November 13. 1880 ‘Daily Chronicle and Constitutionalist’ of Augusta, Georgia, carried this editorial . . ‘A novel spectacle was seen on the Petersburg Road last Saturday. To some people along the wayside, while they may have read of such a thing, their eyes had never beheld the reality. To such people, ‘seeing was believing’ . . . familiar as they are with the Petersburg Road, its roughness, its steep hills, its deep ravines, abrupt curves, massive boulders, and deep holes; its thousand-and-one breakdowns, smash-ups, stallings, capsizings, and cuss words by the wholesale. They had ‘hearn talk about such a thing’ as an engine pushing itself along, ‘but didn’t believe a d-n word of it.’ They were doubting Thomases . . . until, with their own eyes, they saw the monster ‘like a thing of life’ travelling this road, over its hills, across its bridges, through its quagmires and streams. They said, ‘It was bought in Augusta . . . and here it is’!’ That traction engine, was C. and G. Cooper Company’s all-purpose power unit of 1880!
I bought the cylinder casting, steam gauge, pipe and pipe fittings, also valves. All the rest came from the junk piles and scrap heaps, worked over to serve the purpose. For example the drive wheels, bull gears and pinions are from a hand lawn mower. The fly wheel is from a walking plow, governor from a phonograph. It lacks only a friction clutch and an injector to have everything the originals had. It is 32′ long, 17′ wide and 21′ to top of cab. The cylinder is 11/2 x 11/2. At 250 it develops a full 18 mouse power and will not run the corn sheller.
I enjoy the ALBUM and receive real help from the engineering articles. For example, Old Hubuh has a Marsh reverse gear and the recent article and blue print on this gear was of much value to me.
Howard Camp, of 18 West Washington Street, Newnan, Georgia, is shown above with one of his extensive collection of old train whistles, which has been accepted by the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D. C., and which will be kept for posterity in the United States National Museum. This particular whistle is from Steam Engine No. 425, Atlanta and West Point Railroad. It is Mikado Type 2-8-2, and was built in 1923 by the Lima Locomotive Works. At left is the original brass nameplate from the engine, and Mr. Camp also has the original bell, which is mounted in the front yard of his home, old-time ‘whistling hoggers’, one of whom was Joe Dennis, of Palmetto, Ga., were known far and wide by their distinctive and individual styles of blowing the whistles.
