A real Rube Goldberg - the Klose System radial steam loco

Someone brought a recent copy of Continental Modeler to our monthly meeting. It had an article describing a class of 0-6-2 steam locos in Bosnia using the "Klose System", which I had not heard of before. This was the equivalent of a modern Diesel radial truck applied to a steam loco to pivot the driving axles to keep them perpendicular to the rails on curves. A very complicated system of levers shifted the axle boxes fore and aft in the frame to pivot the axles, and to in turn shorten or lengthen the side rods. While it sounds like a maintenance nightmare, apparently the locos were successful and ran for some 60 years. Googling found the following page which illustrates the Klose System on several different locos:

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Anyone want to try a working model in Nn3?? Gary Q

Reply to
Geezer
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I haven't seen the article, but I'm guessing the article decribes the JZ class 189 engines.

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An acquaintance of mine travelled through Yugoslavia in 1966, where he saw, photographed, and rode on one such engine, which had been built by Krauss in 1893. So I think one can reasonably describe the design as successful.

Reply to
Mark Newton

Klose was the loco superintendent of my prototype railway, the K. Wuerttembergische Staats Eisenbahn. I have three different flexible chassis locos on my list to be built:

- Klasse E. 2-4-2 (1B1n3) inspired by the Belgian 2-4-2 with the square chimney. This is much more conventional but the front and rear trucks are linked for side movement and both are lever operated by the tender movement in relation to the loco. It's the background Lok on my homepage:

- Klasse G. 0-10-0 (En3) an 0-10-0 with the outer axles mounted on trucks and a complex system of diamond lozenges and an interconnecting direction reversing linkage so that the coupling rods expaned and contracted in proportion to the curvature. While the initial batch wasn't repeated, they remained in service for about 30 years doing their intended heavy work.

- Klasse F1c 0-6-0 (Cn2) The front and rear axles were on linked trucks with only the center axle rigid. The design was intended for faster goods trains compared to the standard 0-6-0 long boiler Fc. There's a picture of the Fc on the Brawa web-site.

Reply to
Gregory Procter

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