Steam on the Manitou & Pikes Peak Cog Railway, 1991-1992 

Great to see this vintage engine working.

Thanks for posting this..visited the Cog Wheel Route this summer and couldn't find any footage at all of the steamers on the mountain! Hope they will steam up again one day!

Several points- The jerking on the camera is the pistons going back and forth not the rocking lever. All steam locomotives do this. The lever is for increase of power as the length above the shaft is longer than the length below which connects to the crank pins which produce the rotation. The crank pins on one side are set 90 degrees ahead of the crank pins on the other side so the locomotive can be started at any position. We were there in July of 2007 and was told the locomotive had a cracked cylinder casting. As all of these locomotives were built the same parts can be swapped. No. 4 had been on display at the Colorado Railroad Museum before being rebuilt for the centennial. All of these steam locomotives were built by Baldwin Locomotive Works to the Abt patent and were the last operating Vauclain compound locomotives. Vauclain compound is the use of two pistons on one crosshead with steam used first in the small diameter cylinder then in the larger diameter cylinder before being exhausted up the stack. The flashing fire under the locomotive is from an oil burner as oil is easier to control than burning coal. The diesels use biodiesel so they probably use the same fuel for the steamer. If so the smell would be the same. The locomotives use the cog wheels for traction not the wheels. There are two cog wheels on each axle and the teeth of one match the depression of the other to help even out the thrust. These trains don't usually operate above about 8-10 mph. Hope this helps. .

Indeed. They should restore #4. I find the design on this to be interesting, the rocking lever motion is suposibly what's causing the jerking effect as seen on people and the camera while working up the grade. Thanks for sharing such fashinating footage.

One reason I read a while back was there is aren't anymore water tanks or coal docks to give the steamer the juice to get all the way up the mountain. Diesel has long replaced all of the steam way of life on the mountain.

they brought the #4 out last week end (10/23/10) for a test run but unfortunately she developed a leak around the threads of the RH boiler washout plug and the test run quickly became a out of shop photo shoot.

Yah, I thought the boiler went out. I had read that they put it away due to the boiler going bad, and they didn't have enough money to restore it....or something like that. But its good to hear that they are going to after all :-)

I wonder what the diesel smoke from the train at the end smells like (the one in the shed).

Someday, can I make replicas of a coach & an engine from the Manitou & Pikes Peak Cog Railway in Colorado?

Really?? So someone else volunteered to restore it eh? Thats good. It would be nice to have that running again.

Why would they only take the steam engine part way up the mountain? Why not the full route? Doesn't make sense

Cool, too bad they couldn't run it all the way to the top.