I highly recommend this 1952 book on the steam locomotive. It is a professional, detailed work completed just after the end of steam locomotive construction.

My question: does anyone know who the author, Alfred Bruce, was? The text does not include a biography. The author clearly had some first hand professional experience with mainline steam.

Alfred W Bruce, Director of Steam Engineering at Alco

See:

http://www.steamlocomotive.com/berkshire/?page=err

There's a copy of the Bruce book on eBay right now for ten bucks / "buy it now."

I also have an extra copy.

Steve

Here is what John H. White, Jr., formerly of the Smithsonian, had to say about Bruce in the Fall-Winter 2007 edition of "Railroad History," the biannual publication of The Railway & Locomotive Historical Society:

"Alfred W. Bruce is best remembered for his history of the American steam locomotive, published in 1952 by W.W. Norton. It remains a standard reference today. Bruce was born in West Boylston, Mass., and earned a degree in mechanical engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in 1901. Soon after graduation, he found work at the Rhode Island Locomotive Works as a draftsman. In 1904, he moved on to Schenectady. He changed jobs again the following year from the Northern Pacific Railway to American Car and Foundry and then back to the American Locomotive Company's New York City office in 1908. He would remain at Alco for another 38 years, designing steam locomotives. In 1924, he was appointed designing engineer for Alco. Retirement in 1946 gave him time to write his excellent book. He died at the age of 76 on January 19, 1955, in Riverhead, Long Island, N.Y."

Robert LeMassena, in the introduction to Kalmbach"s reprinted edition of Lionel Werner's "Articulated Locomotives," considered Bruce's book to be one of four essential classics on steam locomotive history and design. The other three are "The Steam Locomotive," by Ralph P. Johnson (Baldwin's chief designer late in the steam era, and the originator of the duplex drive concept as later expressed by the Pennsy's T-1), "Articulated Locomotives" by Lionel Werner, and "Catechism of the Locomotive," by Matthias N. Forney.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthias_N._Forney

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duplex_locomotive

http://railroadbooks.biz/prodDetail.php ... eamjohnson

Sorry, couldn't find anything on Werner.

A minor correction to your excellent post: The author of Articulated Locomotives (1930, reprint 1970) was Lionel Wiener not Werner.

I cannot find much about him except a brief listing on the German Wikipedia which says he was a Belgian railway engineer (I am presuming they mean engineering not train driving), b. 1878, d. 1940, and beside this well known book he also wrote operettas and a comprehensive history of Brussels.

Steve

Thanks for the correction, that's what happens when your library is in the basement and you haven't checked on the book in a while, and are working from memory. And as for the compliment, that should really go to Mr. White for finding out so many things the rest of us would miss.

One of the things I remember about Weiner's book, and brought up by LeMassena, is that the book was originally written in another language (French?) and there were some interesting things that came out of English to French and back to English again--LeMassena's favored example was how the B&O's Sand Patch grade came out as "Saint Pitch" in the retranslation back into English.

It is also amazing how many ways designers came up with to bend locomotives around curves. Mallets and Shays and Beyer-Garratts are so pedestrian when compared with some the the other machines in that book!

It is interesting to see some credit and recognition being accorded to individuals who worked in the design and construction of US steam locomotives. While the names of a few of the pioneers of dieselization are quite well known (but often not acknowledged by museums), it frequently seems that the later foreign steam designers get better "press" in the US than the Americans who were leading authorities on steam locomotive design. Sometimes it seems like these guys were banished when they lost to the diesel and their history and accomplishments got flushed down railroad history's drain.

Take a look sometime at how many patents James G. Blunt of Alco is credited for. Then think about what he is best known for in railroad enthusiast and preservation circles. And how many people in this hobby/industry nowadays would know his full name without being told it.

But then, how many museums make the link between the classic styling of the Alco FA and PA locomotives and the styling of electrical appliances of the 1930s and 1940s including waffle irons, refrigerators, stoves, lots of Telechron clocks, and a very familiar electric motor start/stop control box. Gosh I wonder why so many things have all those parallel lines intersecting a circle, like the FA and PA headlight casing. Could it be because they were designed by the same person?

Interpret? Wonderful sounding word. Isn't that something they do in museums?

PC

Are there any good works on Woodard of Lima?

Steve

Another correction to my post, in regard to Robert Le Massena's four classics--it was not Forney's "Catechism of the Locomotive" (although it is a classic in its own right), but Angus Sinclair's "Development of the Locomotive Engine," which covered locomotive construction and development prior to 1907.

http://www.amazon.com/Development-Locom ... 0262190680

Excerpt from Catskill Archive, a chapter on "Curiousities of Locomotive Design--whoo--ee!

http://www.catskillarchive.com/rrextra/odcuri.Html

I'm going to have to get a copy of that, and Johnson's "The Steam Locomotive,", too. . .

There is a considerable dearth of material on the designers themselves. I think a part of this is that we as a society look too much on people in "ART" and do not appreciate the people in the "art of engineering" (as Mercedes-Benz once used as an advertising slogan). There is a scene in the fairly recent film, "The Aviator" (Howard Hughes biopick) in which Hughes (played by Leonardo di Caprio) has occasion to make just this point to the family of Katherine Hepburn for their emphasis on "art" and a failure to appreciate the people who make good living possible.

When I get more time, I'll post up John White's commentary of Will Woodard from that borrowed copy of "Railroad History" I currently have; I would highly recommend looking up a copy, it's a special edition covering locomotive builders, with a considerable section on various personalities in the field. I also recommend John White's book, "The American Steam Locomotive, An Engineering History" as an encyclopedia of steam from the beginning to about 1890. White or somebody needs to continue the story to 1953 or even beyond!

What does survive is the work of the designers themselves, both the published works we have been discussing and the snorting, breathing artifacts we call steam locomotives. Now, how to work this in to our story?

One possible approach was one I hoped to use in a proposed television series I attempted to write (but couldn't sell--blast!), in which an an unnamed railroad that looks an awful lot like the Chesapeake & Ohio takes delivery of some new locomotives just after the attack on Pearl Harbor. My main character, a young man who thanks to a combination of talent, enthusiasm, and a bit of good fortune (which includes other men being called to other service because of the impending war) is promoted to something like a road foreman, and he gets to accompany the railroad's officials to Lima, Ohio to accept these new engines. On the way in the road's offic car, he and the officials discuss locomotive developments, including this four-unit machine from General Motors with 5,400 horsepower and 200,000 pounds of tractive effort, but it is dismissed becasuse it has 16 traction motors and 64 cylinders and pistons! How do you maintain all that? And besides, we are in the coal business, why bring in oil from outside?

Among other things, we get to meet the designer of the new engine at Lima, a thin, balding man with a pipe, who has this understated air of competence and great pride, despite a very quiet demeanor. And even if the new machine isn't a colorful streamlined diesel (or a modern high-speed electric TGV), it is still an impressive, massive machine, of great length and height, with huge steam pipes snaking under the running boards and air tanks on top, air compressors up front, four cylinders, 12 drivers, and a six-wheel trailing truck. . .it doesn't look at all like what most people think a steam engine should look like, certainly nothing like a kettle from the 19th century. . .indeed, it looks more like somethng from the future, being extremely functional. . .with a machine like that, who needs diesels?

(The future wouldn't turn out that way, of course, but that's for later on in the series.)