Steam & Excursion > With Hard Service, Some Locomotive Designs Still Needed Help!

The builder's of logging locomotives really had to make sure that their design specifications could hold up under the rigorous stresses that these locomotives would be put through with long days over steep grades on rough track and heavy loads.  There were times, even with the best designs, the loggers needed to find ways to improve upon the builder's designs to keep these engines in service after years of abuse.  Here we see one such example.

Turned out in 1916 by the Climax Manufacturing Company of Corry, Pennsylvania, Saginaw Timber's 70-ton 3-truck Climax #3 was the latest design produced by that company for the time.  She was a powerful locomotive that, as advertised, could stand up to the rigors of logging in the forested hills south of Aberdeen, Washington.  For over 20 years she performed well in this job, with one exception.  After nearly 20 years of service, her arch-bar trucks began to crack on occasion from the years of hard logging service.

Posed with this problem, the CMO at the company shops in Brooklyn, Washington developed the reinforcement straps that we see on her in this fine Al Farrow photo taken April 1, 1938.  This solution worked and she no longer had cracking issues in her truck. 

It should be noted, that Climax changed their truck design on many of the locomotives they built in the years after #3 was shipped from the factory.  Later locomotives were equipped with cast steel frame trucks rather than the arch-bar trucks used on earlier models.

Martin



Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 04/03/20 02:12 by LoggerHogger.

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That looks like a logical reinforcement, with an I-beam along the bottom of the truck frame clamped to the frame by long threaded rods and brackets at the top. The objective would have been to help transfer the downward load from the bolster out to where it is supported by the axle journal boxes and springs.  The added I-beam and rods would do that.

Of course cast steel frames would have been better, but this approach should have been a significant improvement to the original arch bar and apparently was good enough!