Alco
0-6-6-0 Mallet Locomotive for the Moffat Road
Mallet Engine for the D. N. W. & P. During
the last two years the
articulated type of compound locomotive has so increased in popularity
among railroads
in this country, as well as in South America, that it is no longer the
novelty it was five years ago, when the first one of this type built in
this country was turned out at the Schenectady plant of the American
Locomotive Company.
(from a 1909 magazine, in the public
domain)
This type having been introduced to handle increased tonnage on heavy
grades, has so far been confined principally to roads having such
grades. Of roads of this character, the Denver, Northwestern &
Pacific Railroad, more often called the Moffat Road, has perhaps some
of the heaviest grades of any road in the United States. In spite of
this fact, however, the officials of this road have waited to see
whether the Mallet type would prove as successful as its advocators
prophesied. Up to the present time, therefore, although well
adapted to their practice, they have purchased no articulated
locomotives. The service given by engines of this class which have now
been in operation for two or three years on several of the most
prominent roads, have so proved its practicability and adaptability for
service under conditions similar to those on the Moffat Road that they
recently placed an order with the American Locomotive Company for one
0-6-6-0 type locomotive, the half-tone illustration of which is
presented here.
As far as the design is concerned, in general, it is similar to its
prototype, the one built for the Baltimore
& Ohio Railroad. The
engine under consideration,
however, weighs only 327,500 lbs., whereas the former locomotive
weighed 334,500 lbs. This difference in weight is due in part to a
smaller number of
tubes of the same diameter in the Northwestern & Pacific engine
than in the Baltimore & Ohio, there being only 409 tubes 234 ins.
in diameter in this
engine, as against 436 tubes in the B. & O. engine. There is also a
difference in the diameter of drivers, those of the engine here
illustrated being 55 ins. in
diameter, while those of its predecessor are 56 ins. in diameter.