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Other Porters Here, we try to document a small, but important, part of the locomotive world. Porter compressed air locomotives were used around the world and in just about every industry. Because of the lack of smoke, fire, and moisture, they were ideally suited for certain applications. Textile and rope manufacturers were customers, as were mines. The industries were all interested in a locomotive that would be simple to use, work all day with little maintenance, and present no hazard to their products or employees. In the cases of mines, the compressed air locomotive actually 'refreshed' a portion of the mine's atmosphere from the exhaust.
This engine is currently located near the Spokane Fair Grounds, Washington. You can see that this locomotive is also of a smaller gauge than our Porter. Photos courtesy of Brian Fritz's Washington Steam Locomotive pages, and are used here with permission. For those of you planning a steam vacation in the Pacific NorthWest, his site is a good starting point.
The following text and two photos are courtesy of James Hefner. His site is located here, and he is also documenting surviving world steam locomotives, of which he has found 25 compressed airs, and you can find his CD-ROM for sale here. "This example was built by Porter, and is located in Mel Ott Park on the Belle Chase Highway in Gretna, LA. It has three smaller air tanks connected by curved pipes, instead of the usual one large insulated steam tank. (The three smaller tanks could hold air at a higher pressure than one large steam tank. A similiar compressed-air locomotive stored air at 600psi, which was reduced to 150psi before admitting into the cylinders.) The two flat bumps on top of the top tank are bases for sand domes. A pipe sticking out of each side tank was probably used to fill the air tanks. An separate air tank for the brakes is also located between two of the air tanks on the right-hand side. This locomotive is incomplete -- some of the parts that are missing include the driving rods and cylinder heads. It used to be operated by the New Orleans Sewage & Water Board through at least 1948, and currently has markings for the Orleans-Kenner Railway (OKRA)."Also, you can see a bit more information at Doug Bailey's site Steam Locomotive dot Info. In fact, our Porter is also listed on the site.
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