I have been looking at several old photos of NYC RR 2-8-2's and noticed something shown on 2 photo's that I have never seen or paid any attention to before on the fireman side of the locomotive cabs. They look like 3 handles/levers with rods running downward placed over the area of the number painted on the side of the loco cab. Of the many pictures of NYC 2-8-2's I have looked at so far I see this on only 2 engines, the #1490 a class H5la a Alco built in 1913 and #1453 a class H5u Alco built in 1923. What the heck is the purpose of these levers/rods used for? The #1453 was renumbered in Jan. 1950 from the Indiana Harbor Belt Line wich was its #408. Both engines appear to have the same boiler fronts that have a horizontal double row of rivets or whatever they are above the smokebox door. Where many other NYC RR 2-8-2 photos don't have that horizontal double row above the smokebox door.

They control the flux capacitor. There is one handle for each node.

A view of the side of NYC RR #1453 showing the same levers/rods placed over the number.

Extended valve rods and handles for injector control: overflow valve, water valve, etc. Erie did the same thing on a lot of locomotives.

Howard P.

That large blob behind the trailing truck looks like an exhaust steam injector, sometimes called a "poor man's feedwater heater," because it recaptured waste heat from the exhaust steam it used to force the water into the boiler. The rods are valve stem extensions, and the blobs in the middle of their length are universal joints. the more typical installation has these routed through holes in the cab floor and the handles on the inside of the cab wall.

Edit: Howard types faster than I do.

Thank you! Well that certainly would have looked better if they had went thru the cab floor. Looks rather tacky and unsightly placed on the side of the loco cab over the number!

In all seriousness, they are perfectly positioned because you need to be looking out the window to see the results of your adjustments.

Perfectly positioned until you have to reach out to operate the injector at 40 MPH in a blizzard! Some mechanical department engineer's great idea, no doubt. Bet the crews sincerely hated these!

Fritz -

You didn't include a photo of the mentioned "horizontal double row of rivets...above the smokebox door". My guess is that these engines had an Elesco feedwater heater mounted over the door, and that the railroad removed them, probably for ease of maintenance. That might also explain the need for 3 lever/rods you mentioned.

I sure do like those NYC Mikes!

Les

Les, Here's a close up of the front of #1490 I believe you are correct. I got out the photo I have of the #1453 and on the back of the photo in very small writing it says Feedwater heater removed by the time this photo was taken on 12/4/55, I had to put my glass's on to read it! Soooo I presume now the #1490 must have had a feedwater heater prior to when the photo of it was taken in 1956? the photo's of both engines were taken at Wabash, Indiana on those dates. One other thing I noticed about most of the NYC RR 2-8-2 locomotive photo's I have been looking at is it appears they used different types of tenders. The reason of my interest in the NYC Mikes is a week ago i traveled to far midwestern Indiana and bought the number plate wich i believe is from #1490. This year i have made 2 trips to western Indiana so far. One of these times i need to stop and visit your Railroad museum!


Fritz

External shafting-rods for injector controls were not limited to the New York Central. I've seen photos of engines with this on at least two roads, the Erie and the NKP, and if I recall, the C&O as well.

I could be wrong, but it's my understanding this may have had to do with getting valves and steam pipes out of the cab. Reportedly one of the more common causes of injury and death in the steam era was broken piping in the cab, with the resulting scalding.

There is at least one account of a minor rear end collision that involved a Southern Pacific cab forward. Externally the only clue was that the cab had a bit of a tilt. Inside the cab there was very little visible damage. But a steam pipe was broken up near the turret, and the blast of steam killed three men.

For this reason, later engines had the turret manifold forward, outside the cab, usually under a turret cover of some kind, with the valves actuated by shafting from inside the cab and running through the front cab wall. Mechanical lubricators eliminated the piping and the hardware associated with displacement lubricators. By the end of the steam era, about the only steam plumbing still in the cab, at least in new construction, was for the water glasses, steam gauges, and the mechanical stoker.

Long before this, cab mounted injectors--yes, they were very often in the cab in the early part of the 20th century, and the PRR even had the check valves in the cab, too!!-- were moved outside the cab, along with as much steam piping as could accompany them. In some cases, this meant valves for these devices were no longer in the cab, but near the appliances they controlled--hence the rodding and shafting under discussion here.

Look closely at this photo of NKP 624--and note the shafting and handles near the rear of the engineer's cab window.



https://fortwaynerailroad.org/2017/01/c ... ort-wayne/

Those are operating rods reaching down to the non-lifting type of injector located very low underneath the loco cab, below the bottom level of the water in the tender. The injector is called “non-lifting” in that the larger volume of water in the tender pushed the smaller amount of water through the tank hose and into the injector, where steam from the boiler was concentrated through a series of cone-shaped nozzles to gain speed and force the water through the check valve and into the pressurized boiler. Non-lifting injectors were used on either (or both) sides of a locomotive, and operating control handles were sometimes located outside the cabs.

Lifting injectors were located higher up on the locomotive boiler, either inside the cab or immediately in front of the cab, so their operating controls were located right there inside the cab, not outside below the cab window. Located higher up on the side of the boiler than a non-lifting injector, a lifting injector did not have the benefit of the weight of the tender water to push water into the injector, but had to create a vacuum to suck (lift) the water up and into the injector. Just as with the non-lifting injector, the steam from the boiler was concentrated through a series of cone-shaped nozzles to gain speed and force the water through the check valve and into the pressurized boiler.

Each type of injector had its good and bad features, so railroads had to use whichever type was more beneficial to them. On the Wheeling & Lake Erie, a locomotive might have a pair of lifting injectors one day, and then receive a pair of non-lifting injectors during its next visit to the shop. The NKP also used non-lifting injectors with the distinctive cab-side controls.

John B. Corns

Fritz -

Thanks very much for the photo of the front end of NYC #1490. I have a color photo of a sister Mike on a freight train which I believe was taken on the Valley Junction, Ohio to Beeson, Indiana line that ran through Connersville, Indiana. The photo was taken across a field so I cannot quite read the engine number. It looks like 14x5 or 14x6, with the 3rd number partly obscured, perhaps because of the same 3 lever/rods that is the subject of this thread. The fireman is in the cab so I guess there is the possibility that he has his arm hanging out hiding that digit. This 2-8-2 has the same kind of tender as on the 1453 and the 1490. The front end of the Mikado is in shadow since it is backlit, so I can't tell for sure that it too is missing its feedwater heater, but I can see no evidence that it still has it. I really like the photo because all 16 cars of the train are shown! I can tell that the boxcars behind the tank are, in order, B&O, Great Northern, Rock Island, C&O and C&NW but after that the lettering on the boxcars is not readable. There are a total of 11 40' boxcars in a row and then possibly a 12th, although it might be a refrigerator car. After that there is a car I can't quite make out and then two open top hopper cars in front of the caboose. In other words, a "typical" steam era freight train!

Les

John B. , Thank you for the clarification that those operating rods were for reaching down to the non-lifting type of injector and what the use of them was for. I just noticed that those rods were in place on both sides of the engine #1490 as I have photo's of both the engineers side and fireman's side of locomotive #1490. On the fireman's side the bracket and rods partially obscures the number 9 and on the engineers side the bracket and rods partially obscures the number 4. So I presume it was necessary that these rods for the non lifting injector could be accessed from either side of the engine and could be controlled by either the engineer or fireman?

The ICC required two methods of adding water to the boiler (built in redundancy) So locomotives had at least an injector on each side. If the engine was equipped with a feedwater heater, it typically replaced the left side injector.