Canadian Pacific 2-2-0 Locomotives in Canada

Class 88 (Locobase 16612)

Data from "Steam Motor Car", American Engineer and Railroad Journal, Volume 80, Nos. 8-9 (August and Septermber 1906), pp 294-295, pp. and 332-333; and "Suburban Steam Motor Car", Locomotive and Railway Engineering, Volume 20, No 5 (May 1907), p. 205. (Many thanks to Chris Hohl for his 2 December 2022 email containing a detailed spreadsheet of data on a series of "steam motor cars" that included comments and links to contemporary accounts:)

H H Vaughan, then assistant to the vice-president, was best known for his persistent, prescient, and successful advocacy, testing, and installation of superheaters in hundreds of CPR locomotives.

Here he offered an alternative to devoting a full-size locomotive and tender to operate short passenger trains on light-traffic branch lines. The result took a familiar form in which a railroad car on a strengthened frame gave up its front four-wheel bogie in favor of a power bogie consisting of a single driving axle in the lead and an unpowered trailing axle.

Behind the cab section, which included the engine, sat a small baggage compartment ahead of the main passenger section, which had 40 seats.that passengers reached from the rear platform. The car could run in either direction. When running passenger-end first, the conductor used a telegraph system to tell the engineer when to start or stop.

Vaughan's unusual variations on this idea were the use of superheated steam and oil fuel..

Cylinders supplied through inside-admission piston valves sat behind the rear axle on the truck; a scaled-down variant of a Walschaert constant-lead gear operated the valves . Their piston rods extended forward to turn the outside cranks on the front wheels.

Oil supplied from a side port through a Booth-type burner heated the Morrison corrugated firebox, whose gases passed through the vertical firetubes above the fireboxes.

Vaughan claimed the 88 served its purpose satisfactorily, being powerful enough to "easily" reach speeds of 50-55 mph (80.5-89 kph) and even to pull a second, unpowered car behind. He extimated operating costs of 15-20 cents per mile (9-12.4 cents per km). The power system was rated at 200 horsepower (149.kW).