Transport Fever 2 - Camden & Amboy 0-8-0 Monster

Don’t worry, you’re not on the happy juice, this actually existed.

This abomination was built for the early American railroad, the Camden and Amboy Railroad. The C.&.A.R.R seem to be the CEO of weird early American locomotives, having had the John Stephens 6-2-0 Crampton (on my workshop too) under its belt.

The C.&.A.R.R is also famous for having (one) of the earliest locomotives to operate in America, the ‘John Bull’ (also on my workshop).

However, this takes the cake.

So just what am I looking at?

So, this is a lever drive locomotive, with the intent of gaining mechanical advantage through the use of levers and pivots to get more out of the engine. I also assume that, in this case, it was to be able to fit the cylinders on a 0-8-0 locomotive, as the lever drive mechanism allows you to ‘double back’ the motion.

The bizzare arrangement of moving metal on each side of this locomotive is actually rather simple (trust me I had to animate it). So, here goes… The piston is at a 15 degree angle, and oscillates half of a beam using a connecting rod. From the beam, a connecting rod connects to the wheels as you would from regular locomotives.

Now, there’s a difference between the model I have made and the original, and that was the fact it actually had a combination of gear drive and coupling rods.

For my own sanity I omitted this as it seems to have been a failure and quickly rebuilt into this version.

So from there, you connect the 8 wheels as you would any other engine. Add in some insane valve gear that I am not sure would work but whatever.

Okay, so… what?

Big, powerful chuff chuff. No do speedy, lots of torque. Makes many noise. 18 moving bits, lots of animate. Not very framerate friendly.

Authors: SteveM4