Democratic Sentinel, Volume 19, Number 30, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 August 1895 — Training a Locomotive. [ARTICLE]

Training a Locomotive.

It may not be generally known that locomotives intsnded for express trains require as much training, in their way, for fast running as do race horses. The Pennsylvania Railroad Company builds its own engines and those built for express trains are known as Class P, They are very large und built with slight variations after the pattern of the big English engino imported into this country several years ago, and which at that time was a curiosity in its way. When one of tiieso big engines is taken out of the shops to bo placed on the road, instead of putting it to the work it is intended for at once, it is run for two or throe weeks on some one of the local branches, in order to train it, so to speak, for faster running. By this means all the bearings and journals connected with the running gear become settled to their work; for, should anything about the new machine not work harmoniously, there is ample time to adjust the defect. Usually the new engine proves troublosome on account of its propensity to make fast time, and at almost every station is found to be a little ahead of schedule time, and must wait for from ten seconds to a ininuto. Xo- 100 us Class P was running yesterday on the Trenton accommodation train, but will soon be flying over the road from Broad street station to New York and return, at the rate, in many places, of a mile a minute-