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A Boxpok is a steam locomotive wheel that gains its strength through being made of a number of box sections rather than having traditional solid spokes (the name is a variation on "box-spoke"). Being hollow, they allow better counterbalancing and stability than conventional drivers, which is important for fast locomotives. The Boxpok wheel was patented by General Steel Castings Corporation of Granite City, Illinois.
The Boxpok was the most common of the four disk wheels in use by US steam locomotive designers, the others being the Baldwin and Scullin. A fourth design, the Universal, was used in locomotive rebuilds. All vary slightly in appearance but are essentially the same in structure. [1]
The term "Boxpok" is also sometimes used to describe the Bulleid Firth Brown (BFB) wheel in use on British railways at that time, but this is incorrect; while the BFB is similar to the Boxpok, one side of each box section is left open, so is not a true box structure unlike the Baldwin, Boxpok and Scullin drivers.
The Whyte notation is a classification method for steam locomotives, and some internal combustion locomotives and electric locomotives, by wheel arrangement. It was devised by Frederick Methvan Whyte, and came into use in the early twentieth century following a December 1900 editorial in American Engineer and Railroad Journal.
Under the Whyte notation for the classification of steam locomotives, a 2-10-4 locomotive has two leading wheels on one axle, usually in a Bissel truck, ten coupled driving wheels on five axles, and four trailing wheels on two axles, usually in a bogie. These were referred to as the Texas type in most of the United States, the Colorado type on the Burlington Route, and the Selkirk type in Canada.
A 2-8-8-4 steam locomotive, under the Whyte notation, has two leading wheels, two sets of eight driving wheels, and a four-wheel trailing truck. The type was generally named the Yellowstone, a name given it by the first owner, the Northern Pacific Railway, whose lines ran near Yellowstone National Park. Seventy-two Yellowstone-type locomotives were built for four U.S. railroads.
Under the Whyte notation for the classification of locomotives, 4-6-4 represents the wheel arrangement of four leading wheels, six powered and coupled driving wheels and four trailing wheels. In France where the type was first used, it is known as the Baltic while it became known as the Hudson in most of North America.
On a steam locomotive, a driving wheel is a powered wheel which is driven by the locomotive's pistons. On a conventional, non-articulated locomotive, the driving wheels are all coupled together with side rods ; normally one pair is directly driven by the main rod which is connected to the end of the piston rod; power is transmitted to the others through the side rods.
Rail transport terms are a form of technical terminology applied to railways. Although many terms are uniform across different nations and companies, they are by no means universal, with differences often originating from parallel development of rail transport systems in different parts of the world, and in the national origins of the engineers and managers who built the inaugural rail infrastructure. An example is the term railroad, used in North America, and railway, generally used in English-speaking countries outside North America and by the International Union of Railways. In English-speaking countries outside the United Kingdom, a mixture of US and UK terms may exist.
Under the Whyte notation for the classification of steam locomotives by wheel arrangement, 4-4-2 represents a configuration of a four-wheeled leading bogie, four powered and coupled driving wheels, and two trailing wheels supporting part of the weight of the boiler and firebox. This allows a larger firebox and boiler than the 4-4-0 configuration.
The Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) class T1 duplex-drive 4-4-4-4 steam locomotives, introduced in 1942 with two prototypes and later in 1945-1946 with 50 production examples, were the last steam locomotives built for the PRR and arguably its most controversial. They were ambitious, technologically sophisticated, powerful, fast and distinctively streamlined by Raymond Loewy. However, they were also prone to wheelslip both when starting and at speed, in addition to being complicated to maintain and expensive to run. The PRR decided in 1948 to place diesel locomotives on all express passenger trains, leaving unanswered questions as to whether the T1's flaws were solvable, especially taking into account that the two prototypes did not have the problems inherent to the production units.
A 4-4-4-4 steam locomotive, in the Whyte notation for describing locomotive wheel arrangements, has a four-wheel leading truck, two sets of four driving wheels, and a four-wheel trailing truck. While it would be possible to make an articulated locomotive of this arrangement, the only 4-4-4-4s ever built were duplex locomotives—with two sets of cylinders driving two sets of driven wheels in one rigid frame, essentially a 4-8-4 with divided drive.
Under the Whyte notation for the classification of steam locomotives, 2-6-2 represents the wheel arrangement of two leading wheels, six coupled driving wheels and two trailing wheels. This arrangement is commonly called a Prairie.
Under the Whyte notation for the classification of steam locomotives by wheel arrangement, 4-10-2 represents the arrangement of four leading wheels, ten powered and coupled driving wheels and two trailing wheels. In South Africa, where the wheel arrangement was first used, the type was known as a Reid Tenwheeler. In the United States of America it was known as a Southern Pacific on the Southern Pacific Railroad and as an Overland on the Union Pacific Railroad.
A coupling rod or side rod connects the driving wheels of a locomotive. Steam locomotives in particular usually have them, but some diesel and electric locomotives, especially older ones and shunter locomotives, also have them. The coupling rods transfer the power of drive to all wheels.
SCOA-P pattern wheels are a type of steam locomotive wheel. Rather than having traditional solid spokes, the SCOA-P spoke is hollow, with a U-shaped cross section. They are considerably lighter than a conventional spoked wheel or Boxpok wheel of the same size and strength.
Salamanca was the first commercially successful steam locomotive, built in 1812 by Matthew Murray of Holbeck, for the edge-railed Middleton Railway between Middleton and Leeds, England and it predated Stephenson's Rocket by 17 years. It was the first to have two cylinders. It was named after the Duke of Wellington's victory at the battle of Salamanca which was fought that same year.
The DR Class 01.5 was the designation given by the Deutsche Reichsbahn in East Germany to express train locomotives that were 'reconstructed' from those of the pre-war DRG Class 01.
The wobbly-web wheel is a form of metal disc wheel where the disc is 'wobbled' into spokes. This provides a stiffer, lightweight wheel.
A duplex locomotive is a steam locomotive that divides the driving force on its wheels by using two pairs of cylinders rigidly mounted to a single locomotive frame; it is not an articulated locomotive. The concept was first used in France in 1863, but was particularly developed in the early 1930s by the Baldwin Locomotive Works, the largest commercial builder of steam locomotives in North America, under the supervision of its then chief engineer, Ralph P. Johnson.
The Bulleid Firth Brown wheel (BFB) was a locomotive wheel developed for the Southern Railway in the late 1930s. It was a disc wheel, in contrast to the usual spoked wheels in general use on British railways. The wheel was designed by Oliver Bulleid and developed by the steel company Firth Brown of Sheffield.
Pennsylvania Railroad 5550 is a mainline duplex drive steam locomotive under construction in the United States. With an estimated completion by 2030, the locomotive will become the 53rd example of the Pennsylvania Railroad's T1 steam locomotive class and the only operational locomotive of its type, as well as the largest steam locomotive built in the United States since 1952. The estimated cost of PRR 5550 was originally $10 million, but an updated projected cost of $7 million was released with the acquisition of an existing long-haul tender from the Western New York Railway Historical Society in August 2017. Construction began in 2014 with the casting of the locomotive's keystone-shaped number plate. As of February 2024 the locomotive was 43% complete.
A multiplex locomotive is a steam locomotive that divides the driving force on its wheels by using multiple pairs of cylinders to drive multiple driving wheel set groups. Such a locomotive will necessarily articulated if it has more than two sets of driving wheels. There were locomotive projects with three, four, five or six sets of drive wheels. However, these locomotives were never built, except for four triplex locomotives in the United States and one quadruplex locomotive in Belgium.
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