Talk:Camelback type locomotive

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[edit] Copyright problem

This page appears to extremely closely duplicate most information from its reference. SpaceCaptain 05:42, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Which is perfectly fine. Information is not copyrighted, only its expression.

It is, of course, not ideal for this article to be based on only one source; so if you have others, feel free to add to it. —Morven 08:41, Mar 24, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Inaccuracy of history

The B&O had camelback engines starting in 1853, so the claim of an 1877 invention date is specious. Part of this seems to be a misunderstanding of the cited text, but part of it seems to arise from the cited author not realizing that camelbacks predated the Wootten firebox.

No they didn't. They had Winans Camels, which are conventional locomotives that have a cab placed on top of the boiler rather than over the firebox.

I'll come back soon and try to update this based on info from Sagle's B&O Power. Mangoe 04:19, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

I've added some info on the B&O locos, but much remains to be done. The article remains somewhat contradictory, as the section on the Wootten firebox version still ignores the B&O versions. I've temporarily removed the "survivors" section, as it is quite inaccurate (some of the B&O specimens also survive). Mangoe 11:50, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Here we go again. I can find no consensus whatsoever as to whether the camelback type encompasses the Winans/Hayes engines or not. I've even found references that say that the Wooten-boilered engines are 'not camelbacks, but only the Winans engines. This seems to be something that a lot of people want to be sticklers about, but there seems to be no real basis for making such a fine distinction. Mangoe 04:13, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Resolving the Winans issue

There seems to be a group of people out there who are insisting that the Wootten firebox versions of the late 1800s are a totally different creature from the B&O Camels of the 1840s and '50s. In researching this, however, I'm not finding any strong evidence that this is anything more than railfan nitpicking. Googling for wootten camelback winans -wikipedia produces only an estimated 38 hits, and a bunch of these have nothing to do with railroading. Indeed, it yields (via a Google book search) the following:

With the fireman's cab mounted on the opposite of the engineer's, these locomotives took a design from the early locomotives of Ross Winans and the Baltimore & Ohio. They became known by the old name of "Camelback." Daniels, Rudolph. Trains Across the Continent: North American Railroad History. Indiana University Press. 2000, p. 85

An article in Classic Trains says the following:

The first 0-8-0 was built in 1844 by Ross Winans for the Baltimore & Ohio. Winans subsequently built more than 200 such engines in his Baltimore shop, including 119 for the B&O alone. Perhaps the most famous of Winans' engines was the Camel - likely the first camelback locomotive. Carlson, Neil. "Steam locomotive profile: 0-8-0". Classic Trains. July 4, 2006.

Laurence Sagle also uses the term in reference to the Winans engines in B&O Power, teh standard work on B&O locomotives.

Given all this I am unwilling to let the current situation stand, and intend to merge the two articles again. Mangoe 20:38, 5 April 2007 (UTC)