A carrying wheel on a steam locomotive is a wheel that is not driven; i.e.

, it is uncoupled and
can run freely, unlike a coupled or driving wheel. It is also described as a running wheel[1] and
their axle may be called a carrying axle. A carrying wheel is referred to as leading wheel if it is
at the front, or a trailing wheel if it is at the rear of the locomotive.

Weight distribution
In particular reference to steam engines, the carrying wheels have a very important purpose of
allowing the engine's weight distribution to be altered. For example in the use of leading wheels
it would allow the boiler to be located further forward of the driving wheels, the weight of which
counters the leverage imposed by the drawbar and the load of the pulled wagons/cars about the
fulcrum of the rearmost driving wheel. Similarly the trailing wheels can move the fulcrum to the
rearmost trailing wheel. Such change can dramatically improve the operating speeds of engines
and their tractive effort.

References
1.

1. Wörterbuch der Industriellen Technik, Dr.-Ing. Richard Ernst, Oscar Brandstetter Verlag,
Wiesbaden, 5. Auflage, 1989, ISBN 3-87097-145-2.

 v
 t
 e

Locomotive design
 Cab forward
 Sharknose
 Steeplecab
Cab
 Cab unit
positioning
 Hood unit
Short hood /
Long hood  Cowl unit
 Boxcab
 Dual Control Stand

 AAR wheel arrangement

 UIC classification
Wheel
 Swiss classification
arrangement
 Whyte notation

Valve gear  Allan

  Baker
 Bagnall–Price
 Baguley
 Bulleid
 Caprotti
 Gab
 Gooch
 Gresley
types
 Hackworth
 Joy
 Kuhn slide
 Lentz
 Southern
 Stephenson
 Walschaerts

 AAR type A switcher truck

 Arnoux system
 Articulated bogie
 Bissel truck
 Blomberg B
 Cleminson system
 Grovers bogie
Bogie types  Jacobs bogie
 Krauss-Helmholtz bogie
 Mason Bogie
 Pony truck
 Radial steering truck
 Scheffel bogie
 Schwartzkopff-Eckhardt II bogie

Other  Adams axle

running gear  Axlebox
elements  Beugniot lever
 Carrying wheel
 Coupled wheel
 Driving wheel
 Equalising beam
 Gölsdorf axle
 Journal box
 Klien-Lindner axle
 Leading wheel
 Luttermöller axle
  Radial axle
 Railway tire
 Road–rail vehicle
 Trailing wheel
 Train wheel
 Wheelset

 Giesl
 Kylchap
 Kylpor
Exhaust
 Lemaître
system types
 Lempor
 Lemprex

Common  Blastpipe
exhaust  Smokebox
system  Chimney
elements
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Rail locomotives

DRG Baureihe 05 #05 003 in 1937

In steam locomotive design, a cab forward design will typically have the driver's compartment or
cab placed forward of the boiler at the very front of the engine. On a coal-fired locomotive, the
fireman's station remains on the footplate behind the firebox so as to be next to the tender. On an
oil-fired locomotive, the fireman's station could be (and normally is) in the forward cab. This
type of design was widely, though not commonly, used throughout Europe in the first half of the
20th century, often in conjunction with an enclosed body design and/or streamlining.
Visibility is greatly improved from the cab, and fumes from the chimney do not fill a forward
cab in tunnels. However, the crew's prospects in the event of a collision are worse, and if the
driver and fireman are in separate places it is difficult for them to communicate, just as in
autotrains.

Germany: Deutsche Reichsbahn

In Germany, Borsig in Berlin built a one-off streamlined cab forward DRG Class 05 (serial
number 05 003) 4-6-4 in 1937, with further development stopped by World War II. Fueled by
pulverized coal and with the firebox at the forward end, this loco was built with huge driving
wheels, 2300mm in diameter. The design speed was 175 km/h (109 mph), but its conventional
layout sister 05 002 set a new world speed record for steam locomotives on 11 May 1936, after
reaching 200.4 km/h (124.5 mph) on the Berlin–Hamburg line hauling a 197 t train, a record it
lost two years later to the British LNER Class A4 4468 Mallard. In 1944, the streamlining was
removed, but the 05 003 had by then already lost its cab forward layout.[1] After the war, it pulled
express trains in West Germany until 1958. It was scrapped in 1960.

Italy: Ferrovie dello Stato italiane

Italian cab forward locomotive, group 670

The state-owned Italian Ferrovie dello Stato had several cab forward locomotives, Class 670,
671, and 672. These 4-6-0 engines had a three-axle tender, and were nicknamed "mucca" (cow).
The engines (construction year 1902, top speed 110 km/h) were used to haul passenger trains on
the Milan-Venice railway.

United States

Forney design

"Ariel", a Forney-type cab-forward locomotive: Front is to the left in this image (note location of
headlight and "cowcatcher")
Matthias N. Forney was issued a patent in the late 1860s for a new locomotive design.[2] He had
set out to improve the factor of adhesion by putting as much of the boiler's weight as possible on
the driving wheels, omitting the pilot wheels from beneath the front of the boiler. Such a design
would not have been stable at high speeds on the rather uneven tracks which were common at the
time. Instead, he extended the locomotive frame behind the cab, placing a four-wheel truck
beneath the water tank and coal bunker. In conventional Whyte notation, this resulted in a 0-4-4T
locomotive, but when run in reverse it was effectively a 4-4-0T, with the track stability of that
popular wheel arrangement, along with unobstructed visibility for the engineer, and improved
dispersal of smoke and steam.[3]

Forney's design proved ideal for the small, nimble locomotives for elevated and commuter
railroads, and he licensed the patent design to many manufacturers. Large numbers of Forneys
served in New York City, Boston, Chicago and elsewhere, but were superseded at the end of the
nineteenth century by electrification and the development of subways.

Ariel and Puck were 2 ft (610 mm) gauge locomotives built to the Forney cab-forward design for
the Billerica and Bedford Railroad in 1877 by Hinkley Locomotive Works of Boston.[3]

Southern Pacific Railroad

Mallet compound locomotive, Southern Pacific Railroad

The best known example of the cab-forward design in the United States, the Southern Pacific
Cab-Forward (also known to a lesser extent as "Cab-in-fronts" and "Cab-aheads") placed the cab
at the front by the simple expedient of turning the entire locomotive, minus the tender, by 180
degrees. This arrangement was made possible by burning fuel oil instead of coal.

The cab forward design was widely used by the Southern Pacific Railroad.[4] The design was able
to deal with the peculiar problems of its routes. The 39 long tunnels and nearly 40 miles (64 km)
of snow sheds of the Sierra Nevada could funnel dangerous exhaust fumes back into the crew
compartment of a conventional locomotive. After a number of crews nearly asphyxiated, the
locomotive was run in reverse. This meant that the tender was leading the train, which
introduced new problems. The tender blocked the view ahead and put crewmen on the wrong
sides of the cab for seeing signals. The tenders were not designed to be pushed at the lead of the
train, which limited speeds. Southern Pacific commissioned Baldwin Locomotive Works to build
a prototype cab-forward locomotive, then ordered more units before the prototype had even
arrived.
All of the cab-forwards were oil-burning locomotives, which meant there was little trouble
involved putting the tender at what would normally be the front of the locomotive. The oil and
water tanks were pressurized so that both would flow normally even on uphill grades. Visibility
from the cab was superb, such that one crewman could easily survey both sides of the track.
There were concerns about what would happen to the crew in the event of a collision, and at least
one fatal accident occurred on the Modoc Line in Herlong, California when a moving locomotive
struck a flat car.[5] Turning the normal locomotive arrangement around also placed the crew well
ahead of the exhaust fumes, insulating them from that hazard. One problematic aspect of the
design, however, was the routing of the oil lines; because the firebox was located ahead of the
driving wheels (instead of behind them, the usual practice), oil leaks could cause the wheels to
slip. A nuisance under most conditions, it resulted in at least one fatal accident. This occurred in
1941 when a cab-forward with leaking steam entered the tunnel at Santa Susana Pass, near Los
Angeles. The tunnel was on a grade, and as the slow-moving train ascended the tunnel, water on
the rails caused the wheels from a leaking cylinder cock to slip and spin. The train slipped
backwards and a coupler knuckle broke, separating the air line, causing an emergency brake
application and stalling the train in a tunnel that was rapidly filling with exhaust fumes and
steam. The oil dripping on the ties then ignited beneath the cab, killing the crew.[6]

No other North American railroad ordered cab-forward locomotives, although some, like
Western Pacific, did consider the type. Built to deal with difficult terrain, these locomotives
became an easily recognizable symbol of the Southern Pacific. In total 256 such Mallet-type
articulated locomotives, in three different wheel arrangements, were placed on SP's roster. One
example of the type, Southern Pacific 4294, is kept at the California State Railroad Museum in
Sacramento, California. It is a 4-8-8-2 locomotive and is the only one to escape being scrapped.
It was also SP's last new steam locomotive, built in 1944.

North Pacific Coast locomotive 21, an early cab-forward experiment

A decade before SP's first cab forward, the North Pacific Coast Railroad, later part of the SP-
owned Northwestern Pacific company, rebuilt an 1875 4-4-0 into an oil-fired cab-forward
locomotive. This innovative engine was built by William (Bill) Thomas, the NPC master
mechanic who was nationally known[7] and holder of a number of patents. Thomas used the
running gear and frame from NPC locomotive 5, the "Bodega", which had been wrecked in
1897, to build NPC 21. With the addition a new and unusual marine water tube boiler and an all-
steel cab, installed in reverse order from standard engines, this unique creation earned Thomas a
patent on the locomotive design. No. 21 entered service in 1900, but only lasted a few years.
Although it reportedly steamed well, though with a sooty exhaust, the crews found it difficult to
operate, and with fears of the possible results of a collision they dubbed it "The Freak". A
negligent fireman allowed the water level to drop, damaging the boiler, and it was not repaired.[8]
Prussia

Experimental Prussian T 16 (see in German) 2'C2' (4-6-4T) had control cabs at both ends.

UK: Southern Railway

Oliver Bulleid's ill-fated Leader is sometimes referred to as a cab-forward locomotive, but since
it had a cab at each end like a typical modern diesel or electric locomotive, this designation is not
entirely appropriate.

Road transport
Automobiles

The AMC Pacer's forward placement of the passenger compartment

The Dodge Intrepid is one of the best known examples of cab forward design in automobiles

The cab forward design allows the passenger volume to be larger than in other similar sized
automobiles.[9]

The first modern mass-produced U.S. automobile using the cab forward concept was the Pacer,
introduced in 1975 by American Motors Corporation (AMC).[10][11][12][13] The company did not call
it "cab forward", but the Pacer's layout placed the passenger compartment farther forward than
was typical to that time.[14] Its A-pillars were moved forward and the windshield was placed over
part of the engine compartment. The Pacer's "wide track and cab forward design actually lets it
handle pretty well" given its body roll like competing contemporary models.[15]

Cab forward was used by Chrysler Corporation starting in 1992 to describe styling and
engineering features that were similar to those seen on the AMC Pacer and the Lamborghini
Portofino, which improved cornering and interior space[16] The passenger cabin was "pushed
forward" so that the front wheel well directly abutted the leading edge of the front doors, and the
windshield extended forward over the engine, while the rear wheels were shifted towards the
back corners of the vehicle. Moving the wheels to the edges allowed designers to enlarge the
interior while improving ride and cornering.[17]

Numerous models built from 1993 to 2004 on the Chrysler LH platform, the JA and JR platforms
("cloud cars"), and the PL platform (Neon), were specifically marketed as cab forward cars.
Chrysler claimed to be the first to apply these features to a full-size car.[18] Likewise, the Dodge
Stratus and Chrysler Cirrus have a hood that is wider than it is long because engineers
established a goal of packing the engine and everything else that is located ahead of the
passenger compartment into a much smaller space and then the designers developed the car's
outer body to offer more interior roominess than competing models in their size class.[17]

Commercial vehicles
Tatra 815 version with low cab, situated in front of the engine

Main article: Cab over

In road vehicle design, cab forward, also known as cab-over, COE (Cab Over Engine), or
forward control, is a body style of truck, bus, or van that has a vertical front or "flat face", with
the cab sitting above the front axle. This body design allows for a more compact configuration.
For example, the Jeep Forward Control model was the first time the payload (or pickup box) had
a record-breaking 74 in (1,880 mm) length (with the tailgate up) on an 81 in (2,057 mm)
wheelbase as well as the first time offering a model where a 9-foot (274 cm) box exceeded the
wheelbase of a truck.[19]

The cab forward truck configuration is currently common among European and Japanese truck
manufacturers, because the laws governing overall vehicle lengths are strict and the body style
allows longer trailers or a longer cargo area for the same overall length than a standard truck
(with an engine compartment ahead of a conventional cabin). Better visibility and
maneuverability in tight quarters, such as for city delivery, are benefits of locating the truck's cab
up front. Large trucks of this type are most often described as cab over engine (COE) or cab over
models.