The American Side of the Quadruplex Locomotive was a planned train concept that wasn't built at all, though there was a quadruplex built in Belgium, although no Quadruplex steam locomotives were built in America.
The Patent For It[]
In June 1914, George.R Henderson was granted US Patent 1,100,563 for a Quadruplex 2-8-8-8-8-2 locomotive, which was assigned to the Baldwin Locomotive Company. Baldwin submitted the design to the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railway, which in the 1910s was a strong proponent of compound locomotives.
This would have been, in 1913, by far the largest steam locomotive ever proposed. In Quadruplex form, it would have been 129 feet 10+1⁄2 inches (39.586 m) in overall length, a total weight of about 885,000 pounds (401 t), with a tractive effort of 200,000 pounds-force (890 kN).
Plans for the Design[]
The Quadruplex Locomotive was a 2-8-8-8-8-2, it was designed to have two boilers on it as going off of a single boiler was absolutely absolutely not going to be enough; according to the patent this was a compound locomotive, engine cylinders 7 & 9 would receive high pressure steam to drive the 1st & 3rd sets of driving wheels and the exhaust as lower pressure steam from cylinders 8 & 10 would power the 2nd & 4th sets of wheels; as well as the idea that the engineer's/driver's cab was at the front of the locomotive as it would be way too long to put it at the back, the fireman's cab was behind the firebox, so the crew were separated similar to the Camelback locomotive, he had proposed a communication system between the cabs that would use cables or rod operating devices (much like the engine ordered telegraph that was used on steam ships, or even a voice-pipe), The boiler would be jointed and have a flexible coupling so it can have it's own articulation on tight curves, the two boilers would be served by only 1 firebox, Henderson also included a turbine driven extractor fan that was within the smokebox that would be intended to maintain a constant draft of the flues in both boilers, that's because Henderson calculated that a conventional blast pipe utilizing steam from the low pressure cylinders wouldn't have been enough to provide a sufficient draft through the boiler while the locomotive was in motion, he clearly figured this motion out. But sadly, this Quadruplex locomotive was never built at all.
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