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One of two remaining "camelback" locomotives in existance. This one has the distinction of being the "last operating" camelback, as it ran at Strasburg Railroad for a few years before being parked over at the rail museum across the street. Built by Baldwin in 1902, (as #1187), it was a switcher at the Reading Company for forty three years, and was then sold to a steel plant in Birdsboro. Seventeen years later, it went to Strasburg RR and was the only steam locomotive they have to come in under its own power. It does not operate today, but is kept for display purposes. The Camelbacks were called that, because the cab was in the center of, and over, the boiler, instead of behind as normally seen, or ahead in a "cab forward" such as some of the "Big Boys" and "challengers" built for the Union Pacific. These were built in quantity, but boiler explosions and steam pipe failures had the nasty habit of killing people in the cab even more than usual on these locomotives, so the NTSB of the time banned them from further production, and they slowly dropped away from use. The reason for this design was because the railroads in the east hauled Anthracite, or hard coal, but were built to use soft coal. This made no sense, since they could not even burn what they hauled. A man named John Wooten designed a new firebox which had a much wider spread grate, and could burn the anthracite coal. This resulted in a cleaner, hotter fire, with much less waste. The railroads could now burn the "culm" or leftover coal sitting around the coal mines that was unacceptable for heating or home use. Due to this, savings, in "modern" dollars of something like 30,000 a year could be realized. If you look carefully to the left of this picture, you can see the PP&L fireless cooker, the largest such locomotive ever built. |
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