The Locomotive - Lighthouse Survival Blog

106 THE LOCOMOTIVE. [July,
materials, but the engineer was driven to use them. The cylinders were a very bad
part of the engines, but the other parts were little better. We hear much of standard-
ization, and of making everything to gauge; but engineers will find, later, that this
is not the right road to success. A cry for standardization is a cry for profits, and the
Americans never think of anything but the balance sheet. It would be better to return
to the chisel and file, and to aim at getting everything to fit and to wear, rather than to
have everything fall cheaply into its place. Future engineers will see to it that things
are not made to compete, but to last long and to wear well.
•• Each part of the American engines under review is made after the genius of the
American 'mechanic' — that is, it was made in a hurry. The drill would be going
through a bearing, and when well through it would be found out of true. It would'
then be quickly started at the other end, and a great hole left in the inside of the bear-
ing, unseen. The bearing looked all right from the outside, but the shaft working in
it rested only on two short surfaces at the ends. Such a job would have been examined
in England, and ordered to be flung on the scrap heap. In America these things form
part of the engine, are sent out of the country, and become a worry and vexation of
spirit to the engineer in charge; and the common expression is, 'The home-made machine
will see the American ones out of the station.' Of course, when engines are made
in this way, when they are disgracefully machined, when the cross-head is not in line
with the guides, and the surfaces are of bad, soft metal, and don't wear, they are, to
say the least, not competition machines. In locomotives and power station engines the
competition from America is over; their introduction and their success stand on the
same footing as that other foreign design, the Belleville boiler."
"We reproduce this article because it appears in a bright paper, which has, we be-
lieve, quite an influence in England. We have made a number of changes in the word-
ing of the original, because in some places the sense was not entirely clear, and a few of
the verbs did not agree with their subjects; but we are confident that we have not ma-
terially altered the writer's meaning at any point. We do not know what basis there
may be for the editor's condemnation of the particular engines he had in mind when he
wrote this article; but we do know that such engines as he describes are not turned out
in America, even by fourth-rate machine shops. There is a junk shop down back of
our office, where one can find engines of far better quality than this, which have been
thrown out because, after long years of service, it was thought best to replace them
with others of more modern design. We cannot imagine what kind of a scrap heap the
Practical Engineer's engines came from.
Pulverized Fuel.
About ten years ago D. K. Clark referred to the use of powdered coal as " unique and
interesting." It is now much more than that, and is worthy of the most careful attention
of engineers in view of its apparently very promising possibilities. The idea dates back
to 1831, when Henschel carried out experiments at Cassel, Prussia, in connection with
brick kilns and heating furnaces. While progress has been made continually, it was
not until recently that commercial success has been attained in practical operations, but
its present employment in connection with the manufacture of cement in this country,
and also in firing boilers both here and abroad, entitle it to a consideration which it has
not yet attracted.
The burning of fuel in finely divided form permits of turning the fuel into gas and
obtaining a perfect and prompt intermixture of the gas and air. This makes a perfect
(and therefore smokeless) combustion possible, and there is good reason to believe that