Y6 2128 Crosshead Design Question (Experimental)

[NW Mailing List]

The screenshot and link below are from a 1938 Otto Perry photo at Hagerstown in the Denver Public Library Digital Collection. 

In this photo, 2128 has an unusual crosshead guide and crosshead setup. 
The section depth of the top and bottom guides is *much* deeper than typical
The bottom shoe of the crosshead “straddles” its mating guide in a normal fashion, but the upper surface doesn’t. The top half looks abbreviated, as if it had internal bearing surfaces (like a multiple bearing crosshead). 
The crosshead appears to be one-piece, instead of the typical separate body / shoe.

I checked the archives and found a record for “Crosshead Loco. Class Y6. (Style No.1)”, which does indeed have an internal “male” guide(second screenshot / link). I couldn’t find anything on the unusual guides. The extra depth for the top guide makes sense, given the internal guideway, but not for the lower.

Was this an experimental setup? If it was experimental, is it known what problem it was intended to solve? It looks like the crosshead would have more bearing area for upward thrust in forward gear, if nothing else? Less maintenance from its single-piece design?

https://digital.denverlibrary.org/nodes/view/1100890?lsk=42fc45569c589fdedcdc22b804a8b2b9



Croshead drawing
https://www.nwhs.org/archivesdb/detail.php?ID=50773


Matt Goodman
Columbus, Ohio, US
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