Found.........

..........by the side of Highway 7 (The Mountain Highway) at Elbe, WA. I think there may be something missing.


Regards,

Stuart

Stuart,

A good discovery! Looks like it was made in a local workshop! I wish they'd deal with the rust!

StuartRae said:

..........by the side of Highway 7 (The Mountain Highway) at Elbe, WA. I think there may be something missing.

Click to expand...

That's huge, beautiful and hardly lost! Reminds me of Columbus discovering America!

Asher

Stuart,

I wonder why there are 3 funnels and in what way these are different from regular trains. do they even use the same gauge tracks?

Asher

Hi, Asher,

Asher Kelman said:

I wonder why there are 3 funnels

Click to expand...

Regarding the two domes, ordinarily one (the "steam dome") has the actual throttle valve under it and the other (the more forward) usually holds sand to be released onto the track to prevent slipping under heavy traction requirements.

I haven't yet figured out what kind of loco this is.

Best regards,

Doug

Hi, Asher,

It appears to be some sort of geared locomotive, with a steam engine in the center
driving the two sets of wheels through two "prop shafts". (I think we see the forward drive shaft, with the after one partly gone.)

One style of such is called the "Shay" type, with three vertical cylinders) located on the left side, normally). A variation was the Willamette Geared Locomotive, something like this one:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/everkamp/5879248057/in/photostream/

But this looks to be a bit different.

Here's another shot of the same machine:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jason_nash/5993871940/#/photos/jason_nash/5993871940/lightbox/

It almost looks as if we are seeing a cylinder of the steam engine at that bizarre angle on the right side (I note the stem pipe to it from the "steam dome").

I'll continue my research.

Best regards,

Doug

Aha, its a Heisler.

That has a two-cylinder "twin-vee" engine amidships, driving the two sets of wheels through driveshafts. The cylinders really hang out (as in the machine we are considering).

Here is a pic from Wikipedia of a smaller one:


Here we see the opposite cylinder in more detail:


More scoop here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heisler_locomotive

More scoop here:

http://www.gearedsteam.com/heisler/heisler.htm

This is more like "ours":


The rear driveshaft seems to be gone.

In this kind, the "truck" under the tender is driven too (can't tell whether "ours" originally had that or not, but probably).

Ordinarily, only one axle of each "truck" is driven by the drive shaft, the other two wheels on the truck being driven by side rods from the first axle. ("Ours" may be that way too - can't see in either shot of it I have.)

Carla says, "They can run but they can't hide".

Nice catch, Stuart.

Best regards,

Doug

Hi Doug,

Thank you so much for the research. I had assumed that the cylinder(s) and drive gear were robbed out, but what you say about the V-twin makes perfect sense. I've never seen or heard of such a loco before.

Regards,

Stuart

One aficionado reports that this seems to be a 1912 three-truck Heisler, originally built for Pickering Lumber but later marked for Silver Creek Logging Company (but that may be an "exhibition" railroad). But I think he's wrong (see following).

Ah! Here's our girl (but in the same condition - rear drive shaft gone):

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jimsawthat/5923237831/#/photos/jimsawthat/5923237831/lightbox/

We can see the side rods here. It looks as if this did not have the tender truck driven (as there are no side rods nor any crank pins nor counterweights for them on the tender truck wheel) (that is, it is actually a large "two-truck" Heisler).

Best regards,

Doug

No, in fact, I think I do see side rod counterweights on the tender truck wheels (even though the side rods themselves are gone).

So this was in fact a "three truck" Heisler.

Best regards,

Doug