admit the air over as large a surface as in burning coal, so that it may not deflect the flame and cool it at one point. If the construction is right, the handling and maintenance are just as important, and if properly handled there should be no smoke. But when there is absolutely no smoke, we are on the danger line in another direction, where the dropping of the lever or slipping of the engine will snuff out the fire, draw in cold air, and cause the flues to leak. In pulling out and getting under way, it is believed to be better practice to have a color of smoke than absolutely smokeless, to insure against this possibility, as many failures can be attributed to this cause.

In answering the latter part, concerning safety, from local observation it

would seem that oil fuel is the less dangerous, as the fireman intuitively puts out the fire in case of collision or derailment. Within the year we have had a chance to observe the effect of oil burners in disasters, which did not catch fire, where it would seem an impossibility to place a coal burner and escape a conflagration.

MR. H. L. STEVENSON: Perfect oil burning locomotives ought to consume nearly all their smoke. If perfect conditions could at all times be maintained, very little opportunity would be afforded for complaint against smoky oil burners, but the contrary is often found to be the case when conditions are not what they ought to be to insure perfect combustion, but contribute largely to defeat the efforts of enginemen in obtaining desirable and satisfactory results. These imperfect conditions referred to can not be properly charged to imperfect design or model of the brickwork or attachments of the firebox, which were originally in good form and in perfect condition, but now possibly need repairing. There may be slight leaking of tubes or stay bolts, which in itself may cause imperfect combustion, or the brickwork may need repairing, which in bad condition also contributes largely to poor consumption of fuel oil and excessive smoking of engines; but owing to circumstances over which roundhouse forces have no control, due to the necessities and demands of the traffic department and the scarcity of locomotives, this one in bad

condition is forced into service again without receiving necessary attention and repairs, with what result can be easily conjectured without drawing on the imagination. The assignment of locomotives to service after being at a roundhouse from two to five hours after completing a trip is not at all imaginary, but of frequent occurrence, and it is often the case that engines can not be held long enough to have boilers washed out or necessary repairs to brickwork, often found to be in bad condition.

The inexperience of enginemen in the practice of fuel-oil consumption, or the improper manipulation of the firing apparatus, or neglect to keep the tubes clean and free from soot by frequent and thorough sanding, is often followed by excessive smoking of locomotives.

To the last section of the question, "Which is the most suitable fuel for locomotives, having regard to the comfort and safety of passengers?" There is scarcely any room for discussion on the point of comfort to passengers riding behind an oil-burning locomotive, who are not subjected to the annoying discomfort of constant showers of cinders, as is the case with a coal burner. Who has not at some time had the pleasurable experience of cinders in one or both eyes, causing inflammation therein, to say nothing of the anguish of mind or the inclination to say cuss words, mentally if not audibly, unless restrained by devout religious influences? Then, again, the delays incident to the necessary cleaning of coal fires and hoeing out of the ash pans of coal burners do not attend the operation of an oil burner, which also contributes to the comfort and pleasure of railway patrons. From a standpoint of safety, it can be stated without fear of successful contradiction that as many train wrecks have been consumed by fire when the locomo tives attached were burning coal as has been the case when oil was used for fuel, although I have no statistics at hand to verify this assertion; yet instances can be pointed out where train wrecks have been consumed by fire when coal was the fuel used, while very serious wrecks, where oil was the fuel used, escaped ignition entirely. I will cast my vote in favor of crude mineral oil for locomotive fuel.-Pacific Railway Club.

The Failures of Large Locomotives.

Evidence is accumulating which tends to show that the locomotive has grown too rapidly, and that, as now constructed, on many lines where it is employed, it is not well adapted to the service. If its record could be written up, showing the time it is out of service and the expense it has already caused for repairs, it would be appalling to conservative railroad managers and at least discouraging to the more progressive. The difficulty with leaky tubes on new engines with medium wide fire-boxes is quite general, and as the cause is not well understood, a certain remedy can not, therefore, be applied. Under such conditions the engine can not develop its full capacity, and it is under the disadvantage of being compelled to propel its own extra great dead weight with its tractive power lessened. The enginemen are demanding more wages for handling the big power, and the firemen complain that the amount of coal burned is so large that two firemen should be employed. The accumulation of condensed steam in large cylinders of compound engines, and the compression of gases demand numerous relief valves. These are constantly leaking and surrounding the front of engine with a cloud which must be annoying to the engineman and often dangerous on account of his inability to see the signals. This has been mentioned as one of the principal objections to the large compound engines which have been built in recent years.

These three conditions seriously affect the usefulness of the large engine when in service. The records show numerous breakages which throw it out of service completely. Some of these are due to faulty design and others to a want of proper adaptation to surrounding conditions. Cracked side sheets are now so frequent with wide fire-boxes on some roads as to amount to an epidemic, and they are as prominent a subject of boiler shop repairs as when steel sheets were first used, and so many theories were advanced to account for their failure. An examination of the cracked sheets shows the principal deterioration to be within a circle of about 3 feet diameter near the center of length of the side sheet and near the bottom. In this locality the sheet shows numerous cracks on the fire side ex

tending. vertically from one staybolt to another. When a piece of the steel from such a side sheet is pulled on a testing machine these cracks open up like splits in hard wood, and the same thing takes place when a piece is punched out. The cracks open up on the fire side of the punching. No satisfactory explanation of the cause of cracked fire sheets has been found, but some attribute it to a want of circulation, or to the foaming of alkali water causing overheating, and to the fact that, when hot, the sulphur from the coal forms with the steel a carbide of iron, from which cause is established a deterioration which is cumulative and finally results in long cracks, sometimes extending 2 feet vertically. One cause of these cracks may be the expansion and contraction over a large area tending to buckle the sheet. The sheets also crack between the fire doors. This is probably due in part to injuries to the sheet in flanging and also to the rigidity due to so much flanging in a comparatively small

space.

The enormous force produced by large cylinders and high steam pressures has produced stresses in the frames which have searched out the weak points, and they, too, have broken in large numbers, both cast steel and forged frames. This is partly due to faulty design, to bad welds, to unsound castings and to shrinkage strains. Much of this trouble can be avoided by good workmanship, but the correct proportions in design are largely to be obtained by knowledge gained in experiences such as those now so frequent. Broken cylinders on large compound locomotives have been more frequent than is generally realized, and this has perhaps caused a greater expense for repairs and has kept the engine out of service longer than the other failures.

The failure of cylinders is attributed to several causes, one of them to the pressure of water in the cylinder, another to excessive compression of gases, one to the tendency of the overhanging mass of the barrel to break away from the saddle at the frames when the engine pounds on the track at frogs and low joints, another to overheating due to lack of lubrication when drifting. This latter cause will be corrected by the use of an extra lubricator for the low-pressure cylinder. An illustration of the delay in repairing engines

with the large compound cylinders broken is shown in the case of a road which, on account of the high price charged for a cylinder casting, made a pattern for the cylinder and then found that no foundry in the State or near by in any direction had facilities for making the casting. Another road, after securing a casting, found that it had no machine tools large enough to finish it. Quite a number of large engines have met with serious derailments when the track was unequal to the heavy wheel weights, but they have succeeded better on roads where track is well ballasted, where heavy rails are used, and where they are properly cared for and not sent far from the home shop. When forced into positions which are not adapted to it, the large locomotive has frequently proven a lamentable failure and a costly experiment.

The unforunate part of it is that the experiment has been made in some instances on so large a scale that many locomotives will require radical alterations before they will perform regular and efficient service. It would doubtless have been wiser to have built medium-sized locomotives for many Western roads where there are thousands of miles of poor track, where the water is bad and the

roundhouse work rough and careless, and to have experimented with a few of the large locomotives until their construction had been gradually modified so as to make them better adapted to their environment. While the large engine when at work has shown a lower cost per ton mile than the smaller engines used five or ten years ago, it has not been shown that the total earnings for a year for very large locomotives on Western roads have been larger than those from a medium-sized engine which has been gradually developed on the road where it is used, and one which could be kept in service months at a time without any extraordinary repairs.

It should not be understood that we believe that the large locomotive is wrong in principle, but we have endeavored to show that its growth has been too fast and its proportions and construction have not been developed symmetrically. As an engineering matter, stationary engine and locomotive design are quite different.

If

it is desired to increase the size of a power plant 50 per cent. it is only necessary first to increase the number of units of boilers by that amount, and as it is certain that the original units worked successfully, there can be no doubt about the larger plant. The stationary engine is separate from the boiler and is not com

plicated by the requirements of boiler attachments and by track conditions which determine the number and arrangement of wheels. Its proportions are largely the subject of exact calculation and the designs for larger power can be made with confidence in their complete success. This is true of locomotive design only to a limited extent. When it is desired to increase locomotive power 50 per cent. there are quite a number of elements which are necessarily matters of experiment rather than calculation, and their success or failure is only assured by extended experi

ence.

The lesson to be learned from the failure of heavy locomotives in such large numbers is that these machines can not be constructed with certainty of success by our best builders, with their magnificent shops and skillful designers, and that they must be developed gradually by a process of continued improvement, due to the knowledge gained by their various failures in detail in service. All this requires time and a longer time than has been given to the development of the very large locomotive.-Railway Age.

Telegraphers Should be Licensed.

The subject of licensing railroad telegraphers engaged in handling messages and train orders effecting the movement of trains, is a subject not only of vital interest to the telegraph profession, but to the general public. It is a subject that has received spasmodic consideration for a number of years, but one that is only brought up when some glaring accident occurs through the incompetency of a telegrapher. The horrible accident that recently occurred on one of the large railway systems in Canada wherein twentyeight lives were lost and many score of persons injured, has again brought the subject prominently before the general public, not only of the Dominion of Canada, but of the United States, and all the leading newspapers are devoting columns of space to the question of devising plans for insuring more safety to the public while traveling on the railways. The coroner's jury which investigated the wreck on the Canadian line was unable to fix the responsibility as between the dispatcher and an operator, to whom it was claimed a train order was given, but which was not delivered on account of the operator claiming that he had been instructed by the dispatcher previous to the arrival of the train to "bust it."

By way of diversion it might be appropriate to call the attention of all railroad telegraphers to the fact that after a train order has once been given and it has been repeated and O. K. given, no telegrapher should ever allow a dispatcher to induce him to "bust it," as the only proper way that an order can be annulled after once put out is by the sending of another order annulling the previous one, and this should always be insisted upon.

Among other things developed by the coroner's jury was the fact that there was a station between the point where the order was supposed to have been put out and the place where the wreck occurred, at which the dispatcher could have put out another order and prevented the catastrophe, which station was a night telegraph office and which point the dispatcher used every means to communicate with, but unfortunately this point was manned by a young boy only 16 years old, and the particular night on which the wreck occurred was his first night in the office, and his statement before the coroner's jury shows that he did not even recognize his office call which was so industriously used by the train dispatcher in an endeavor to prevent the wreck; therefore, it can at least be asserted that had a competent telegrapher been employed at the intermediate point instead of an incompetent boy, who failed to recognize his own office call, the wreck by which twentyeight lives were lost and over forty people injured would have been prevented. This naturally brings up the question of how to prevent the railroad corporations from employing incompetent telegraphers and thereby endangering the lives of the traveling public. In the opinion of the Editor this can only be accomplished by legislation and the enactment of laws preventing the railroad corporations from employing any but competent telegraphers, and in order to determine the competency of the telegrapher, of course, it is necessary to provide for some form of standard examination and the issuance of certificates. This is a matter that would properly come under State regulation, therefore it would seem that the proper way to regulate this evil is to provide in each State by legislation for a State Examining Board, which Board shall examine all railroad telegraphers and issue to each of them a certificate of competency, provid

ing they pass a satisfactory examination, and that no telegrapher shall be employed in the State who does not hold such a certificate.-Railroad Telegrapher.

Engineer Wisker Not Guilty.

The trial of Engineer Wisker for manslaughter for his part in the famous tunnel collision on the New York Central Railroad, has resulted in his acquittal, and as to the propriety of this verdict we think most fair-minded people will agree. The fact that other engineers have made thousands of trips with trains through this tunnel in safety does, of course, prove that it can be done by means of extreme care and watchfulness, but it does not prove that the conditions are all that they should be for the safe running of trains, and though it seems to be the fact that Engineer Wisker was not the most efficient possible man to be in charge of a locomotive, yet it is doubtful if a man can or should be held legally responsible for lack of personal efficiency. If he is trusted with responsibility by those who have the power to impose responsibilities it is questionable if he is under obligation to decline those responsibilities on account of his own consciousness of unfitness for them, and where an engineer places himself at the head of a train he certainly takes at least as much risk as any passenger in that train, and it is to be assumed that he will have a care for the safety of a train under conditions where, if an accident occurs, his own life will be more likely to be forfeited than that of any other. It would seem that such an assumption of risk is all that society ought to require of a locomotive engineer. The conditions of the tunnel in which the accident happened were caused by a desire to economize, to save money and to pay big dividends. All these conditions could have been avoided by the expenditure of money and those who were responsible for this failure to spend money for that purpose are being made to suffer by means of damage suits in which some record breaking awards have been made. We hope such awards will continue to be made and that the lesson in false economy will be as thoroughly taught as possible.-American Machinist.