4-8-8-2 Cab forward Question

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H

hamltnblue

Active Member
Hello All

Today I was checking out one of the new MTH cab for-wards. It looked and sounded great.

While watching it run I notice that there was a bar that ran across the smoke stacks right down the center. I just googled some pics and found that it's prototypical.

What is the bar used for.

Here's a couple of pics. Arrow points to bar.

SP4112A.png


SP4142A.png
 
It was a deflector to keep the hot exhaust gases from blowing directly into the snow sheds and catching fire if memory serves correct.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
It was also used to keep the steam from blowing the roofs off the snow sheds. Without the deflector, the steam pressure would blow the boards off.
 


Found some more about the deflector, before they developed the cab-forward it was also used to try and keep the smoke at the top of the tunnels and snowsheds to help out the engineers but that idea didn't work out well enough and so goes the rest of the story.
 
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