Appendix 4 



The Railroad Advocate in 1856 published these two accounts of 

 Niles & Company locomotives. 



WESTERN LOCOMOTIVES 



Niles & Co., as indeed all the other builders in Ohio, have enough 

 intelligent liberality to throw open to the public the principal dimensions 

 and details of their engines. The time was past, long ago, when loco- 

 motive builders could arbitrarily impose their prejudices upon their 

 customers, and make secrets out of their proportions and arrangements 

 of machinery. Purchasers, and not builders of engines, now dictate the 

 general direction of improvement in locomotives, and insist upon sizes 

 and constructions which are founded in a common experience, or in broad 

 or closely contested opinion. It is just, therefore, more to the railroad 

 public than to the builders, that the details of the engines which now form 

 the standard manufacture of the West should be given at large. The 

 present article will afford no more room than for a description of Niles & 

 Go's, engines, but memoranda of those by some of the other Ohio builders 

 will be given elsewhere in today's paper. 



An engine built by Niles & Co. for the Indianapolis and Cincinnati 

 railroad may be taken as the subject of illustration. Outside connected, 

 nearly level cylinders, spread truck, link motion, wagon top boiler, solid 

 frame. The boiler is 44 inches diameter in the shell and contains 141 

 copper tubes, 2 inches outside diameter and 10 feet 10 inches long. The 

 fire-box is 50 inches long on the grate, 38 inches wide, and 58 inches deep. 

 There is a good sized dome over the firebox, which is considerably elevated 

 in the crown to give ample steam room. The furnace is stayed very strong. 



The cylinder is 15 inches diameter with 22 inches stroke of piston. 

 Four drivers ^i feet diameter. The steam ports are the longest which 

 we have seen on any locomotive, — viz., 18I2 inches, width i inch. The 

 greatest throw of valve is ^% inches; outside lap Y^ inch, and inside lap 

 %(, inch, on each end. The cylinders ai-e thoroughly jacketed with brass. 

 The cylinder fastening is made by bolting directly (without a saddle) 



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