Let me tell you a bit about my favorite steam locomotive: the Forney. It's a little bit
funky looking and there are very few examples of them running today, and frankly, I took
a lot of footage of the two of them running on Disneyland Railroad so expect to see a
lot of this footage in the video. Not all steam locomotives were built for the
same purpose. In fact, to most people who know nothing about them, the very mention
of a steam locomotive might prompt them to think of the most popular engines, such as
a 4-4-”O” American Type, or possibly even the largest one ever built: the Big Boy. The
4-4-0 was designed to be a general-purpose engine, and that’s part of the reason for
its longevity and fame, but sometimes there were jobs that needed specific engines. Heislers,
Shays, and Climaxes were built for traversing fairly steep track grades; speed was not necessarily
a priority for that job duty. Large consolidation locomotives or articulated-type engines were
built to haul a great deal of weight across long distances. Forney’s had their own purpose,
and that was to be a general-purpose engine…used for hauling almost anything on various track
grades. Well ok, there is a bit more to it. Forneys could go around sharper curves and
their weight distribution gave them better adhesion to the rails…don’t worry, I’ll
explain all this as I go along. It all starts with Matthias Forney, an American
mechanical engineer who designed and built steam locomotives around the mid 1800’s.
He worked as a draftsman for the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad in 1855, and then changed
to the Illinois Central Railroad in 1861 where he patented the 0-4-4T configuration locomotive,
one that would forever be named after him, the Forney.
For those watching who might not be familiar with locomotives and their configurations,
let’s begin with the basics. A classic American Type locomotive, also known as a 4-4-”O”
is a bit of a misnomer the “O” is actually a zero, so its really 4-4-0…yeah I know
we’re American so we make up our own rules. But the point is the numbers mean there are
four pilot wheels that support the front end of the boiler and guide the locomotive around
turns, then there are four driving wheels to provide propulsion and zero trailing wheels
behind it. The 4-4-0 was a great multi-use locomotive, and thanks to the large tender
behind it, it could carry lots of fuel and water for a long journey. But even still,
there were some minor flaws. One of them was that if it only had a different wheel arrangement,
it could produce even more tractive effort. Tractive effort is basically a measure of
strength and power the locomotive can provide. Perhaps I’m going too fast…the power a
locomotive can provide is transferred from the steam cylinders to the wheels and then
transferred to the rails in the form of tractive effort. But the strength of the engine means
nothing unless the wheels can adhere to the slippery track much better. The more weight
you put on the driving wheels themselves, the more adhesion you have with the rails.
When you think about it, the pilot truck on a 4-4-0 is not powered, and because it supports
the weight of the front end, it takes away some of the potential tractive effort.
Enter the Porter locomotive. Some were small, and some were very large, but all of them
had one thing in common, they put most, if not all of the locomotive's weight on the
driving wheels. Many porters also did not have tenders, instead, the water sat in a
tank that saddled the top of the boiler, and the fuel was usually kept in the cab or in
a little bunker behind the cab. With all the weight on the driving wheels, the design maximized
tractive effort. That’s why you’ll see that a porter that appears smaller than a
4-4-0, could actually pull more weight. Porters were very good general-use locomotives, and
because they weren’t very lengthy, they could go around sharper track curves. There
were a few drawbacks though, one of them being that they couldn’t go as far of a distance
because their water and fuel capacity was more limited, but that’s what made them
good little steamers for farms, plantations, and even as switcher locomotives that sorted
train cars in a rail yard. But there was yet another drawback to the porter. The more tonnage
they pulled behind them, the more the weight of the locomotive was shifted away from the
front driving axle to the rear driving axle. Now, this didn’t necessarily affect its
tractive effort, but it did affect the locomotive's behavior and caused odd maintenance issues,
such as the steel tires on the rear axle wearing down faster than the ones on the front. This
issue was somewhat lessened when porters began having a single-axle trailing truck manufactured
under the cab. It allowed the fuel bunker to be enlarged slightly, and with the extra
wheels behind the locomotive, it helped to keep the weight distribution more evenly spread
when pulling a heavy train. But it wasn’t perfect.
That’s where Matthias Forney came along and patented a design that allowed the driving
axles to handle all the weight of the boiler, and for a small trailing truck to help support
an enlarged water and fuel bunker. The unpowered trailing truck did take away some of that
potential tractive effort, but not by much. Think of the rear truck as kind of like training
wheels on a bicycle, it keeps the back end of the locomotive propped up, but even still,
most of the weight is still transferred to the driving wheels. But the most significant
purpose of the trailing truck is to prevent the locomotive from trying to lift its front
wheels when pulling a heavy train, thereby keeping the weight evenly distributed on the
driving wheels, and keeping a more consistent tractive effort. On top of solving the weight
distribution issue that plagued Porters, the Forney could still go around tighter curves
than a 4-4-0, which meant they could still perform a wide range of tasks.
One of the most significant uses of Forney locomotives, was actually for the use of pulling
municipal elevated railways. In cities like New York and Chicago, Forneys were in heavy
use, pulling small passenger trains above the streets. Their small design allowed them
to go around sharp turns while still hauling heavy loads of passenger consists, this is
what earned the Forney locomotives the nickname “The Little Giants”.
The Rogue River Valley Railway in Oregon connected Jacksonville to Medford with only five miles
of track. It wasn’t a very busy line and so trains were often a mixed consist of livestock,
bricks, mail, timber, crops, and passengers. It’s for this reason that they operated
Porters and Forney engines in the early years, it was cheaper than buying and operating anything
larger. The Forney reached its peak popularity between
the 1880s and the 1920s, but their decline was rapid and swift. Electric Streetcars and
small diesel-electric locomotives had completely replaced Forneys. Some of the last operating
railroads that still used Forneys were the two-foot narrow gauge lines of the state of
Maine, operating into the early 1940s before closing down operations.
It turned out that Forney engines were almost the perfect engine for small, privately owned
narrow gauge lines in the United States. For those that don’t know, narrow gauge refers
to the narrow width that the rails are laid, in comparison to the standard 4 foot 8 ½
inch gauge we use today. In the late 1800s, it was estimated that by building narrow gauge
lines through terrain that was often considered difficult for standard gauge systems, you
could significantly reduce the cost of building and operating a railroad. The Denver and Rio
Grande Western built the longest 3-foot narrow gauge lines in the country, but they tended
to operate larger locomotives and trains. The narrow gauge railroads of Maine decided
to use a 2-foot narrow gauge to reduce the cost of construction and operation as much
as possible, which is why many of them lasted so long. The Maine narrow gauge railroads
had almost exclusively chosen Forney engines as their primary mode of locomotion. Of course,
they still had to be manufactured smaller than the Forney engines of the municipal elevated
railways, but the very design of the Forney itself was perfect for any type of narrow
gauge short lines. The Wiscasset, Waterville, and Farmington Railway still operates today
as a heritage railroad showing off the beauty and wonder of these tiny little engines and
their rolling stock. Three-foot narrow gauge lines were also common
among the farms and plantations of the south. Forneys and Porters were often the locomotive
of choice for these private estate railroads because of their small size, tractive effort,
and reliability. When many of these 3-foot narrow gauge railroads ceased operation in
the mid-20th century, Walt Disney sent scouts to find the best specimens for use on his
own narrow gauge line, the Santa Fe & Disneyland Railroad in his Disneyland theme park in Anaheim,
California. The Disneyland Railroad is often chalked up
to be some kind of standard amusement park railroad however, it is anything but standard.
Walt Disney was a passionate railroad enthusiast and during his construction of Disneyland,
he insisted on having a railroad encircle the park. However, the park was designed in
a miniature 5/8ths scale in order to give it a sense of charm. This meant the railroad
had to be scaled down to match, and the trains would run on a 3-foot narrow gauge line with
the track, ties, and even the ballast, all scaled down to 5/8ths of real size. When the
park opened and it turned out they needed to add more locomotives and trains to the
line, Walt had his Imagineers scour the nation for already existing specimens of 3-foot narrow
gauge locomotives. The Disneyland Railroad #3 Fred Gurley was originally a 0-4-4T Forney
Style engine built by Baldwin Locomotive works in 1894 and was owned by the Godchaux sugar
company and put to use hauling sugar cane from the plantations. When it came to Disneyland
it was fully restored and even had a single-axle pony truck installed at the front, if for
no other reason than Walt liked the way it looked.
Decades later in the year 2005, Disneyland would introduce another acquired Forney, this
one was built by Baldwin Locomotive Works in 1902. It’s noticeably smaller than Fred
Gurley, but you wouldn’t know it seeing as it was still capable of hauling the heaviest
train on the line. Disneyland’s Excursion train was designed to maximize passenger capacity
and can hold 325 people when fully loaded. The train can easily weigh 140,000 pounds
compared to the locomotive’s own meager 22,000 pounds.
This is what made the Forney Style locomotive so popular and so fascinating, such a tiny
locomotive with the capability of doing work that other larger engines might not be able
to do under the same restrictions. They are my favorite type of engine, and when I designed
my own model railroad, I knew I had to get one. The engineering is so sound, that even
in such a miniature scale, my Forney engine can still pull this 13-car train all on its
own. The way these Little Giants were able to accomplish these seemingly impossible feats
of strength is entirely attributed to the fantastic engineering of the steam locomotive
genius, Matthias Forney. If you’d like to learn more about the design
and history of the Disneyland Railroad, click the link in the corner of your screen or in
the description below. Be sure to like the video and subscribe to the channel for more
videos about the age of steam.