The Project Gutenberg eBook, How to Become an Engineer, by Frank W. Doughty

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Title: How to Become an Engineer

Author: Frank W. Doughty

Release Date: January 6, 2014 [eBook #44604]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HOW TO BECOME AN ENGINEER***

E-text prepared by Demian Katz
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
(http://www.pgdp.net)
from page images generously made available by the
Digital Library of the Falvey Memorial Library,
Villanova University
(http://digital.library.villanova.edu)

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I. HISTORICAL.
CHAPTER II. DESCRIPTION OF THE LOCOMOTIVE.
CHAPTER III. HOW TO BECOME AN ENGINEER.
CHAPTER IV. DUTIES OF AN ENGINEER.
CHAPTER V. HOW TO RUN A TRAIN.
CHAPTER VI. HOW TO BUILD A MODEL LOCOMOTIVE.
CHAPTER VII. CONCLUSION.

HOW TO BECOME

AN ENGINEER.

Containing Full Instructions How to Proceed in
Order to Become a Locomotive Engineer;
Also Directions for Building a Model
Locomotive; together with a Full
Description of Everything an
Engineer Should Know.

PROFUSELY ILLUSTRATED.

BY AN OLD ENGINEER ON THE NEW YORK CENTRAL RAILROAD.

New York:
FRANK TOUSEY, Publisher
29 West 26th Street.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1898, by
FRANK TOUSEY,
in the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington, D.C.

How to Become an Engineer.

CHAPTER I.

HISTORICAL.

To begin a subject properly you must begin at the beginning.

Boys who don't like history need not read this chapter, for in it we tell how the steam engine began, and if it never had begun, you know, there would never have been any engineers, nor any necessity for writing this book.

For two or three generations we have had the story of James Watt told us; how when a boy and watching his mother's tea-kettle one day he saw the steam lift the lid, and that suggested the idea that if a little steam could lift the lid of a kettle, a great deal would lift still heavier weights and revolutionize the world.

Now they tell us that Watt was not the first one to have this idea by several, that it was first suggested by the Marquis of Worcester, in his book called the "Century of Inventions," as "a way to drive up water by fire," A. D. 1663.

This was about a hundred years before Watt came on deck, but the marquis never put his idea into practice, and Watt did, so to the latter the credit belongs.

Here are a few dates:

Watt's invention of the separate condenser, 1765; Watt's first patent, 1769; Watt's first working engine introduced into a manufactory, 1775; first steam engine erected in Ireland, 1791; first steamboat run on the Hudson, 1797; first steamboat abroad, 1801.

First regular steamboat ever run was from Albany to New York. The name of the boat was the North River, her builder was Robert Fulton, and she made the passage in 33 hours.

The first railroad was built in England, in 1811.

The first ocean steamer was the Savannah, an American craft of 350 tons, which sailed from New York for Liverpool, July 15, 1819, making the voyage in 26 days.

Such were the early beginnings of steam.

There are three principal kinds of engineers, locomotive, steamboat and stationary.

In this little book we propose to deal mainly with the duties of a locomotive engineer.

If one is a good locomotive engineer he can easily learn to manage the engine of a steamboat; and if he is skilled in either of these particulars he will have no difficulty with the biggest stationary engine ever built.

The First Locomotive.

The work of the different engineers differs only in detail, not in kind.

Let us now glance at the history of the steam horse, which has done more than any other one thing to revolutionize the world.

Be very sure that the locomotive, with its pistons, its spinning drive wheels, its polished steel and shining brass, did not come into existence all at once.

By no means. Like everything else in the way of mechanical invention that attains greatness, the locomotive had an insignificant beginning to reach which we shall be obliged to get back somewhere about the middle of the last century, for then it was that the desire for faster traveling than horses can furnish seems to have had its birth.

The first attempt at a railway seems to have been at Colebrook Dale, England, a spot celebrated for having the first iron bridge in the world—where a small iron road was constructed in connection with some mines; a horse furnished the motive power here.

The first railroad then was without a locomotive, and, strangely enough the first locomotive was without a railroad on which to run.

The first locomotive made its appearance in France. It was simply a huge tea kettle on wheels, and was built by Joseph Cugnot at Paris in the year 1769.

It is the custom of English writers to ignore Cugnot's invention, and claim for themselves the origin of the locomotive; but that is only a pleasant way the English usually