publicity stunt from Oct 16,1945 at Harmon NY...was filmed by Pathe Newsreels and shown in 11000 movie theaters around the country....as an add for Timken Roller bearings
ive heard of other acts too as far as this or that being pulled by whom ever
Jock Ellis Cumming, GA US of A Georgia Association of Railroad Passengers
I'm an engineer at a company that designs and builds mud pumps for oil drilling. You'd be surprised at how these things resemble steam engines in many ways. We obviously have pistons but we also use cross heads and lots of other pieces that steam engine running gear posses. We use dual tapered roller bearings throughout. Our largest pump in the shop currently is 2200 hp. It's got a big bull gear inside that is run off of a pinion shaft. We had a little steel wheel (handle) attached to the pinion shaft and I was quite easily spinning the pump over.
Keep in mind this would be the equivalent of moving a steam engine by spinning grabbing it's wheel and turning it. Since we only lose 5% through friction through the entire pump, it's not hard to move. I suspect a roller bearing equipped steam engine would be the same way. On level track, you really aren't going to have to use much effort to overcome the friction of the running gear. It just isn't much. We had a competitors pump out in the yard for a while that used bronze sleeve bearings. That pump was only rated at about 450 hp. It was real hard to turn! Then again our pumps are 95% mechanically efficient due to the rollers and theirs are only about 75% mechanically efficient due to the sleeve bearings. We have actually measured the losses.
It's interesting since this is basically the same thing that the Timken test did. It was showing the mechanical efficiency increase due to using rollers. It works.
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