Talk:Reuben Wells (locomotive)

Please Define or clarify the term Adhesion or add other qualifiers to make it more completely accurate
For instance, Shay Engines some of which are still operated at Cass Scenic Railroad State Park routinely climb 10 percent grades. The distinction I'm going for is that those are what I understand to be adhesion, i.e. standard rails. The difference is that the Engines at Cass are Geared. What I suspect you need to include is that this engine climbed the steepest grade and was a standard Rod driven engine. Also note, that while Cass's lines are now isolated, at the time they were in active use, they were a mainline between the now Ghost Town of Spruce and Cass.

Don't get me wrong, I love train history, and for that little engine to climb that grade is very impressive. Egreena42 (talk) 22:06, 5 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks! Using the sources I have on hand I tried to clarify the statement. I'm in no way a train expert so if there is anything further you can glean from that that you'd want to clarify, I'd be happy for you to. Thanks for your help!HstryQT (talk) 22:40, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

Note that the grade a locomotive can climb itself is very different than the grade it can pull a given train of cars up. A 100 ton loco with 15% adhesion could presumably climb a 10% grade by itself, as the traction it could get would be about 0.15*100t = 15t, and it would only need 0.1*100t = 10t, so 5t to spare. But pulling 100 tons of cars (with 10t additional of drawbar pull against it) it would need 0.1*100t (for the engine) + 0.1*100t (for the cars) = 10+10t = 20 tons of adhesion, so it would slip, being 5t short. Any water, ice, etc on the tracks would of course reduce the adhesion below ideal values. Wwheaton (talk) 01:22, 6 March 2011 (UTC)


 * has added "standard-gauge main-track grade" qualifier. Do we mean Standard gauge? What is "main-track"? If this info came from the Kriplen citation, let's add a quote to the citation. If it did not... --Kvng (talk) 13:52, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

Builder & date
The San Diego Railroad Museum page here says she was built in the railroad shops, but gives the completion data as 1858, not 1868. Can anyone resolve this? Wwheaton (talk) 01:28, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

Comments by Mjroots
With the intention of improving the article

Shouldn't the name of the locomotive be in italics whenever mentioned (See Invicta (locomotive)). The severity of the incline is given as a percentage. This is fine for Continental Europe, and I suspect the States as well. Here in the UK, gradients are express as "1 in xxx" I'm not 100% sure, but would 1 in 15 be a good approximation/conversion? Would it be possible to add this info? Mjroots (talk) 18:37, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
 * To convert percentage grades into ratio grades (and vice versa), divide into 100. Thus 5.89% = 1 in (to 3 dp), so say 1 in 17. That's steep for a purely adhesion line. -- Red rose64 (talk) 19:38, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

Potential sources...

 * Photo
 * Book
 * Pages 6 & 7
 * Ealdgyth - Talk 16:45, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

Song
Shouldn't we mention that the title and lyrics of the famous American folk/bluegrass song "Reuben's Train" refers to Reuben Wells? More information: https://mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=161482 173.88.246.138 (talk) 22:12, 4 April 2023 (UTC)