Early Engine Frames: Forged or Cast ?

[NW Mailing List]

Mr. King & Mr. Garner, and all other generous souls on this List --

Thank you for your kind responses to my question about forged/fabricated engines frames vs. cast frames.

It is obvious that I spend too much time in the early literature (... I have not looked at a modern book on railroading in at least a decade,) which defect of character was the inspiration for my wonderment about forging/fabricating/casting of engine frames.

The immediate prompt for my question was an illustration showing the forging of engine frame members with a drop hammer, published 134 years ago in Railways of America, ed. by Thomas M. Cooney, 1890, page 138. I will attach that image.

The book is an ecclectic edit, rather typical of the books published in the 1890s, and quite similar in content to the wonderful set put out by Marshall Kirkman around 1900. There are chapters on the civil engineering of railroads, engines and cars, operating rules and practices and safety, the passenger business, the railroad mail service, business and labor relations, and maintaining statistics. The book has 200 illustrations, which would today be considered primitive because the photograveur process had not yet been perfected.

Shucks, the book even contains an illustration showing our beloved Dr. Frank Scheer, furiously whipping the horses pulling an Overland Mail Coach !  (That, of course, was before he went to work on the RF&P RR at age 16.)

I will try to catch up on the times and be more modern in the future... but that just may be impossible for a backwards dude like me !

Ciao,

-- abram burnett
Now Selling: Turnip Isotopes and Metabolites
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