pokermind wrote:Fellow posters we must remember how much steel railroads require for their tracks before blithely suggesting miles of railroad and that on Safehold steel production is a bottleneck.
SNIP
Poker
BTW, the steam locomotive comprises two basic elements: the boiler and the running gear. It's the running gear that determines the speed and power of the final machine. Each railroad had a mechanical department whose purpose was to develop locomotives and equipment that was suited to its particular operations. Because of the need to tailor running gear and boilers to specific loads and speeds, there was a tremendous variety of different machines in use across the country. Each railroad had its own ideas on use of appliances, headlights, cowcatchers, and infinite other details. As a result, there was
no mistaking a Pennsy locomotive for one on the Santa Fe or Northern Pacific or - heaven forbid - the New York Central.
For example, the Belpair firebox was more or less the trademark of a PRR locomotive. The boiler used on its H-10-class 2-8-0 was also used on the commuter-service G-5 4-6-0 and the very fast 80-inch-drivered E-6 4-4-2. The boiler designed in 1914 and applied to 425 K-4 4-6-2s was also used on 574 Ll-class freight 2-8-2s. Why? Because the PRR declared itself the "standard railroad of the world" (because, internally, it indeed was heavily standardized - and saved a lot of money this way).
