FC Oeste 4-8-0 Locomotives in Argentina

Class Serie 15 (Locobase 11237)

Data from diagram supplied at the [] site, last accessed 17 April 2010. D[ennis] Rock Carling, 4-8-0 Tender Locomotives (New York: Drake Publishers Inc, 1972), pp. 73-74 and serial #200 in table XI pp. 106-107

Almost at the same time as the railway took delivery of the Class 4-6-2s for fast fruit expresses, the superintendent J W H Rae sought a more powerful engine to pull night passenger trains. For this service, the Oeste chose a taller driver.

Carling wrote that the Oeste planned to acquire an up-to-date engine with "cast steel bar frames, cast steel cylinders, and 225 lb/sq in [15.5 bar] boiler pressure". But Armstrong Whitworth couldn't produce steel castings. So the Quinces were built with heavier cast-iron cylinders and plate frames but thinner boiler plate requiring a lower 200 psi setting and, in partial compensation, an increase of 1" (25.4 mm) in cylinder diameter..

Later operation led to a change from rear-driving-axle bearings with side-play to thin flanges on the middle two pairs of drivers.