The camelback locomotive (also known as a Mother Hubbard) was the result of the development of the Wooten firebox, designed to have the maximum grate area to burn cheaper hard coal (anthracite). The cab ended up behind the firebox which before the days of trailing trucks didn't work. The solution was to leave the fireman out on the footplate while moving the engineer forward alongside of the boiler in his own cab. This was not ideal, the crewmen were separated and unable to to communicate. They were not popular with crews for that reason and also because a broken rod could thrash the cab and occupying engineer. The photo at bottom shows that it did actually happen.
But I want to know, who occupied the left side of the cab? I found a reference by a prewar reporter who got to ride in the cab, he was seated on the left side seat, which was identified as the fireman's seat- though I expect the fireman rarely got the chance to walk up beside the boiler and take a break. Locomotive crews at the time were three, engineer, fireman and brakeman. I guess the brakeman was in the caboose or on a passenger train, in a coach.
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| Ron Ziel and George Foster, Steel rails to the sunrise, Hawthorne Books, 1965 |
The March 16th post with the broken axle was a camelback locomotive. Luckily the rod didn’t break and thrash the cab. My grandfather who was born in 1903 worked for a while as a fireman on the C&O railroad. I have a coal shovel he used that’s stamped C&O. He used to tell us about how everyone hated the camelback locos. Firemen were out in the open in the winter and the engineers were right next to the boiler in the summer.
ReplyDeleteI expect the cab was very narrow with no room to get away from the heat beside that boiler either!
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