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Steam booster

Steam booster

By Brian Schmidt | February 6, 2024

| Last updated on August 8, 2025


A black-and-white photo of a Boston & Maine 2-10-2 steam locomotive with a booster engine on its rear tender truck
A Boston & Maine 2-10-2 steam locomotive is seen at Wooster, Mass., in an undated photo. The tender’s rear truck looks a little different from its front one because it’s a booster engine, an auxiliary locomotive designed to turn the main locomotive’s excess steam at slow speeds into extra traction to help get the train started. H.F. Harvey photo
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