin Locomotive Works was called upon to build two 2-8-0s for use as Field Hill pusher engines in 1884, at the time they were the most powerful locomotives built. Two more followed in June 1886, the CPR began building its own 2-8-0s in August 1887, and over the years hundreds more were built or bought. The Big Hill temporary line was to remain the main line for twenty-five years, the improvement project was started in 1906, under the supervision of John Edward Schwitzer, the senior engineer of CPR’s western lines. The first proposal had been to extend the length of the climb and this idea had quickly been abandoned because of the severe risk of avalanches and landslips on the valley side. The route decided upon called for two tunnels driven in three-quarter circles into the valley walls, the higher tunnel, number one, was about one thousand yards in length and ran under Cathedral Mountain, to the south of the original track. When the new line emerged from this tunnel it had doubled back and it then descended the valley side in almost the opposite direction to its previous course before crossing the Kicking Horse River and entering Mount Ogden to the north
8.
Bank engine
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A bank engine or helper engine or pusher engine is a railway locomotive that temporarily assists a train that requires additional power or traction to climb a gradient. Helpers/bankers are most commonly found in mountain divisions, where the grade may demand the use of substantially greater motive power than that required for other grades within the division. Helpers/bankers were most widely used during the age of steam, especially in the American West, the development of advanced braking systems and diesel-electric or electric locomotives has eliminated the everyday need for bankers/helpers in all but a few locations. With the advent of dynamic brakes on electric or diesel-electric locomotives, bankers or helpers were historically positioned at the rear of the train, in which case they also protected against wagons or coaches breaking away from the train and running back downhill. Also, in a role, it was possible for the helper/banker to easily separate once the train had crested the grade. Once separated, the banker would return to a siding or stub so as to clear the mainline, a common practice with knuckle couplers was to remove the knuckle from the front coupler. The locomotive would be brought up behind the last car of the train while the train was moving slowly, the air brake hose would not be coupled. When the train no longer required assistance, the helper/pusher would slow, then reverse and this practice was outlawed in North America after the end of the steam era. Special heavily constructed cabooses were sometimes used in helper areas, ordinary cabooses were built as lightly as practical and might be crushed by the helper/pushers force, which could be as much as 90 tons. The heavy cabooses allowed crews to avoid the procedure of splitting the train just ahead of the caboose. Pushers/helpers were commonly designed to provide power for very short runs. But if it could push enough to get the train to the top of the grade, then it could build up pressure while coasting back down and this practice was common in Europe. Since it was not possible to control a steam locomotive. Careful coordination was required between engine crews to assure that all locomotives were operated in a consistent manner, standard whistle signals were employed to tell the helper crew when to apply power, drift or brake. A misunderstanding of signals by a pusher locomotive crew could result in a wreck if the lead locomotive applied brakes while the bank engine was still applying power. The usual result was that the train would experience a violent run-in, the town of Helper, Utah was named after these engines, as it was where helper engines were kept to assist on the climb to Soldier Summit. In the UK, an engine that was attached to the front of a train to assist with the ascent of an incline was called a pilot locomotive. This differentiated it from the engine which was provided to power the train to its destination
9.
Ore Mountains
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The Ore Mountains or Ore Mountains Range in Central Europe have formed a natural border between Saxony and Bohemia for around 800 years, from the 12th to the 20th centuries. Today, the border between Germany and the Czech Republic runs just north of the main crest of the mountain range, the highest peaks are the Klínovec, which rises to 1,244 metres above sea level and the Fichtelberg. The Ore Mountains are a Hercynian block tilted so as to present a steep face towards Bohemia. They were formed during a process, During the folding of the Variscan orogeny, metamorphism occurred deep underground, forming slate. In addition, granite plutons intruded into the metamorphic rocks, by the end of the Palaeozoic era, the mountains had been eroded into gently undulating hills, exposing the hard rocks. As the rock of the Ore Mountains was too brittle to be folded, it shattered into an independent fault block which was uplifted and tilted to the northwest. This can be clearly seen at a height of 807 m above sea level on the mountain of Komáří vížka which lies on the Czech side, east of Zinnwald-Georgenfeld. This process is known as dissection, the Ore Mountains is geologically considered to be one of the most heavily researched mountain ranges in the world. The main geologic feature in the Ore Mountains is the Late Paleozoic Eibenstock granite pluton and this pluton is surrounded by progressive zones of contact metamorphism in which Paleozoic slates and phyllites have been changed to spotted hornfels, andalusite hornfels, and quartzites. Late Tertiary faulting and volcanism gave rise to basalt and phonolite dikes, Ore veins include iron, copper, tin, tungsten, lead, silver, cobalt, bismuth, uranium, plus iron and manganese oxides. The soils consist of rapidly leaching grus, in the western and central areas of the mountains it is formed from weathered granite. Phyllite results in a loamy, rapidly weathered gneiss in the east of the mountains producing a light soil, today the land is predominantly used for pasture. But it is not uncommon to see near-natural mountain meadows, to the north of the Ore Mountains, west of Chemnitz and around Zwickau lies the Ore Mountain Basin which is only really known geologically. Here there are deposits of coal where mining has already been abandoned. A similar but smaller basin with abandoned coal deposits, the Döhlen Basin, is located southwest of Dresden on the edge of the Ore Mountains. It forms the transition to the Elbe Valley zone, the Ore Mountains are part of a larger mountain system and adjoin the Fichtel Mountains to the west and the Elbe Sandstone Mountains to the east. Past the River Elbe, the chain continues as the Lusatian Mountains. While the mountains slope gently away in the part, the southern slopes are rather steep
