Look at this crazy thing.

[SteamSewnEmpire]

Normally - 99 times out of 100 - I wouldn't post a thread like this. But I stumbled onto this one-off loco from late 19th Century Bavaria, and figured there might be an audience here for this kind of weirdness:

That's a 4-2-2-2. And no, your eyes are not playing tricks on you - the center wheel is lifted. Apparently it could be raised or lowered to provide extra adhesion during starting, in somewhat similar fashion to the booster engines on tenders and some rear bogies during the middle half of the 20th Century. But why someone didn't just stop about halfway through the design phase of this bird and say "hmm, this might be a little complex for the mechanical department" is just beyond me. It seems as if the Royal Bavarian State Railways were pretty guilty of making this kind of 'build first, ask questions later' decision more than once. But, having said all that, I just love the steam-punk aesthetic of this thing - it's like it's ripped right out of some 90s Final Fantasy game.

I'm not sure if this would be possible to build in Lego. By necessity, the smaller driver would need to be flangeless, and probably the primary driver, too, since I cannot imagine being able  to give the lead truck any kind of play with all that hardware impacting the motion. 

Edited March 3, 2021 by SteamSewnEmpire

[UltraViolet]

Wow - both this and the other picture you linked really made my day!  I'm struggling to figure realistically how much additional adhesion they were going to achieve with this scheme, given how small the extra driver was, taking into account the relative inefficiency of the earlier locomotives with a single large driver arrangement, and considering the difficulty of avoiding wheel slip with multiple independent and unsynchronized cylinder/drive gear groupings.  The sound of these things in action must have been quite bizarre!

[zephyr1934]

2 hours ago, SteamSewnEmpire said:

That's a 4-2-2-2. And no, your eyes are not playing tricks on you - the center wheel is lifted. Apparently it could be raised or lowered to provide extra adhesion during starting, in somewhat similar fashion to the booster engines on tenders and some rear bogies during the middle half of the 20th Century. But why someone didn't just stop about halfway through the design phase of this bird and say "hmm, this might be a little complex for the mechanical department" is just beyond me. It seems as if the Royal Bavarian State Railways were pretty guilty of making this kind of 'build first, ask questions later' decision more than once. But, having said all that, I just love the steam-punk aesthetic of this thing - it's like it's ripped right out of some 90s Final Fantasy game.

That looks like an engineer (design side, not engine driver) just showing off, "look at how many pistons I can cram in such a small space." But it seems like there was a bit of logic there, start fast with the small wheel and then when up to speed use the large driver. Probably built with the goal of making a record breaking speed. When you stop and think about it, the water troughs for taking water on the fly are equally crazy (but proved to be more practical). Anything to shave a few minutes off of the schedule in the name of beating your competition.

[SD100]

Bizarre, but now they use the same lifting axle idea on GE ES44C4s... And it sucks as much now as it probably did then!

[Daedalus304]

1 hour ago, zephyr1934 said:

That looks like an engineer (design side, not engine driver) just showing off, "look at how many pistons I can cram in such a small space." But it seems like there was a bit of logic there, start fast with the small wheel and then when up to speed use the large driver. Probably built with the goal of making a record breaking speed. When you stop and think about it, the water troughs for taking water on the fly are equally crazy (but proved to be more practical). Anything to shave a few minutes off of the schedule in the name of beating your competition.

My assumption would have been something that it's more like an early booster truck - use the small drivers for better low-speed power to help get it started or just better low-speed operations in general

[Pdaitabird]

If that thing had been built anywhere else, I'd call it hopelessly overcomplicated. Given the reputation of Teutonic machinists for stubborn perfectionism, I bet it worked flawlessly. Thanks for sharing this!

[SteamSewnEmpire]

6 hours ago, UltraViolet said:

Wow - both this and the other picture you linked really made my day!  I'm struggling to figure realistically how much additional adhesion they were going to achieve with this scheme, given how small the extra driver was, taking into account the relative inefficiency of the earlier locomotives with a single large driver arrangement, and considering the difficulty of avoiding wheel slip with multiple independent and unsynchronized cylinder/drive gear groupings.  The sound of these things in action must have been quite bizarre!

If you're bored, this auction site for brass locomotives is a good place to view weird prototypes. Fair warning: he deals in a wide variety of engines, including stuff from Germany in WW2 that's prototypically painted (so if certain emblems are banned in your country, I guess don't go there). Still, it takes a very long time to scroll through everything they've ever sold, and there's a ton there I'd never seen before.

[dr_spock]

I've seen that steam locomotive somewhere before in an unusual locomotives video.  Scheduled maintenance would probably be critical in keeping it going, kind of like with any German designed automobile.

I think connecting a driver of that size to a LEGO train motor would make for a crazy fast MOC.