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The thing you have to remember on all these longer wheelbase locomotives is that drivers aren't as horizontally rigid as most of us think they are. First of all, many locomotives all the way down to 0-6-0 switchers had blind drivers. It just varied from railroad to railroad in how tight the curves in their yards were (where blind drivers were primarily needed). On the main line the lateral force the drivers would exert because of the wheelbase is lessened by the common practice of simply widening out the gauge a little, even a small change in that makes a big difference in the equipment, even for today's trains. Besides that on a lot of older locomotives they were simply designed with a certain amount of slack in the rods and running gear to accomodate curves. Later in locomotive design on the Pennsy especially the running gear was specifically designed to move to follow the curves. In some case locomotives designed like this even up to 2-10-0's didn't even need blind drivers! Hope I'm not rambling too much for this to help you out! <br />Tim Sheffield
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