Chapter 3 



George Escol Sellers' 

 Grade-Climbing Locomotive 



In 1830 Charles B. X'igneols and John Ericsson devised a method 

 to assist locomotive propulsion with a center rail. In this system 

 the engine's regular cylinders and driving wheels are assisted on 

 steep grades by horizontal, smooth adhesion wheels, driven by 

 auxiliary cylinders, which grip a rail fastened in the center of the 

 track. Vigneols, one of the best-known British railway engineers, 

 and Ericsson, a versatile inventor who became associated with 

 nearly every area of applied mechanics, received British patent 

 5995 for their invention on September 7, 1830. However, the 

 invention, to my knowledge, was never given a practical test. 

 Nearly twenty years later the idea of a center-rail system was 

 revived by George Escol Sellers, who devised probably the most 

 ingenious and advanced design for this type of railway. 



This account of Sellers' development of the center-rail system, 

 his unsuccessful attempts to introduce it, and the five locomotives 

 built under his patents is based largely on two sources. The first of 

 these is a remarkable collection of letters dealing with the subject 

 among the Peale-Sellers papers at the American Philosophical 

 Society, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. This collection contains much 

 of the correspondence between Sellers and the other individuals 

 involved wdth grade-climbing locomotives. The second consists 

 of the Minute Books of the Panama Railroad, U.S. National Ar- 

 chives, Washington, D.Cl. The information revealed by these two 

 firsthand sources refutes much that has been written in the past 



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