i can only sometimes control the rivets

Discussion in 'General Chatter' started by jacktrash, Feb 25, 2015.

  1. jacktrash

    jacktrash spherical sockbox

    i'm sorry, that looks like an upright vacuum cleaner.
     
    • Like x 3
  2. Morven

    Morven In darkness be the sound and light

    It kinda does. It's someone trying for the look but just ending up with something awkward. Someone copying without understanding. The proportions are just wrong.
     
  3. jacktrash

    jacktrash spherical sockbox

    it's that fat paunch up front. it looks like it probably waddles.
     
  4. Morven

    Morven In darkness be the sound and light

    Streamlined steam locomotives are either aesthetic masterpieces or complete duds, stylistically. Of course nobody agrees completely on which go on which side of that line ...

    Most people seem to think the LNER A4 Pacifics, which include world speed record holder Mallard, were successes aesthetically:

    800px-Mallard_4468,_Barrowhill,_13_April_2012_(3).jpg

    The LMS's streamlined Princess Coronation class was more bulbous and not quite as popular, but I think it's quite attractive:

    800px-6229_DUCHESS_OF_HAMILTON_National_Railway_Museum_(5).jpg
     
    • Like x 2
  5. jacktrash

    jacktrash spherical sockbox

    see, i think the round front is much more pleasing. and not just because of its iron man paint job. the mallard's got a weird forehead.
     
    • Like x 1
  6. Morven

    Morven In darkness be the sound and light

    So many of them end up looking like rail Zeppelins of one sort or another.
     
  7. Morven

    Morven In darkness be the sound and light

    LNER-10000.jpg

    And then there's this oddball, LNER № 10000, which was an experimental locomotive with a high-pressure water-tube boiler following marine practice.

    It proved unsuccessful as well as just plain odd-looking and was nicknamed the "Galloping Sausage" by railwaymen.

    Later on its chassis was used to make what was essentially a slightly longer A4 with similar streamlined casing, which proved fairly successful, but it didn't survive.
     
    • Like x 2
  8. Wiwaxia

    Wiwaxia problematic taxon


    Thaaaat one just looks like a dildo to me, honestly.

    Also camo green is just not a good color for gothic.
     
    • Like x 1
  9. Morven

    Morven In darkness be the sound and light

    I'd buy it.
     
  10. jacktrash

    jacktrash spherical sockbox

    that's just... no. who thought that was okay. that's not a train, that's a wad of play-doh.
     
    • Like x 1
  11. Morven

    Morven In darkness be the sound and light

    It's pretty horrid, though I like its rebuild as a conventional locomotive. One remaining feature was that the two sets of trailing wheels weren't in a trailing truck but were independent. The first pair were mounted on the typical Cartazzi axle used by the LNER, which permits limited, self-centering lateral motion within a rigid frame, while the rearmost pair were a two-wheel Bissel truck.

    It was basically a longer A4 with a significantly bigger firebox and more power, as well as a very spacious cab.

    BR-60700.jpg
     
    • Like x 1
  12. jacktrash

    jacktrash spherical sockbox

    yech. that looks all makeshift AND it still looks like the alternian mother grub on wheels.

    am i being a design snob? very well, i am a design snob. :P
     
  13. Morven

    Morven In darkness be the sound and light

    Design snobbery is nowhere near a bad thing, dude. Even when you're wrong.

    :D
     
    • Like x 1
  14. Morven

    Morven In darkness be the sound and light

    NWJH2300.jpg 5045T2 (354).jpg steam_turbine_m.jpg

    Norfolk and Western #2300 "Jawn Henry", the last steam-turbine locomotive tested on American railroads. Built by Baldwin-Lima-Hamilton with electrical equipment by Westinghouse in 1954.

    As you can see, it was ridiculously huge, 111 ft long without water tender (coal was carried in the hopper in front of the cab). It used a Babcock & Wilcox water-tube boiler, as seen on e.g. ships, running at a pressure of 600 psi, double the general maximum for a regular steam locomotive boiler. This fed a turbine which turned a generator, much like the diesel engine in a modern locomotive does; the whole think ran on four C trucks, so a total of twelve traction motors and driven axles. Unfortunately it wasn't a success. Coal and water don't agree with generators and motors, and caused short circuits. The feedwater pumps were under-specified and broke down all the time. It was too long to turn on most N&W turntables, and while it proved efficient at low speeds, it was a different story above 15 mph. It spent 3 years working mostly helper service on steep grades, for which its low speed, high tractive effort optimal conditions were well-suited. After that, it was scrapped, and the N&W started buying diesels for freight service.
     
    • Like x 3
  15. jacktrash

    jacktrash spherical sockbox

    i like the looks of it, all monstrous and epic like that, but from an engineering standpoint it does not look like a good idea. how does something that long handle curves?

    i do think you could probably do a coal-fired steam turbine to generator dealie without the short circuits, although maybe not with the materials available then.
     
  16. Morven

    Morven In darkness be the sound and light

    With modern technology you could probably do it, but whether it would be any better than alternatives is doubtful I'd have thought. The only truly successful steam turbine locomotives were in Sweden, three very conventional looking direct-drive locomotives for a mineral-hauling railway. All three survive and at least one has run in preservation.

    wp28315620_05_06.jpg

    A similar design on a slightly larger, faster locomotive was the LMS Turbomotive, which had a reasonably successful career but in the end proved not sufficiently better than conventional piston-driven locomotives to be worthwhile.

    06202a.jpg

    and the final one like this was the Pennsylvania Railroad's mighty S2, a 6-8-6 monstrosity. It worked great at speed but was hugely inefficient at slower speeds. Note the quad stack, the only locomotive I can think of with more than two.

    prr6200.jpg

    Similar locomotives to the Swedish one were also built in Germany and Switzerland to modest success.
     
    Last edited: Mar 17, 2016
    • Like x 2
  17. jacktrash

    jacktrash spherical sockbox

    i know the romance is in passenger trains but it seems like all the cool engineering relates to hauling freight.
     
    • Like x 1
  18. Morven

    Morven In darkness be the sound and light

    That's because freight generally earns way more than passenger traffic. Even in the golden age of train travel, let alone having to compete with airline fares today.
     
  19. Morven

    Morven In darkness be the sound and light

    Here's another strange one from the age of steam:

    1909-shot-of-a-Kitson-Meyer-0-8-6-0-T.jpg

    A Kitson-Meyer, one of the rarer types of articulated steam locomotives, a British development of the German-invented Meyer type. Separation of the two powered trucks underneath allowed the locomotive's firebox to fit between them, resulting in an easier-fired, better-steaming boiler, and being tank engines they were equally good at running in both directions. In fact, crews generally preferred treating the cab end as "front" because of a better view. This one is a rack-and-adhesion locomotive; note the separate, smaller cylinders above the main ones on the smokebox end, driving a gear stack between the first and second axle?

    Almost all of these were sold to British-controlled interests in South America, and Kitson went bankrupt in 1929 and no more were built after that. For a 1909 locomotive this is pretty sophisticated. The locomotive is air-braked and probably supports train air-brakes too, it has a fully covered cab, and in this case appears to be a wood-burner.

    A small number survive. Here's one:
    tr 11 12 kitson-meyer • 501.jpg 10156.jpg

    This one appears very similar to the old photograph except the lack of rack cylinders, and may simply have had the rack cylinders removed later, as they proved unnecessary.

    Some larger examples were created, like these:

    km.jpg km1.jpg
     
    • Like x 1
  20. jacktrash

    jacktrash spherical sockbox

    there was a fascinating amount of experimentation going on, wasn't there?
     
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