Re: Locomotive Construction

Thanks for the responses. I only offered the low, squatty build as a comparison. Reasons for smaller drivers and low gravity centers makes perfect sense, especially on the NG. Tall drivers and speed also make sense. It is these odd, tall with small drivers engines thathave me puzzled.

Without digging through archival photos for an example, those tall locos I refer to DO have that large open area between the drivers and the boiler barrel as Linn mentioned. This is to facilitate a wider firebox ? What does a trailing wheelset have to do with this ?

Pulling from memory, it seemed to me that this type of build had abnormally small drivers for the overall height, and/or the boiler diameter looked proportionately small.

Excuse my lack of "pro" terminology here.