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that the State Railways would not permit a foremanas he was in 1844-to make personal profit out of his own invention; so, his friend, M. Fisher, an engineer of the same company, made application in Walschaert's name, on October of the above year, for a patent relating to an improved valve gear, of which our present-day Walschaert motion is a close duplicate. The patent was allowed, and M. Fisher never claimed any credit for himself. It was in 1848 that Walschaert applied the gear to one of his engines and the results were all that he had anticipated. His device attracted attention throughout the Continent, and in due time came into general use on the principal railways of Europe. His engine equipped with the trial valve gear was the first one on the State railways to have a variable cut-off, for all of their other engines had the old hook motion, and as Egide Walschaert had never seen-possibly had never heard of a shifting link, the problem that he worked out was greater than we, of to-day, can realize at first thought.

He was awarded a gold medal, and a diploma and honorable mention for his improved valve gear at the Exposition at Paris in 1878, and also at Antwerp in 1883. His death occurred at Saint-Gilles, near Brussels, on February 18th, 1901.

It has been said of the man whose mind conceived this theory of valve-actuating mechanism, that "Egide

Walschaert wrought better than he knew, for this gear now seems indispensable to meet conditions recently arisen because of the development of the locomotive in this country, of which the inventor could not possibly have dreamed. His work now meets a need which did not exist during the lifetime of the inventor, and for this reason he is entitled to credit for solving a problem of, to him, a future generation."

It is purposed here to explain the theory and action of Walschaert's valve gear, showing that his principle was not only an improvement on the old hook motion, but even at that early date was a better device than the modern, and commonly used, Stephenson link motion; to show it in as simple and plain a manner as possible, going through the process of its evolution from the common sawmill engine, that some of the readers hereof may have tended, and we will build up the Walschaert gear from it, ourselves, with the help of a few drawings and photographic views.

In taking up the study, or entering into an analysis, of any particular form of locomotive valve gear, it must be assumed that the principle of the plain steam engine in its 'most primitive form is already understood at least, the valve itself. We will, however, start, in this building-up of our prospective Walschaert motion, with the plainest pattern of valve-actuating gear, and explain its actions so far as may be necessary

before its further evolution begins. As to the valve,— it is a study itself, separate from the subject of this article, but must be gotten acquainted with before starting into the subject of the mechanism that operates it; for, if the reader does not understand somewhat of the construction and functions of the valve, this is a step ahead of him—but a step that may easily be overtaken.

There are several different designs of steam valves, but all do practically the same work: that of admitting and releasing steam to and from the cylinder in which the energy of the steam is transformed into piston power-the power that makes the wheels go 'round.

With all of the common types of valve there are but two ports to the cylinder-one to each end-and while the valve is admitting live steam to the cylinder through one of these ports, it is discharging the exhausted steam from the other port, and vice versa. Usually, the direct exhaust port is located midway between the two steam admission ports. An outside admission valve is one that starts the piston moving in the same direction in which the valve is travelling at the time the admission port is opened, and the admission ports are opened outside of either end of the valve while during the same time the other end of the cylinder is discharging its exhausted steam through the cavity in the centre of the valve. Such a valve

may be either of the round, "piston" type, or the flat, plane-faced D-slide pattern. An inside admission valve does its work in exactly the reverse manner to that of the one just described, and all inside admission valves in common use are of the piston type, which in construction are really two ordinary pistons with metal packing rings, and with a tubular connection from one piston to the other; this connecting cylinder is usually made hollow in order that the pressure against the outer ends of the pistons will be held in perfect equalization and the valve be thereby more uniformly balanced; in some cases, however, the opening through this "spool," as the whole valve, complete, is termed,―is closed. It is claimed for the piston valve, by its friends, that it is a perfectly balanced valve—with an "open spool"; but while it is evenly balanced "fore and aft," the frictional surfaces with the steam pressure bearing against them—the packing rings are not balanced at all; while a D-slide valve may have nearly all of its bearing surface balanced.

Lap is the distance by which the valve overcovers the steam admission port-the distance the valve must be moved from an exact central position on its seat before the port begins to open to admit steam to the cylinder.

Lead is the distance that the admission port is specially opened at the time when the piston is at an end—either end of the cylinder, at the prime start—

or finish, both are the same-of its stroke. Lead is given in order that steam may be admitted between the piston and the cylinder head, toward the completion of the stroke, as a means of cushioning the piston and thereby tempering the sudden reversion of its motion; the same effect is, however, more economically produced by closing the exhaust from the cylinder at an earlier period in the finish of the piston's stroke, thus making use of the confined dead steam in its

[blocks in formation]

FIG. 1.

-The Main Valve; showing admission and exhaust ports, the cylinder and piston.

compressible resistance as a cushion; this earlier closing is spoken of as the "cut-off" of the exhaust. Cut-off more commonly has reference to the closing of the port for admission of live steam to the cylinder

2

CRANK

SHAFT

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