Читать книгу Locomotive Engine Running and Management онлайн

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I once knew a machine-shop foreman, a man of extensive experience in building and repairing engines, who took a locomotive out on trial trip. A side-rod pin began to run hot; and, although he was leaning out of the cab-window, he did not observe any thing wrong till a drop of babbitt struck him in the eye. An experienced engineer watching the rods would have detected the condition of affairs before babbitt was thrown.

A difficult thing for an inexperienced man to control in running a locomotive at night, when the conditions of adhesion are bad, is the slipping of the drivers. Slipping is a simple matter enough to those who feel it in the vibrations of the engine; but the novice has not this sensitiveness to slipping vibration developed, and he must depend upon his eyesight or his hearing to detect it. On a dark, stormy night, the eye is useless as a means of judging as to the regularity of the revolving wheels: the howling wind or rain, rattling on the cab, drowns the sound of the exhaust. Under circumstances of this kind, an engine might jerk the pins out before the empirical engineer discovered the wheels were slipping.