Arizona Republican

CURIOUS GERMAN LOCOMOTIVE

One of the German locomotives shown at Paris is so singular in the salient feature of its design that had not the idea been indignantly repudiated by its designer one would have felt impelled to regard it as a huge scientific practical joke. It is a four coupled compound express engine, built by Krauss of Munich for the Bavarian State railways. The astonishing peculiarity of this engine is that its two parts of bogie wheels are placed so far apart as to admit between them a third pair of wheels three feet three and three-quarters in diameter, and that this third pair is driven by a pair of small outside cylinders, the combination producing what is called an "auxiliary" engine—equivalent to the "donkey" on board a steamer. Further, this pair of small auxiliary drivers can be raised from the rails or pressed upon them as desired by means of a lever. The object of this eccentric appliance has proved a tough puzzle to most visitors. One, a British engineer of no mean standing, hazarded the conjecture that the tiny auxiliary wheels and cylinders were to be used to move the locomotive about the yard, so as to give the big wheels and cylinders a rest. This suggested to him a humorous comparison with Sir Isaac Newton's absent minded provision of a large aperture in the door for his large dog to pass through and a small aperture for the small dog. Naturally the designer was outraged at so disrespectful a reference and he promptly explained that his "real intention is to have a locomotive which, in general, has the qualities of a four coupled engine, but is able to increase, every time it is needed, its cylinder power as well as its adhesive weight in the proportion of 3 to 2, so that it can exert temporarily a tractive power corresponding to six coupled wheels."

—Engineering Magazine.

Never stop to argue with your enemies. If they get in your way walk calmly around them.