Figure 8. — A 2-wheel Bissell truck installed on the Pennsylvania Railroad's No. gr. This engine originally 

 an 0-8-0 Winans Camel built in February 1854, was rebuilt by John P. Laird in 1867, at which time the 

 Bissell truck was added. Note that Hudson equalizing lever was not used. {Smithsonian photo 468o6~k) 



The British journal Engineering, in an article other- 

 wise friendly to the inventor, expressed some skepti- 

 cism as to the real merit of Hudson's invention.'^ 



If Mr. Hudson's truck, ... be examined, it will be seen 

 that the radius link serves no other purpose than that of 

 carrying the truck along with the engine, and this could 

 obviously be ecjually done by the pivot or central pin of 

 the truck itself. 



It is probable that few builders other than Rogers 

 made use of the Hudson radial link.'" One of these 

 was John Headden, whose General Darcy, shown in 

 figure 6, was fitted with the Hudson truck. 



Thus, by 1860 there had been perfected and 

 adopted a successful 4-wheel safety truck for 4-4-0's 

 and 4-6-0's used in general mixed and passenger 



15 Engineertng, July 12, 1867, vol. 4, p. 29. 



'8 John Headden, master mechanic of the New Jersey Rail- 

 road and Transportation Company, built at the road's Jersey 

 City shops several locomotives equipped with Hudson's variety 

 of the Bissell truck. Headden, upon the death of Hudson, 

 succeeded him in 1881 as superintendent of the Roger "Works. 



service. But as the decade advanced, the need grew 

 for heavy freight engines that could be safely run at 

 speed. Without a pilot truck, the leading driving 

 axle of the freight engine was generally overloaded. 

 While the application of a 4-wheel truck reduced this 

 front-end overload and permitted faster running it 

 materially reduced the traction of the drivers by 

 bearing too great a portion of the total weight. This 

 loss of traction was of course highly undesirable and 

 generally disqualified the use of 4-wheel trucks for 

 freight engines. W^hat was needed was a truck which 

 would guide the 0-6-0's and 0-8-0's around curves 

 and yet leave the greater portion of the weight on the 

 drivers. The 2-wheel, or pony, truck met these 

 requirements."' 



1' It is believed that Harrison, Winans and Eastwick made 

 one of the first uses of a 2-wheel radial truck on a 2-6-0 built 

 at the Alexandrovsky Arsenal, St. Petersburg, in 1844-46. 

 The success or exact particulars of these machines is unknown. 

 See John Jahn, Die Dampflokomotive in Entwicklungsgeschichiltcher 

 Darslellung Hires Gesamtaujbaues, Berlin, 1924, p. 239; Richard E. 



126 



BULLETIN 228: CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THE MUSUEM OF HISTORY AND TECHNOLOGY 



