Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 222, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 September 1915 — “TEST” CAR IS THE LATEST [ARTICLE]

“TEST” CAR IS THE LATEST

Addition to Railroad Equipment Has Been Subject of a Great Deal of Comment A new addition to the facilities of the railroad test department is the chemical test car —a fully equipped laboratory on wheels, says the New York Sun. The car has just been completed. It is designed especially for the purpose of making tests and inspections of steel rails at the point of manufacture.

When in use, the car will be moved to a mill where rails are being rolled, and chemical analyses will be immediately made of the finished rails. This procedure, it is expected, will avoid the delays which at times occur in the operation of the mills, and which cannot be avoided without having a sufficient force of chemists on hand during the rolling process to see that the chemical requirements of the railroad’s specifications are complied with.

An interesting feature of the department is the locomotive testing plant. The old method of testing a locomotive —the one Kipling has vividly described —was to take it out on the track, hitch it to a .train of loaded cars, and see what it could actually do on levels, grades, curves and straight track. Now everything that could be learned by such methods, and more too, is ascertained with scientific precision and great expedition. The locomotive test plant is virtually a treadmill on which the engine runs. Its drivers, instead of resting on rails, turn against the upper side of heavy wheels, and by applying brakes to these wheels any conditions of resistance met in actual work on the road can be duplicated. The engine, instead of pulling a train, pulls against a dynamometer, which is a machine for measuring the pulling force.

In the locomotive test plant such matters as maximum speed, maximum tractive power, starting power and fuel consumption are studied with the greatest accuracy. About twenty-six men are kept busy making the locomotive tests. This plant is the principal one of the kind in existence. Supplementing the locomotive test plant is the dynamometer car. This is a specially designed car, equipped with a dynamometer and used for measuring the pull required to haul a given train. For this purpose, of course, the car is inserted between the locomotive and the remainder of the train. It is used for making practical tests, under actual Operating conditions, ot the force required to draw trains consisting of cars of various types and number, over tracks of all characters.