Featured Article » Nonfiction

Fire Breathing Hogs

Written by Kevin H. Evans

Prologue

 

Engineer Lothar Schneider walked into the crew office. Glancing up he checked out the assignment boards and spotted his name. Yeah, there it was. He had received the first run.

He turned and saw his fireman hang up his time card. "Otto, are you ready?"

Otto sauntered over, wiping beer from his mustache. He must have just come from breakfast at the inn. "Ja, I think so."

Lothar stuck his thumbs in his overalls. He was very proud of this opportunity. "Today we are assigned to the large new engine on its first run."

Otto pulled the job assignment board off the wall, and looked at all the pages. "Lothar, are you sure it will pull a train that big?"

The engineer nodded. "The Locomotive Werk says it will. They have not been wrong before."

Out in the yard the hostler, Carl, had placed the engine on the drill track. Lothar started at the nose, walked down the fireman side, and around the tender at the rear, then all the way back to the engineer window.

The hostler came out and followed Lothar on his inspection walk. "This locomotive's a real monster, with twice as many driving wheels as anything anybody has ever seen before. Do you think you can handle it, Lothar?"

Without answering the hostler, Lothar and Otto climbed into the cab. The hostler had done his work well. There was a full head of steam and the fire was burning nicely.

Lothar stuck his head out of his window. "Yes, Carl. I think we can handle it. You got everything just right."

Otto put the lunch buckets on the oil shelf attached to the backhead. Together they made the checks to see that all was ready. Lothar opened the starting cocks, grabbed the throttle, and notched the link up. Gently easing the throttle open, toggling the sanders and adding a little sand to the track, he began to move the giant machine.

****

Industrialization the way we have described it in the 1632 universe will demand enormous amounts of material to be moved from one location to another. Perhaps the largest material movement will be that of supplies and raw materials for the steel industry. In the quantities we need, steel cannot be made by hand. By 1635 steel manufacturing will need to be producing thousands of tons of steel a year. Each ton of steel requires the movement of three to five times as many tons of raw material that are required to produce one ton of steel. All of this material cannot be moved by hand with the available workforce. Also, all of this material does not exist on the production site and must be brought to the production area. This means that we have to move a lot of stuff to get to the industry level we want. Moving all that stuff will be mostly the job of the railroads and river barges. These are the only two forms of transportation that will have the capacity to move the quantities we need. This will require the railroads to grow in size and capacity, and it will require material-handling equipment for the barges.

In addition to material handling, transportation of people and transportation of finished goods will demand much higher capacity from the railroads. In fact, finished goods and agricultural production will consume much of the railroads' capacity. Large urban areas are supported by the countryside around them. Food, finished goods, and many essentials will need to be transported into the cities from that countryside. This transportation, especially over a long distance, will require the railroads.

To increase in size, a railroad will need to put more track on the ground. This will require the acquisition of the right of way (the land the railroad is built on), and large gangs of men to build the railway. To increase capacity, the railroad will need more cars. These cars will need to be capable of moving the cargo that will be given to the railroads' care in a safe and swift manner.

The increased capacity and the longer distances serviced by the larger railroads will mean more cargo will move across the rails. This will require longer and heavier trains. To move these trains, the railroad will need either multiple locomotives or a much stronger locomotive.

In our timeline the railroads responded to this need by first adding a third set of drivers and then almost immediately a fourth set of drivers to the locomotives. The Whyte classification of this locomotive is 2-8-0; meaning that the locomotive will have two pilot wheels and eight driving wheels. The locomotives were commonly called "Consolidations" in our timeline.

This class of locomotive was built in greater ...