The Pennsylvania Railroad
in Jersey City Book 2
Compressed Air Locomotives —Part I
Hard cover, 64 – 100lb high gloss 10” x 7” pages, 85b/w photos plus location maps.
A 2012 PRR Jersey City Hudson River Water Front Calendar (11”x8.5”) valued at $9.95 is included. Price for both $22.95 Available at all fine Railroad book retailers.
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Homestake Mining No. 9 is a good example of a Porter single-stage pneumatic locomotive. The 8.5 ton, 22” gauge 0-4-0CA was built in April 1907 and is displayed at the Black Hills Mining Museum in Lead, South Dakota. Its tank was pressurized to 900 p.s.i.
AMERICAN COMPANIES BEGAN in the 1800s to use locomotives powered by com- pressed air to replace horses and mules in un- derground mines and to take the place of steam locomotives at industries where smoke, cinders, open flame, or moisture were an is- sue. Although the first pneumatic contrap- tions took to the rails in the 1840s, 50 years passed before practical compressed air loco- motives were offered in the United States. The first were little more than storage tanks bolted to a steam locomotive’s running gear, but they evolved into complex machines which employed multiple high-pressure tanks, compound cylinders, and atmospheric reheaters to allow longer running times. To- day several “air motors” are preserved in the U.S. and Canada. In this two-part series, we’ll explore their history and development and look at surviving examples. The idea of using compressed air to power
a locomotive dates back to when the first patents for air-powered rail equipment were issued in England, as early as 1828. Advo- cates of “atmospheric railways” believed that air was a suitable (and safer) replacement for steam, but compressed air came with its own set of problems. Locomotives had to be filled with high-pressure air from an outside source (usually a large steam-powered com- pressor connected to a tank or pipeline) and refilled frequently. This limited their range; once the air was gone, there was no way to replenish it if a compressor wasn’t nearby. In 1840 two Frenchmen, M. Andrund and
Tessie du Motay, put the first air motor on rails in a small, eight-passenger carriage. Many other oddities appeared during this era of experimentation and invention, most meeting with limited success. Because smoke and pollution were an issue in big cities, in 1879 Louis Mekarski invented an air-powered tramway that was installed in the streets of Nantes, France. The air-pow-
ered streetcars featured tiny coal-fired boil- ers —bouillottes —to preheat the air. They remained in operation for nearly 40 years, mere stepping stones in the development of compressed air haulage. The first serious use of pneumatic loco-
motives came in the early 1870s during the construction of Gotthard Tunnel in Switzer- land. Because of their exhaust, steam loco- motives couldn’t be used in the bore, but lo- comotives were needed to haul out rock and debris. The tunnel’s contractor tried pres- surizing a steam locomotive with air instead of steam. It worked, and soon two specially- built 0-4-0CA’s trailing auxiliary air tanks on wheels were laboring in the tunnel. Com- pared to later pneumatic locomotives they were crude, but they showed that com- pressed air could be used for heavy hauling. Despite a long list of failures, as late as
1875 some insisted that compressed air was superior to steam, including Robert Hardie, who designed an air locomotive to run on New York City’s elevated railway. Five were built in 1878; they were marginally success- ful but complicated machines sporting four 580-p.s.i. iron air tanks, regenerative brakes, and hot water reheaters. Their complexity, plus the need for a pipeline and compressor, proved to be their undoing. Hardie later de- signed a pneumatic locomotive for the Man- hattan Elevated Railway that bundled 36 2000-p.s.i. weldless cylinders, but like Merkarski’s trams, it had a small coal-fired boiler to preheat the air and never progressed past the testing stage. By 1890 the limits of using air to power a locomotive were well known, and they were not suitable replace- ments for steam power in most situations. However, the mining industry came to embrace the compressed air locomotive in a big way. Running steam underground was dangerous, especially in mines where cin- ders and open flame could spark a methane
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