Re:(erielack) ERIE steam locomotives - K5 and K5A

["Janet & Randy Brown" <jananran_@_mymailstation.com>]

Warning: This is nit-picking at its finest, performed by professionl Nit Pickers.  You may not want to try this at home.

Trailing truck:
My statement was meant to help modellers and fans differentiate easily between K5 and K5A locomotives.  The one consistent and irrefutable difference was the trailing truck. A Commonwealth cast "delta" (from its suspension system) meant K5A; the K5 useda built-up assembly with a flat bearing plate between journal and spring -- a Cole.  (The Hodges had a prominent structure rising from the journal to enclose the spring; its suspension system was entirely different from the others.) None of them ever changed trailing trucks; the work would have been difficult, if not impossible, and pointless.  The trailing truck was an integral part of the locomotive's suspension system, not, as we modellers view it, a separate truck flopping around under the cab to use up space .  Change would mean significant re-engineering of at least the tail piece plus the rear of the main frame.  It wasn't done often; never on a K5.

Valve gear hanger:
Perhaps we are talking about different things here.  The hange to which I refer is the boxy thing like a "s" on its tummy from which the valve gear all depends.  It sits above the first driver. On the originals, the outside of this was flanged and heavily, visibly bolted.  The rebuilds used a newer, smoother cast version, readily indentifiable in photos by the lack of flanging top and bottom.  Both were bolted to a crosstie which also supported the crosshead guide system -- alligator (earlier) or multiple-bearing (later).
The cast engine bed, as shown at Biernacki,  p33, has cast integrally the crosstie to which the valve gear hanger and the crosshead guide system are all bolted; the hangers were separate castings.

Drivers:
Eleven K5s received full sets of BoxPok drivers, either before or during rebuild.  Sources are Locomotive Quarterly; Route of the Erie Limited; Erie Power; Eastern Steam Pictorial.

I still have to force myself to say "spoke", not Spock; it is, of course, logical.

As I say -- this is nit-picking at its finest, but it is also history.

Randy Brown
 



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