Re: Uintah 50/51 reverse mechanism question

The picture above is the Baldwin builder's photo of the engineer's side of the cab interior of URy. #50 on p. 154 of "Uintah Railway, The Gilsonite Route" by Henry E. Bender Jr., 1970 (c) Howell North Books. It has been published elsewhere as well.

The picture clearly shows the short power reverse lever and quadrant. The throttle is in its normal position, and there is nothing that looks like a second throttle. I wonder if the second throttle mentioned in a post above could have been a drifting throttle, similar to those on the D&RGW K-36 engines? Can't tell from the picture.

Regarding the second steam dome, the railroad discovered that, when running down the 7.5% grade on Baxter Pass, the boiler water got low enough that it did not show in the water glass. It was found that an imaginary line drawn from the steam dome midway along the boiler shell intersected the backhead very close to the lower water glass connection and very close to the top of the crown sheet. A two-part, relatively simple solution was decided upon. The crown sheet was lowered some and a second steam dome was installed back closer to the firebox. This solved the problem. This info is paraphrased from p. 159 of the Bender book.

Both the 50 and the 51 were simple articulateds, both front and rear sets of cylinders used high pressure steam.

Hope this answers the question.

Ed



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/27/2015 01:30PM by Ed Stabler.