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A camelback locomotive (also known as a Mother Hubbard or a center-cab locomotive) is a type of steam locomotive with the driving cab placed in the middle, astride the boiler. Camelbacks were fitted with wide fireboxes which would have severely restricted driver visibility from the normal cab location at the rear.
The camel and the camelback design were developed separately by two different railroads in different eras. Though the name is often incorrectly used interchangeably, they had little in common other than the placement of the cab. Unlike the later Camelbacks, Camels had cabs that rode atop the boiler. Ross Winans wanted to put as much weight on the driving wheels as possible to increase traction. Camelbacks have a cab that straddles the boiler. While Camelbacks have the same idea of moving the cab forward, they had it for different reasons. Camelbacks were developed to allow for the use of larger fireboxes, such as the Wootten, which would obstruct the engineer's view from a conventionally placed cab. Camelbacks were particularly known for being used on the Central Railroad of New Jersey and the Reading Railroad.
The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad began to look into developing high-powered steam locomotives in the early 1840s, and in 1844–1847 built a series of locomotives nicknamed "muddiggers". As with many early B&O locomotives, a spur gear drive was used to connect the main shaft to the driving wheels. The long 0-8-0 wheelbase pushed this connection to the back of the locomotive and caused the floor of the cab to be lifted up above the whole assembly.
In 1853 Ross Winans, who had designed the "muddiggers", built the first of a series of 0-8-0 camel locomotives. These had long cabs that ran from the back of the smokebox to the front of the firebox. The firebox itself sloped back on the earliest models. The fireman worked from a large platform on the tender, and in some cases had a chute to allow him to deliver coal to the front of the grate.
Also in 1853, Samuel Hayes, the Master of Machinery for the railroad, had built a series of camel 4-6-0 locomotives for passenger service. The layout of the locomotive was roughly the same as for Winans' freight locomotives, except for the addition of the four-wheel leading bogie. Copies and variations on these locomotives were built into the 1870s, with the last retirements coming in the 1890s. These were called the "Hayes Ten-Wheelers". Many camelback locomotives used anthracite. The B&O examples burned conventional bituminous coal. The large fireboxes of these locomotives were made obsolete by better boiler design.
The B&O Railroad Museum has recently restored their Camel Locomotive and returned it to display. It now is in its original colors and markings for the first time since it left the Mt. Clare Shops in 1869. The Museum also has a Central of New Jersey Camelback, the No. 592, which was donated to the Museum in the 1950s.
John E. Wootten developed the Wootten firebox to effectively burn culm, anthracite waste, which was a plentiful, cheap source of fuel. Wootten determined that a large, wide firebox would work best. As the successful trailing truck used to support large fireboxes had not yet been developed, Wootten instead mounted his huge firebox above the locomotive's driving wheels.
Originally Wooten firebox engines were built with the cab sitting upon the top of the firebox, in the rear. The first Wooten firebox locomotives 4-6-0 "Ten Wheeler" types were built in early 1877 by the P&R's Reading, Pennsylvania shops. However they were not a "camelback" design. The Wooten firebox proved a success; the fuel cost saving was about $2,000 a year (approx. $30,000 now). A Wooten firebox engine, P&R 412 was exhibited at the 1879 International Technological Exhibition in Paris, where it won a silver medal. Following the exhibition it toured Europe, first to sell anthracite coal and later to sell Wooten firebox engines. The engine could not demonstrate on European lines because, due to the cab sitting on top of the firebox, it was too tall to fit under bridges and through tunnels. The 412's engineer C. Gilbert Steffe came up with a solution. In a French railroad yard, he had the cab removed from the firebox and placed forward of the firebox on the running boards, creating the first camelback locomotive. The engine demonstrated in France and Italy through 1879 and was returned to the U.S. in 1880. Because the camelback design allowed for a taller firebox, the design was used by many of the railroads operating in the anthracite regions of Pennsylvania. By the time of World War 1, the diameter of locomotive boilers had increased to the point the cab astride the boiler was no longer practical and railroads stopped building camelbacks and subsequent Wooten firebox engines were built with conventional end cabs. Camelback engines were constructed with many different wheel arrangements, 0-4-0, 0-6-0, 0-8-0, 2-6-0, 2-8-0, 2-8-2, 4-4-0, 4-4-2, and 4-6-0 were the most common wheel arrangements. The largest ones had a 0-8-8-0 arrangement and were the only articulated Camelbacks built.
By the 1920s, many Camelback Ten Wheelers with boiler pressure at 200psi were in daily use pulling passenger trains on the Lehigh Valley, the Philadelphia and Reading, and the Central Railroad of New Jersey, particularly the last two. For their relatively small size, they were powerful, quick to accelerate, very stable at speed, and could be operated as fast as 90 miles per hour such as on the Reading's Atlantic City line. Some continued in service into the 1950s. [1]
The Camelback's cab astride the boiler design raised concerns for its crew. The separation of engineer and fireman limited their ability to communicate with each other. Also, the engineer was perched above the side-rods of the locomotive, vulnerable to swinging and flying metal if anything rotating below should break; in many cases, the fireman was exposed to the elements at the rear.
The Philadelphia and Reading's crews referred to these locomotives as Mother Hubbards. The B&O crews, who had co-use of the Reading's line from Philadelphia to Bound Brook NJ (the Reading's junction with the Central RR of New Jersey's line to Jersey City across from New York City) called the Camelbacks "Snappers" in reference to a possible side rod snapping and flailing into the cab. [2] Many Camelbacks were converted into end-cab locomotives. The advent of the mechanical stoker which moved coal from the tender to the locomotive and its associated underfloor machinery placed cab floors and tender decks higher, and from that vantage point the engineer was safe.
There are five known Camelback locomotives to survive today:
A steam locomotive is a locomotive that provides the force to move itself and other vehicles by means of the expansion of steam. It is fuelled by burning combustible material to heat water in the locomotive's boiler to the point where it becomes gaseous and its volume increases 1,700 times. Functionally, it is a steam engine on wheels.
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.
The Reading Company was a Philadelphia-headquartered railroad that provided passenger and freight transport in eastern Pennsylvania and neighboring states from 1924 until its acquisition by Conrail in 1976.
In a steam engine, the firebox is the area where the fuel is burned, producing heat to boil the water in the boiler. Most are somewhat box-shaped, hence the name. The hot gases generated in the firebox are pulled through a rack of tubes running through the boiler.
The three L-1 0-8-8-0 Mallet-type steam locomotives of the Erie Railroad, built in July 1907 by ALCO, and numbered 2600, 2601 and 2602 ; were unique in that they were the only articulated camelback locomotives ever built.
The B&O Railroad Museum is a museum and historic railway station exhibiting historic railroad equipment in Baltimore, Maryland. The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B&O) company originally opened the museum on July 4, 1953, with the name of the Baltimore & Ohio Transportation Museum. It has been called one of the most significant collections of railroad treasures in the world and has the largest collection of 19th-century locomotives in the U.S. The museum is located in the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad's old Mount Clare Station and adjacent roundhouse, and retains 40 acres of the B&O's sprawling Mount Clare Shops site, which is where, in 1829, the B&O began America's first railroad and is the oldest railroad manufacturing complex in the United States.
Under the Whyte notation for the classification of steam locomotives, 4-8-0 represents the wheel arrangement of four leading wheels on two axles, usually in a leading truck or bogie, eight powered and coupled driving wheels on four axles and no trailing wheels. In North America and in some other countries the type was usually known as the Twelve-wheeler.
Ross Winans (1796–1877) was an American inventor, mechanic, and builder of locomotives and railroad machinery. He is also noted for design of pioneering cigar-hulled ships. Winans, one of the United States' first multi-millionaires, was involved in national and state politics, a southern-sympathizer and was a vehement "states' rights" advocate. Winans was briefly arrested after the Baltimore riot of 1861. His outspoken anti-federal stance as a member of the Maryland House of Delegates, the lower chamber of the General Assembly, led to his temporary arrest on May 14, 1861. At the time of his arrest, Winans was returning on a Baltimore and Ohio Railroad train from an early session of the legislature that was being held in the western Maryland town of Frederick to avoid the Union Army-occupied state capital of Annapolis in April–May 1861 to consider the possibilities of state secession during the early decisive period of the American Civil War. Winans was related to James McNeill Whistler through marriage.
Atlantic was the name of a very early American steam locomotive built by inventor and foundry owner Phineas Davis for the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B&O) in 1832. It is in fact the first commercially successful and practical American built locomotive and class prototype, and Davis' second constructed for the B&O, his first having won a design competition contest announced by the B&O in 1830.
A class of locomotives is a group of locomotives built to a common design, typically for a single railroad or railway. Often members of a particular class had detail variations between individual examples, and these could lead to subclasses. Sometimes technical alterations move a locomotive from one class to another. Different railways had different systems, and sometimes one railway used different systems at different times and for different purposes, or applied those classifications inconsistently. Sometimes therefore it is not clear where one class begins and another ends. The result is a classic example of the Lumper splitter problem.
On the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, locomotives were always considered of great importance, and the railroad was involved in many experiments and innovations.
The NZR Q class was an important steam locomotive class not only in the history of New Zealand's railway network but also in worldwide railways in general. Designed by New Zealand Government Railways' (NZR) Chief Mechanical Engineer A. L. Beattie and ordered from the Baldwin Locomotive Works in 1901, they were the first locomotives in the world to be built with the wheel arrangement of 4-6-2. This wheel arrangement came to be known as the Pacific type after the voyage the completed locomotives had to make across the Pacific Ocean to New Zealand. A few instances of the 4-6-2 wheel arrangement are known to have existed prior to 1901, but these were all reconstructions of locomotives that were originally built with a different wheel arrangement, thereby making the thirteen members of the Q class the first "true" Pacifics in the world. The Pacific style went on to become arguably the most famous wheel arrangement in the world.
The Wootten firebox is a type of firebox used on steam locomotives. The firebox was very wide to allow combustion of anthracite waste, known as "culm". Its size necessitated unusual placement of the crew, examples being camelback locomotives. The Wootten firebox made for a free-steaming, powerful locomotive, and the cheap fuel burned almost smokelessly; the combination made for an excellent passenger locomotive, and many camelbacks operated in this service.
The Eckhart Branch Railroad was a railroad that operated in the Cumberland, Maryland area in the 19th century.
The Mount Savage Locomotive Works was a railroad workshop established at Mount Savage, Maryland, US. The Cumberland and Pennsylvania Railroad locomotive shops were established in Mt. Savage in 1866, under the direction of James Millholland. The original locomotive shop was constructed of stone and was 90 feet x 250 feet in size with a 33-foot-high roof. An adjoining car shop, built at about the same time, was also of stone and was later extended with a wooden structure. These buildings still stand in Mt. Savage.
The Norfolk and Western M, M1 and M2 Classes were a series of 4-8-0 steam locomotives owned and operated by the Norfolk and Western Railway (N&W). The M Classes were primarily assigned to pull the N&W's mainline freight trains, but following the introduction of the railway's Y Class 2-8-8-2's, the M Classes were reassigned to short line freight service.
Canadian Pacific 1278 is a class "G5d" 4-6-2 "Pacific" type steam locomotive built by the Canadian Locomotive Company for the Canadian Pacific Railway. After being retired from revenue service, the locomotive was purchased in 1965 by F. Nelson Blount for excursion trains at his Steamtown, U.S.A. collection. The locomotive was sold to Gettysburg Railroad in 1987, and it pulled excursion trains between Gettysburg and Biglerville, but it was subject to shoddy maintenance by inexperienced crews. The locomotive was retired from excursion service in 1995, after suffering a firebox explosion in June. As of 2024, the locomotive is on static display at the Age of Steam Roundhouse in Sugarcreek, Ohio.
Central Railroad of New Jersey No. 113, also known as CNJ No. 113, is an 0-6-0 "Switcher" type steam locomotive originally built in June of 1923 by the American Locomotive Company (ALCO) for the Central Railroad of New Jersey. The locomotive was designed solely for yard service and could only operate at slow speeds due to the locomotive not having any leading or trailing wheels, but only six driving wheels. No. 113 currently performs passenger excursion services and some freight assignments on Reading Blue Mountain & Northern operated tracks. It is owned and operated by the Railway Restoration Project 113 Organization out of Minersville, PA.
The Chesapeake and Ohio class H-8 was a class of 60 simple articulated 2-6-6-6 steam locomotives built by the Lima Locomotive Works in Lima, Ohio between 1941 and 1948, operating until the mid 1950s. The locomotives were among the most powerful steam locomotives ever built and hauled fast, heavy freight trains for the railroad. Only two units were preserved; Nos. 1601 and 1604.
Reading 1187 is a camelback 0-4-0 switcher locomotive built in 1903 by Baldwin for the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad. It was primarily used for yard switching services, until 1946, when it was sold to the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company's E&G Brooke Plant as No. 4. In 1962, it made its way to the Strasburg Rail Road in Strasburg, Pennsylvania to be used in hauling tourist trains, but due to its small size, it was reassigned to switching passenger cars. After being removed from service in 1967, 1187 sat on display at the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania, before sitting idle at the Strasburg yard. In 2020, it was acquired by the Age of Steam Roundhouse, who is currently giving the locomotive a cosmetic stabilization at their location in Sugarcreek, Ohio.
