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Updated: June 1, 2025
Although Stephenson’s locomotive engines were in daily use for many years on the Killingworth Railway, they excited comparatively little interest. They were no longer experimental, but had become an established tractive power. The experience of years had proved that they worked more steadily, drew heavier loads, and were, on the whole, considerably more economical than horses.
It is a massive block of timber moving on a pivot, which is turned round by wooden levers, called capstan bars, or hand-spikes, and is used for any purpose that requires great tractive power the drawing in of the cable, for instance, or warping the ship; which means that a rope is fixed on shore, or by an anchor to the bottom of the sea, and the other end of it is coiled round the capstan, so that when the capstan is forced round by the handspikes, the rope coils on to it, and the ship is slowly dragged forward.
The works of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway were now approaching completion. But, singular to say, the directors had not yet decided as to the tractive power to be employed in working the line when opened for traffic. The differences of opinion among them were so great as apparently to be irreconcilable.
The heating surface is, in the tubes, 1,013 square feet; fire-box, 89 square feet; total, 1,102 square feet. The wheel base is 15 ft. 8 in., and the tractive power 88 lb. for each lb. of steam pressure in the cylinders. These engines, working the fast passenger trains at a speed of about 45 miles per hour, burn about 35 lb. of coal per mile, when taking trains weighing about 230 tons gross.
The engine, which is an all-coupled six wheel tank engine, weighs 48½ tons in working order, it has cylinders 18 in. diameter and 24 in. stroke, and 4 ft. wheels, the boiler pressure is 160 lb., and the tractive force per lb. of mean steam pressure in the cylinders is 162 lb.
My negotiations being with a company in a town where there are no steep gradients, and where the coefficient of friction of ordinary wheels would be sufficient for all tractive purposes, I thought it better to avoid the complication involved in employing a large central wheel with a broad surface specially designed for hilly districts, and with which I had mounted a gradient of one in sixteen.
I only wish I may live to see the day, though that I can scarcely hope for, as I know how slow all human progress is, and with what difficulty I have been able to get the locomotive thus far adopted, notwithstanding my more than ten years’ successful experiment at Killingworth.” The result, however, outstripped even the most sanguine anticipations of Stephenson; and his son Robert, shortly after his return from America in 1827, saw his father’s locomotive generally employed as the tractive power on railways.
At a speed of 2.2 meters per second the tractive stress, K, is from 10 to 11 kilogrammes. At a speed of 13.5 kilometers per hour, or 3.75 meters per second, the engine develops a power of 12 horses. The piston is 19 centimeters in diameter, and has a stroke of 15 centimeters. The shaft, in common, of the pump and engine makes 410 revolutions per minute.
The strength of the holding down bolts may easily be computed, when the elevating force of the piston or main centre is known; but it is expedient very much to exceed this strength in practice, on account of the elasticity of the keelsons, the liability to corrosion, and other causes. Q. What is the amount of tractive force requisite to draw carriages on railways?
The greater does the speed become, the more considerable is the diminution in stress; and, starting from a certain speed, the rise of the boat is such as to diminish its absolute tractive stress a fact of prime importance established by theory and confirmed by experiment.
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