26 



HARDWOOD RECORD 



Lumber Handling With Storage 'Battert; Locomotives 



Even iu a comparatively small yard, where 

 there are only a few million feet of lumber 

 stored and handled, the storage battery loco- 

 motive is a surprisingly useful and economical 

 substitute for teams. Consider a day's 

 work in a yard of, say three million feet, sup- 

 plying a car works, or a furniture establish- 

 ment, — any lumber user, not habitually hand- 

 ling heavy 12"sl2" stock, — there will be at 

 least one team busy all the time, getting 

 stock out and hauling it to the dry-kiln plat- 

 form, where it must be transferred to the 

 kiln-carriages. There will be another get- 

 ting the stock from box- and gondola-cars on 

 the siding, and distributing it to its proper 

 piles in the yard, and, quite likely, still an- 

 other feeding to the planing mill. Unless 

 there is to be a great deal of over-eonscien- 

 tious harnessing and unharnessing the horses, 

 most of these teams will be simply standing 

 patiently hitched to their trucks, while the 

 lumber is being transferred, board by board. 

 It takes some time to fill a dry-kiln ear, and 

 some time to load the truck at tlie pile, yet 

 neither takes long enough to make it worth 

 while to unharness the team and use it some- 

 where else. So the responsible head of the 

 lumber yard has to use two, or possibly three, 

 teams in doing work that could all be handled 

 by a single locomotive, and, as the cost for 

 the latter is only the price of 300 ampere- 

 hours of current, it is considerably more 

 economical than the teaming system. 



About a lumber yard, where fire is the arch- 

 enemy, no other type of locomotive but an 

 electric storage battery could be safely used; 

 but the latter, carrying its own power with 

 it, free to go anywhere that track is laid, and 

 with no danger of sparks escaping from its 

 dust-proof motor and controller, is an ideal 

 motive power. The writer's experience with 

 them has been uniformly successful, running 

 them over ordinary 30-pound industrial 

 track, put down sometimes with very little 

 care as to roadbed, and operating over a 

 plant covering five square miles of territory. 

 For practical out-of-door work, the six and 

 ten-ton sizes are about the smallest that can 

 be used to advantage in hauling lumber, 

 cement or contractors' materials. The six-ton 

 locomotive will haul train loads of about 

 18 tons, day in and day out, all over the yard, 

 worrying along over bad curves and good, 

 grades up to three per cent, and track of all 

 degrees of straightness and level. Its yearly 

 deterioration is about fifteen per cent, and 

 the cost about $2,800, including a 300 amp.- 

 hour storage battery. Allowing five per cent 

 for the interest on the money, the total 

 charges against the locomotive will be $560 

 a year, or about $700, including charging cur- 

 rent. It will easily displace four teams, but 



By WARREN H. MILLER 



i,t<erial rights rescncO.) 



where the whole work of the yard can be 

 done by one team it would not pay, unless 

 there was other work in the mill for it to do. 



These figures will give one a pretty fair 

 idea as to how the plan of introducing it as a 

 factor in the works is going to come out 

 financially. As to how long the machine and 

 battery are going to last, I would say that 

 tlie fifteen per cent allowance for deteriora- 

 tion, representing $420 per year, sliould keep 

 the battery and locomotive in good trim for 

 an indefinite period of time, for there is no 

 single wearing part that cannot be repaired 

 and replaced. As repairs are constant the 

 locomotive gradually rebuilds itself as the 

 years go by, precisely as does a steam engine. 

 It w'ill not, however, get out of date as does 

 the latter. 



Like almost any other type of machine of 

 which hard work is required, the electric stor- 

 age battery locomotive has a few simple re- 

 quirements which must be respected if it is 

 going to stay continuously in service. For 

 instance, it is fatal to run the battery con- 

 tinuously, every other day or so, below the 

 minimum charge voltage. This temjitation is 

 strong, near the end of the day, when there is 

 "just one more haul." Yet the plates will 

 surely get buckled and sulphated. If prop- 

 erly charged, the locomotive should reach five 

 'elocK w ith still a margin above low-voltage, 

 but, if it does not, back it should go to the 

 power-house, no matter what the excuse for 

 keeping it on duty. There is a continuous 

 evaporation of water from the batteries, due 

 to disassociation of the water, when oxygen 

 and hydrogen bubbles are formed. At the 

 end of every half-month the level of the acid 

 will have fallen from one inch above the 

 plates to two inches below. Now, this water, 

 that was used to dilute the acid to form the 

 electrolyte, was chemically pure distilled 

 water, and the natural impulse will be to 

 replace it with ordinary "pure" well or 

 drinking water, as the distilled variety is hard 

 to get. But it is one of the most common 

 causes of trouble. After using common 

 drinking water for a few months the bat-_ 

 tery will be worthless, the iron and carbonates 

 in the drinking water having ruined the 

 plates. The principle of a storage battery is 

 based upon the action of chemically pure sul- 

 phuric acid and chemically pure distilled 

 water in lead oxides, and just as soon as 

 other ingredients are introduced the entire 

 process is upset and inefficiency results. But, 

 with a reasonable amount of supervision of 

 the working parts, honest charging and dis- 

 charging, and due attention to the water sup- 

 ply, there is no reason why the electric stor- 

 age battery locomotive should not give as 



GROSS TRAIN L0.4DS IN TONS THAT CAN BE HAULED BY JEFFREY LOCOMOTIVES A 



RATED CAPACITIES AND GIVEN FRICTION LOADS. 



The figures at the tops of the columns arc the- friction loads given in pounds per ton reijuired at 



draw bar to haul the cars on level track. 



good and reliable service as the electric crane, 

 or any tool in the works. 



A prime cause of failure of earlier battery 

 locomotives was improper proportion of 

 motors, battery, and weight of locomotive to 

 the work expected of them. The manufac- 

 turers cannot help you much, as each case is 

 quite distinct from any other, and only the 

 engineer or manager in charge of the works 

 knows just what service is wanted. To set 

 about selecting a suitable specification for 

 the manufacturers to bid on, the first step 

 would proliably be a conference with the de- 

 partmental foreman as to just what loads are 

 to be hauled and when, making up a tenta- 

 tive schedule of tlie probable day's work. The 

 tables of amounts in tons that a given size 

 of locomotive will haul, as given in the manu- 

 facturer 's catalogues, are of little use in 

 industrial plant service. ' They appear to be 

 about twice too large, probably because they 

 are figured on good level straight track, 

 whereas, in practice, the track is full of 

 curves and turnouts, and is anything but 

 level or straight. The table shown, for in- 

 stance, gives 60 tons as the haul of a six-ton 

 locomotive, on level track at 40-pounds per 

 ton draw-bar pull. The figure is quite ridicu- 

 lous, because, even if the locomotive could 

 haul that much, it couldn 't possibly work ten 

 hours at that rate without exhausting a bat- 

 tery weighing far more than six tons, to say 

 nothing of tlie locomotive. We found in prac- 

 tice that 20 tons was about the limit, in- 

 cluding the weight of the locomotive, that 2 

 si.\-ton locomotive would haul on ordinary 

 yard track without slipping its wheels. On 

 good level track it moved this easily, but was 

 just about able to get around curves with it 

 without getting stuck, which is the criterion 

 of practical service. In other words, it would 

 haul five cars of three tons each, and keep 

 them going about the plant all day, without 

 coming in too much run down at five P. M. 

 This is equivalent to about 80-pounds per ton, 

 train resistance, which is a safe figure for 

 practical work. A good rule-of-thumb figure 

 for adhesion is that used by the railroads for 

 all classes of locomotives, viz. : one-fifth the 

 weight in pounds, or 2,500 pounds for a six- 

 ton locomotive. Dividing the train resistance 

 per ton into this gives the amount in tons a 

 given locomotive will haul about the yard. 



Having chosen the size, the next thing is 

 to select the motors and battery. There is no 

 use getting the motors any larger than will 

 just slip the wheels of the locomotive. There 

 are alw-ays two, geared to the rear and front 

 axles, and a pair of switches enables them to 

 be used cither separately or together. They 

 are series wound, like crane and trolley car 

 motors, and so the speed varies as the load, and 

 the horsepower varies with both, so that the 

 specified "horsepower" of the motors may 

 mean — anything. The standard ratings are 

 the horsepower that the motor will deliver for 

 one-half hour 's steady run, without heating 

 more than 40° C, above the surrounding air. 

 When you consider that the works locomotive 

 would go three miles in half an hour's steady 

 run, and never, in practice, has anything like 

 that much to do, the figure is entirely prac- 

 ticable for steady work all day, without get- 

 ting the motors more than hand-warm. With 

 an average load of eighteen tons on level 

 track, and a speed of five miles an hour 

 (which is fast enough to let the crew run 

 ahead to throw switches, and for maneuver- 

 ing safely about a busy yard) the train re- 

 sistance will be 18x80^1,440 pounds. Five 

 miles per hour is 440 feet per minute, which. 



