weird RR machine

[Fred_V]

what the heck is it?
http://theoldmotor.com/?p=175799

[pat1027]

My guess is motive power for road construction, fruit farm, gravel pit or something like that. It has too big an engine and too few seats to be motor car. No apparatus to be a maintenance machine and a bit early for mechanical maintenance.

[John Hasler]

It's function is clearly to transport and power the apparatus mounted on the right end. No idea what that is, though.

[Pontiacguy1]

The right end tanks look like it could be cooling water tanks to me. I've seen old hit-and-miss engines that cooled water by running it down a wire mesh or blowing air through it, sort of like an industrial cooling tower works, but on a much smaller scale.

[BAdams]

How about a trolly for canal boats?

[wms6]

That there is a whizbang thingamajig.

[Bill Shields]

it's a track inspection car...today it would be called a 'speeder'

the black wheel just right of center is the clutch mechanism..it contacts the flywheel at different diameters to change the 'output' speed. Today it would be the equivalent of a CVT (snowmobile) transmission.

willing to bet that the vertical 'steering wheel' is the brake...

[SZuiderveen]

Here is the transmission Bill describes on an early Plymouth critter.

Note similarly to gang car.

Steve

[pat1027]

Looking through this site there are similar machines for industrial railroads. Take a look at Burton and C.W. Hunt's crude oil electric locomotive. The one in the picture looks like a mechanical drive but the configurations are similar.


https://americanindustrialmining.com/lo ... e-builders

[FKreider]

That drive system is exactly how 95% of all self-propelled walk-behind snowblowers work.

[BillF]

Mechanisms like this were also important in high technologies in the small-power-transfer, high-precision regime as "mechanical integrators" (as in machines that performed the basic operation of integral calculus). Such technologies reached their peak of development at the same time as steam locomotives: during World War II. They were found in such iconic systems of that era as the Norden bombsight and the U S Navy's Torpedo Data Computer.
- Bill F

[Pontiacguy1]

And all snapper riding mowers have the same drive system. I've seen a small critter before that was built with a 3.5 HP motor and a snapper mower drive system like that. Worked pretty good and was dependable, although not nearly as refined as hydrostatic or electric.