Re: Uintah 50/51 reverse mechanism question

Chris,

I don't know about two throttles but I can tell you that they had a valve in the cab to change them from compound to simple, IE both cylinders getting high pressure steam, the reason for this was that if you tried to start from a stop with them in a compound mode you would have had to wait a cycle or two either spin or slid the drivers connected to the high pressure steam till you got enough exhaust steam too work the low pressure cylinders, or you used high pressure steam to get every thing moving and then switched back to compound mode with the high pressure steam cylinders exhausting to the low pressure cylinders and then the low pressure cylinders exhausting out the stack. One of the differences between a simple locomotive and a compound is that the exhaust on a simple goes in and out of synchronization as the locomotive moves where a compound locomotive will sound like any other locomotive with only one set of lower or not as sharp exhaust sounds.

Andre