The Status of The Steam Locomotive.

When anyone of long experience and occupying the position of chief mechanical engineer to a leading railway company stands up at a meeting attended by numerous locomotive men and other railway officers and expresses confidence in the ability of the steam locomotive to maintain its position as the chief power unit operating on our railways, it may be taken as reasonably certain that, in the absence of some epoch making development of which we at present have no knowledge, the process of generating steam in locomotive boilers for the purpose of railway transport will continue for an indefinite period (states the “Railway Gazette”). Mr. Gresley voiced that belief in his presidential address recently delivered at a meeting of the Institution of Locomotive Engineers with, however, one important qualification, viz., that the locomotive shall be of greatly improved efficiency as the result of the establishment of a locomotive experimental station. This apart, there can be no doubt as to the general attitude of mind among railway mechanical engineers and others concerned as to the general status of the steam locomotive in its present stage of development. Confidence in it is not based on failure to appreciate the claims of alternative forms of traction, but because it provides a relatively economical, reliable and effective means of hauling trains at good average speeds day in and day out under widely divergent conditions, calling for an elasticity of service which steam as a motive force is adequately suited to fulfil.