Re: K27 Trailing Truck

stanames Wrote:
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> What other locomotives used this fixed training
> truck. I was unaware that it was commonly used?
>
> Was there a specific name to describe this lateral
> moving wheel rather then entire truck movement?
>
> this certainly is a very strange truck. SInce no
> other K class used this design I infer that it was
> not very popular with the railroad.

It is not a “fixed” trailing truck, it swivels like any other. Note the pivot and the "Y" shaped yoke just behind the #4 drivers in this photo of RGS #455. Gravity has swung the truck to the engineer’s side.



It is called a “Rushton Radial Trailing Truck”, one of the earliest designs made. Remember, when the K-27s were built, steam locomotives had only been using trailing trucks for about five years.

The EBT’s Mikados all have them, although theirs are equipped with journal box covers. OP&E #19 from the movie “The Emperor of the North” has a Rushton trailing truck, though being standard gage, the journals are inboard and you can’t see the details of the truck itself. Though there were lots of different designs, lots of standard gage engines with inboard bearing trailing trucks had Rushtons.

No other K class used them because twenty years of progress and experience with trailing trucks taught the builders that there were better, simpler, more straight forward ways to support the rear end of a steam locomotive.