Does anyone know if any drawings or records from the Franklin Railway Supply Company survived? I am looking for anything related to the Rotary Cam Poppet Valve Gear. I think this is going to be a tall challenge but I thought I'd start here.USATC 611 is equipped with this valve gear and I am looking for anything to help reassemble the valve gear.

At last! What a great project! Hopefully somethingwill turn up. Please keep us posted.

I sure hope this is not another project that we are undertaking when there is so much already ahead of the shop crews at TVRM...3 steam locos completely dissassembled, 2 long lines of passenger cars at VAP that are open and exposed to the elements, a new "table car" that nobody has even touched, at least 1/2 a dozen diesels that are crying out for attention and now we are "operating" a freight railroad and playing landlord. Let's finish one project at a time. Please!

No one needs to get excited here. Any sort of work regarding the 611 is way off in the future.I would appreciate that wishing to flame TVRM do it in a separate thread and reserve this thread for anyone have information directly related to my request.

Mark,The library at CSRM has an extensive collection of Lima material. Franklin being a Lima subsidiary, you should be able to find some material on the Rotary valve gear among there collection. In fact, since I have an interest in Franklin Type B rotary valve gear, I once did a search on that and spotted some material in their collection - I just haven't had a chance to actually pull the references to see exactly what they have.Another source may be the Allen County Historical Society (Lima, Ohio) which has a large collection of Lima photos and other railroad archival material. According to their website: "For catalogs or ordering information, contact Charles Bates, Assistant Curator of Railroad Collections, ACM – (419) 222-9426"Unfortunately, Vernon Smith - who used to work at Franklin on rotary valve gear - recently passed away. He would have been the best person to help you. Although his book, "One Man's Locomotives" doesn't get into the details of valve timing, etc. it may offer at least a few insights into rotary valve workings. The book is hard to find, so let me know if you can't locate it...Hope that helps.

Thanks Wolf!What has prompted this inquiry is a pamphlet that has been loaned to me. The pamphlet is titled "The Journal of the Institution of Locomotive Engineers, #177". Contained in it is a paper titled "The Development of the Locomotive Poppet Valve Gear in America". I am reading it now and it contains some interesting stuff. I am not sure how much of this will apply to the eventual restoration of USATC 611 but I do want to know how much of the original engineering is left.More later as I continue my reading...

I am sorry you see a simple statement of facts as a flame, it was not intended as one. It just seems that every time I learn about a new "idea" somebody has, we end up taking on that idea and the current projects get pushed aside. How much time have you spent in Copper Hill this Summer?

Copper Hill is operated by the Hiwassee River Rail Company and not the Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum.What current projects have been set aside? Why would we want to start on the table car before the 1037 is complete? Why would we want to start another diesel restoration before the 6914 is complete? Why would we want to start another steam locomotive project before the 630 is complete?And finally, why do you use a Pseudonym?

"Copper Hill is operated by the Hiwassee River Rail Company and not the Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum. "Then why do we so often see museum staff down there? A promise was made that museum resources would not be expended on that project.We also thought the 1037 would be ready for the Fall season. It looks so good and is so close to being ready.Let's just not get side-tracked anymore. I am glad the 611 project is far off into the future.

Mark - Had a few minutes today to read through Vernon Smith's book. Although the main body of the text doesn't discuss the 611, there is a picture of it with a very interesting caption.According to the caption, you may have one of the only steam engines in the world equipped with an "automatic transmission". The rotary valve gear was modified with a mechanism to reduce the cutoff as the speed increased so that the engineer only had to select forward, neutral or reverse and the valve gear did the rest...Cheers,Wolf

Has anyone had the opportunity to look into this lead that suggested the Franklin Railway Supply Co (New York) archive might be in the CSRM collections?

I eventually found the procedure for setting the Franklin "OC" System of Steam Distribution but nothing on the gear applied to 611. If you ever hear of anyone getting close to needing to set up their OC, have them PM me. LOL

I didn't look at CSRM.

Franklin was actually owned by BALMAR, located in Baltimore, MD, then, I believe, there was another company before it actually got to LIMA. There are some BALMAR archives held by the Baltimore Museum of Industry but that search only led to some C4 booster books, or something like that. They probably have more on making Army tanks. Almost all the industry was connected through an infinite web of incestuous relationships, however. Just look at how many places Mr. J.S. Coffin's name pops up. He was in some position, or another at about a dozen companies.

611's steam chests have a Lima mark but weren't they installed at Porter, Vulcan or somewhere prior to her runs on the MA & PA?

Adam,

According to this article, the work on the locomotive was done at the Vulcan Iron Works in Wilkes-Barre, PA:

http://www.susquehannanmra.org/newsletters/ss1099.pdf

After studying the patent, I don't think it would be difficult to figure out how to set up the cams on the locomotive.

Hi Mark:

Here is a link to a patent and patent drawings. The first is for the steam chest, but the second details the cam and additional machinery. Hope this may be somewhat helpful.
http://www.google.com/patents/US2401764
http://www.google.com/patents/US2234613

Good luck,
Steve Piwowarski

Adam & Steve,

USATC 611 had a set of "one-off" experimental Franklin rotary cam poppet valves. See this earlier thread:

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=27687&hilit=usatc+611

It's not the "normal" Franklin Type B rotary cam poppet valves. Here's the patent for 611's valves:

http://www.google.com/patents/US2518024 ... 0QGTjdn6Ag

Apparently the main purpose of this arrangement was to simplify the operation of the locomotive. There is no cutoff adjustment, just forward, "neutral", and reverse positions. The cam profiles are ground to effectively provide 3 cutoff settings as the locomotive gains speed: full gear (85% cutoff) at low speed, 65% at medium speed, and 50% at high speed.

It's a pretty clever setup and it'd be very interesting to know how well it worked. There's probably useful info in the earlier Franklin patents; just be aware 611 has a different setup.