The work connected with the ordinary repairing of running engines, the emergency repairing executed to get engines ready hurriedly to meet the traffic demands on a road then chronically short of power, and diagnosing the numerous diseases that locomotives are heir to, provided ample material from which this book was constructed. The author is convinced that there is an urgent demand among engineers, machinists, and others, for plainly given information relating to numerous operations connected with the repairing and maintenance of locomotives. To meet this demand, the chapters on “Valve-Motion” and all the succeeding parts of the book were written. In preparing a book for the use of engineers, firemen, machinists, and others interested in locomotive matters, it has been the author's aim to treat all subjects discussed in such a way that any reader would easily understand every sentence written. No attempt is made to convey instruction in anything beyond elementary problems in mechanical engineering, and all problems brought forward are treated in the simplest manner possible.
