A locomotive stoker

A locomotive stoker, especially an experimental type, sometimes receives little attention among railroad historians as well as model-railroaders. So the details and pictures of this large South African steam engine and its tender with automatic stoker in its experimental stage might load up a little more interest. I have lifted the report and its black and white photographs (my tinting) from the December 13, 1913 issue of Scientific American. This weekly journal’s short article runs as follows: . . .

A third-rail electric locomotive was tested by General Electric tested in 1904. It was a new model of electric locomotive with the power to replace the noisy, polluting steam engines thundering down a busy portion of a New York Railroad. The tests of the largest electrical manufacturer in the world at the time, as the advertisement below proudly boasts, proved its faster, cleaner, and quieter locomotive was a better choice for passenger service