Gee, Mark just asked a simple question and look what happened. He showed curiosity on how the valve gear went together on 611 and got flamed. What's wrong with people any more? I would never plan a project without gathering all the information I could and have it on hand for when the time came and neither would he. Of course, the Fire,Ready,Aim people look at things differently.
I'm amazed at how much info this turned up. There are some good folks here too.

Frisco- note that Mark's original post is 8 years old. TVRM has de-assessed the locomotive to a private owner since then, and that owner is apparently showing some interest in restoring it to operation.

There was some discussion about the possible restoration of USATC 611 on another forum last year (a Maine narrow gauge forum of all things IIRC), but I haven't seen anything since.

It would be very cool to have one poppet valve locomotive running in the U.S.

"It's not the "normal" Franklin Type B rotary cam poppet valves."

Hugh, you're absolutely right.

Even still, the patents are not going to tell you that the nominal rod length should be 30.523" for intake and 38.340" exhaust -
Read the angle of both cam shaft arms toward the other end of the cylinder by revolving the main driver. Intake should swing 20 deg. 15 min. at back dead center and exhaust should swing 19 deg. 45 min. at the same time.

Those are generic specs for the "OC" system and may be totally out to lunch for a specific application.

I, too, would love to see 611 run again. Wouldn't that be cool? That's why I spent so much time trying to help uncover "the lost scrolls".

Fortunately for this setup, you've only got one camshaft that drives all the valves. You might have to do it via trial-and-error, but with the engine in forward gear and one cylinder at Top Dead Center, it seems like it'd be obvious how to "time" the camshaft so the admission valve on the appropriate cylinder is fully open at or shortly after TDC.

Let's hope the new owner gets to that point.

My interest in this particular locomotive has been piqued again.

Did it use a standard air-operated power reverser? What about other applications of Franklin poppet valves?

I think it's safe to say that none of the Franklin equipped engines used a conventional power reverser.

For this particular engine, the reverser consisted of a 3 position control valve in the cab that supplied compressed air to a piston at either end of the camshaft. When air was admitted, it shifted the cam sideways fully to one side or the other of the cylinder block. One position provided forward running and the other provided reverse running. The unique cam profiles effectively provided changing cutoff as the engine sped up without any additional adjustment of the camshaft position.

For other Franklin rotary cam equipped engines (none of those remain unforatunately), a shaft turned a pinion gear that shifted a rack that moved the cam shaft from side to side. The camshaft had multiple sets of cam profiles that engaged the followers that lifted the valves off their seats. The engineer moved the cam with a wheel in the cab; I'd imagine that had power assist.

For the oscillating cam valves (Type A), the enclosed valve gear supposedly consisted of mniaturized sets of Walscherts; I'm not sure how it was adjusted.

(edit) One of the patents linked on the previous page: http://www.google.com/patents/US2234613 confirms that the Franklin Type A valve gear "box" contained miniaturized sets of Walschaerts valve gear, and this gear does appear to use a conventional power reverse, at least in one of the "embodiments". The locomotive in the patent drawing appears to be a Pennsy K4, so I'd guess this was the gear arrangement that wound up on K4 #5399.

Late last year I contacted the California St. RR Museum about them possibly having the Franklin Railway Supply Co (New York) archives in their collections.

The CSRRM did refer me to the "John H. Keller Railroad Archives" of the Allen County Museum archive. So I emailed Allen County Museum and they already responded, and they don't have it either.

Do you members think the Franklin Institute of Technology could have been a decendant of the Franklin Railway products Company, and possibly the recipient of its archive? Some blurbs on the net suggest that it could be possible.

In looking for any BLW photos related to Alaska Railroad 557 I did several on-line searches of the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania collection. There are about 18 photos of 611 when it was being modified by Vulcan in 1949. Unfortunately, there aren't thumbnails photos for any of them.

While trying to replicate the search, I came across a reference to an interesting looking document referring to the "test" of 611. If someone gets a copy please give us a summary -



I wonder if Pennsylvania has other Vulcan records that might describe the modification?

Go to http://rrmuseumpa.andornot.com/Archives/. Searches like "Vulcan & 2-8-0" and "U.S. Army & 2-8-0" turn up a number of S160 photos.

Interesting find! Maybe I'll ask Santa for a copy for Christmas. ;-)