September 26, 2019
There’s an old steam locomotive known as a “camelback!”
As you see in this photo, the engineer’s cab is located on the side of the boiler — the large round portion of every steam locomotive, where the steam is generated to power the driving wheels — rather than behind the boiler, which is the norm for virtually every other type of steam locomotive.
Hence, this design took on the “camelback” name, because the engineer sat astride the boiler. It became a very popular locomotive for pulling short passenger and freight trains on railroads such as the one which I grew up with … the Reading Railroad….