Definition of a chassis ... Or frames ... Or something ... ex-82045 The way ahead?

Having just looked at the latest update, I note that it starts "Fitting of the springs to the coupled wheels is complete and they are supporting the weight of the chassis."
The use of the word "chassis" really grates with me, it is an alien word in the context of steam locomotives. It belongs to the worlds of road vehicles and vintage electronics, not railways.
And exactly which bit is meant by 'chassis' anyway? If we draw an analogy with, say, a landrover chassis, it is the structure of metal tubes and u-sections to which everything else fastens, or an analogy with a valve-radio, it is the folded metal box to which everything is attached. So the equivalent part of a locomotive is 'the frames' alone, nothing else.

I suggest the sentence above should read "Fitting of the springs to the coupled wheels is complete and they are supporting the weight of the frames and other installed parts of the locomotive."


Andy

 

c

Or replace all that with chassis!

 

Rivet counting at its best or, is it, worst?

 

I don`t know if it has any connection , but in French they also use the word "chassis" for the frames of a locomotive.

Knut

 

I don't mind what anyone calls it, I'm just happy to see it on its wheels. Or at least on 6 of them...

 

What if it's a 1920s set with a wooden baseboard?

 

It doesn't have a chassis, simple!

 

But we aren't in France...................

 

Indeed so, but I do think part of steam railway preservation should be to correctly use and preserve the historical terminology of the steam age. A steam locomotive doesn't have a 'chassis' any more than it stops at a 'train staion' or is 'parked' when stationary.

 

How long has the term "rolling chassis" been around the describe a loco's frames that have reached the stage of reassembly of getting its wheels back been around? I do try and use underframe in a C+W context though.

 

This is a total hunch, but I suspect it is a preservation-era coinage. It's interesting looking at photos of preservation-era overhauls that very often they get to the "rolling chassis" stage and then the boiler is fitted, followed by finishing everything above the running plate (cab, tanks, bunker etc). Whereas many photos of locomotive assembly in pre-preservation days seem to show an order of fitting the boiler to the frames, more or less finishing above, and placing on the wheels last. No doubt the throughput of how the old works were organised with the work flowing through; different availability of cranage etc., had an influence on the optimum order to carry out reassembly.



Tom

 

Words cannot accurately describe how utterly frustrating it is to see such misinformation being written, when one has been reading WW2 era documents everyday for the last three weeks.

The word "chassis" in regards the frames, wheels and suspension inherent in a steam locomotive, has been used by the original LNER previously in note taking, memorandums and in minutes in the documents I have read. They may not be being used by the locomotive engineers or the workmen, but the word "chassis" has been in colloquial use for some time.

Chassis is a viable word. End of.

Can we get back to the brilliant standard 3MT please?

 

what's in a name? A chassis by any other name would roll as well.

 

The original English use of the word 'chassis' seems to have been for 'frame' ............







....of a window!

 

Your logic is somewhat 'see through'.

 

tumbleweed emoji please...

 

Cox uses chassis in Chronicles of Steam: pub 1967.

 

More of a pane

 

I think I've seen chassis used in 1930s literature to describe the Fury high pressure loco (something like "uses a Royal Scot chassis") and possibly even pre-WW1 on the L&Y. Although I don't have anything to hand.

 

I would assume that using the word "chassis" had come from France with the early motor cars along with garage and chauffeur.
And when it had become popularised and colloquial here came to be used for locomotives as well as automobiles.

(The Shorter Oxford Dictionary of 1933 gives the first use of the words - connected rather carefully with motor cars rather than windows & artillery - as 1903, 1902 & 1899.
Many of the early cars here were French: De Dion, Panhard - which Rolls sold before he tried a Royce, Renaults were typically taxis in London when they first motorised.)

I think chassis implies " including fitments" e.g. the springs whereas the frame might be just that.