The "United Fruit Company" (The "Chiquita" Banana brand owners) in Guatemala owned four; Baldwin 3-foot gauged 2-8-2 steamers (#150-153) that had Caprotti valve gear, does any one here have any info on that loco or its Sales Order clones?

In India on the NWR they also had a ZF class 2-6-2 loco No.76 built at Henschel in Germany that had Caprotti Valve Gear.
NWR 2-6-2T ZF-107 Henschell 22589/1934 Later it was No.105 during Indias renumbering. http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=htt ... 31&bih=659

I read that some of the last British mainline steam locomotives built used the most advanced version of the Caprotti built and it was supposed to be great. It has a crankcase type, sealed lubrication system, which must have been a huge advancement in its time.

This video shows a steam chest made for Caprotti valve gear; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIK5mnd_ ... re=related

Here is a 5' gauge Caprotti valve geared loco flying along an elevated track;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVgFZ8T4hp4

And here are some of the valve gear parts explained; http://www.dukeofgloucester.co.uk/?page ... lve%20Gear

Sir, I believe you have some misinformation. According to Gerald Best's Central American Holiday, FIdeCA engines #150 - #153 were just plain old Baldwin 2-8-2s, no special notes on them of any kind.

I photographed FEGUA #153 in Zacapa, and she most definitely has Walchaerts valve gear and regular piston valves. The FEGUA locomotive diagram book which was issued to me also lists these four engines as having Walchaerts valve motion, with no special notes for the class, and shows them listed in an FIdeCA number block.

Also, your post does not include a foto of any of these locomotives showing Caprotti valve gear, or any lettering for "United Fruit". Locomotives owned by UFCo were lettered Compania Agricola de Guatemala, which shows in good pictures. Certainly there is always the possibility that you may know something that those of us who follow Guatemalan railroads do not, but I respectfuly say that it is more likely that my sources are correct.

I do know something that those of (you) who follow Guatemalan railroads do not, (and) I respectfully say that it is more likely that my sources are correct.

You have succeeded in correcting me on one point, it was one of the an IRCA locomotive, not a United Fruit Company locomotive. I've never seen a photo of a Locomotives owned by UFCo that was lettered; Compania Agricola de Guatemala, which shows in good pictures. I've have seen many that were lettered; Cia Agricola

I'll correct my post, it should read;

The "IRCA, The International Railways of Central America, (Guatemala) owned four; Baldwin (1928) 3-foot gauged 2-8-2 steamers (#150-153) that had Caprotti valve gear. Does any one here have any info on that loco or its Sales Order clones?

1930 Loco and Car Cyclopedia, page 1392, IRCA, 2-8-2, (it was also built to run at 175psi. G. Best would probably have it listed as 180psi when he wrote his book.

So you follow Guatemalan railways.. Hum.... Would you follow Guatemalan railways to the Pacific or to the Atlantic to take a long walk off a short (United Fruit Company) peer? Hold your glasses everyone, I'm just kidding! It was too tempting.

QJ, find some good info about these locos from; the others "that study Guatemalan Ry's etc..", so you guys can tell me about these locos and we can talk about them further. I only have one; not so great photo from the Cyclopedia, and I need a much better one in order to use it to estimate how long the Caprotti steam chest was, so I can match it up to a known Caprotti product.

Here is the Baldwin builder's photo of IRCA 152 from the Broadbelt Collection. By the way, the print was obtained back in 1977 from Mr. Broadbelt.

Southern Methodist University -De Golyer Library has the BLW order record books. The index prepared by the Library of volumes lists separate entries for IRCA 150-151 (vol 79, page 76) and IRCA 152-153 (vol 79, page 82) . That volume is not yet among the volumes that have been made available on-line in PDF format.

Does this one have Caprotti?

http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.p ... 15&nseq=35

Taylor

Naw, the 194 has piston or spool valves and Walschearts valve gear.

What is interesting is that the photo of the 152 looks like it could have Caprotti gear; the steam chest doesn't quite look like a slide valve type, and I don't see the rocker that would be a trademark of Stephenson.

Equally interesting is that the "Caprotti" application seems to be made over a slide-valve cylinder block, in a manner similar to an "Economy" piston valve conversion kit. How many jobs were there like that?

For reference, courtesy of Hugh Odom's Ultimate Steam Page, a list of patent links to poppet valve gears, starting with the general link page:

http://www.trainweb.org/tusp/patents.html

Hope these long links will work; if not, just go to them through the link above.

http://www.google.com/patents?id=EONqAA ... &q&f=false

http://www.google.com/patents?id=uUVdAA ... rd&f=false

http://www.google.com/patents?id=_RFLAA ... ve&f=false

http://www.google.com/patents?id=HoBWAA ... on&f=false

Poppet valves were a "state of the art" application that never quite got out of the experimental stage. Most roads that had poppet-valve locomotives only had one or two examples. Among American roads, these included 4-8-4s (one each) on the Santa Fe, the Burlington, and the NYC, a 4-6-0 and a 2-10-2 on the Reading, a 4-6-2, several experimental 2-8-0s and an experimental 4-8-0 (with 4 cylinders, triple expansion compounding, and a multi-pressure boiler) on the D&H, a President class 4-6-2 on the B&O (which also had a watertube firebox, neither of which it kept), 5 4-6-4s on the C&O (rebuilt from 4-6-2s, with one example preserved), 5 other postwar 4-6-4s on the C&O built new with them, a 2-8-0 built in 1952 for the US Army (also preserved, though in rough condition), and perhaps the largest application anywhere, the 52 duplex-drive 4-4-4-4s of the Pennsy (which also had them experimentally on two or three 4-6-2s, including one of the two K5s on the roster). Most of these were Franklin applications;Caprotti gear was used on the Reading engines, the B&O P-9 and the Pennsy K5. At least one of the D&H engines used a German variant called Dahlberg (sp?).

There may have been others; can anyone fill out this list?

(The D&H also had a 4-6-2 with "Uniflow" cylinders, but I have never found a photo of it. I wonder if such a shot exists.)

The French would go in for poppet valves in a fairly big way, often as a type of conversion job utilizing the Walschearts valve motion. This short film, "Pacific 231," based on a classical piece by Arthur Honneger, has plenty of shots of this valve motion at work on compound 4-6-2s:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKRCJhLU7rs

Other items:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poppet_valve

http://www.lner.info/article/tech/valvegear/lentz.shtml

http://www.midlandrailwaycentre.co.uk/73129/page4.html

A personal observation, based on a sound recording of a Pennsy T-1: This is a commercially available recording based on a wire recorder as its original source, so sound quality leaves a lot to be desired. What is still noticeable, though, is a combination of two engines going into and out of step (typical of any simple expansion locomotive with divided drive, including simple articulateds such as N&W 1218), and a sound reminiscent of a Baldwin diesel engine in what I would call "character" or perhaps "dialect!"

Thank you all so much for your participation in the post.

Brian (Thanks) thats a great photo, its nice and clear, I might have to buy a big copy of that from the Broadbelt collection.

I've been studying the Guatemalan 3' gauge RY's for a few years now and I'm trying to make a comparison of all the Mike's that were Baldwin built and all weight nearly the same in all the roster notes. I'm thinking they might all use the same basic parts.

When I saw that blurry photo in the Cyclopedia I knew it was some sort of Poppet valve setup, but my first guess was Franklin. I had no idea that any of those (typical American practice, 3' gauge, outside framed) locomotives would had been built for the Guatemalan RY's with such an advanced, and somewhat experimental design Caprotti valve gear as far back as 1928.

This is easily my favorite locomotive now, Its really fascinating. I'll try to learn the story of how this thing came to be made and delivered with that valve gear.

Do you men see (in Brian's excellent photo) a linkage leading to the steam chest that looks very much like a stephenson linkage would look?

Maybe the valve gear is driven by a single stephenson link or a small right angle gear box mounted on the front drive axle?

All the other Caprotti gear, that I've seen used either an eccentric crank off of the main crank pin, or a small right angle gear box mounted on a crank that is driven off the main crank pin and is centered on the axle center so it only contributes rotary motion to drive the gear.

I'm also a big fan of Central American railways. Thanks for sharing and please post more and you continue your research. I am sad I never made it down when they were running. Is there any news on the line in Guatemala ever reopening?

To Loco 112:

What you say looks like a drive linkage looks more to me like part of the reversing mechanism. If that's so, the drive for the valve gear is inside the frames, coming off one of the axles. The Reading 4-6-0 was arranged that way.

I've got a diagram around here of that Reading 4-6-0; I may try to see if I can scan it in at some point. Wish me luck, I just got a scanner recently, and am still trying to figure out how to use it.

Here is a detail view of the cylinder, etc.
It does look like some kind of poppet set-up.

Thought I'd go one more and zoom in even more:

I think I've seen a photo of one of the 2-8-0's with a similar arrangement. I'm going to have to go looking for the rest of the Broadbelt photos.

Glad to see this blow-up, and yes, it looks like a poppet-valve job--my original guess looking at the original photo posting was wrong, looking at it here reveals the cylinder block is one meant for this application, not a modified slide valve job. A pipe running outside the block, combined with its shadow, looked like the step in a cylinder block that is above the cylinder on slide-valve engines with outside valve gear.

And I'm not absolutely positive, but it looks like the drive shaft for the valve gear from one of the axles is visible, an angled shaft coming out of the cylinders at about the level with the seam in the cylinders between the main cylinder and the cover for the valve gear. This is in between the frames, and mounted slightly off center. It looks like it might be going to the No. 2 axle.

Just took a look at the second blow-up, and I'm almost positive we are looking at that drive shaft behind the cylinders, angling down at about 30 degrees.

Any word as to what became of these engines, and is it possible one of them may have survived?

Here is a entry that one of my buddies created from a 1938-1956 Baldwin locomtive construction list for a very late (1938-1956) Baldwin of the United Fruit, Cia Agricola locomotive that was one of the #157-#205 IRCA/Cia Agricola Mikados that were built in that time frame;

2-8-2 3' United Fruit Co.-Cia Agricola de Guatemala 40-18x22-180-27,625 (also Maritrop Trading Co.)

My question is how often did the; "Maritrop Trading Co." name appear in United Fruit Co. / Cia Agricola locomotive purchases?