Close up of BoxPox drivers and valve gear components

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Close up of BoxPox drivers and valve gear components

Steam Locomotive

Such is the underpinning of one of the all-time race champions in the annals of American railroading. Many's the time, with her Baker hooked up and a feather at her stack, she's strutted her stuff at the head of the Century and all the other rolling palaces of the Central. Now she rests at Shelby Street, nothing more than an unwanted piece of obsolete machinery, cast aside in an unused corner of an outdated facility, even standing on a length of track scheduled to be torn up as soon as she and fellow-outcasts have been sent to the scrap-heap. The piston and crosshead, combination and lap-and-lead levers, eccentric and reach rods, tumbling shaft, main and drive rods - components of the mechanical brain which transmits her immense energy into direction, power, and most of all speed - these are destined to become obscure words in the unread pages of dusty books. In the long run, the action photograph will be the time-proof preservative for the legend of steam locomotion.

Jeremy Taylor

Jeremy Taylor

2-1/4x3-1/4 neg

5/1956

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4-6-4

417

J-3a

#5437

Alco-Schen

Shelby St., Indianapolis, IN