I am a little late to the party on the valve gear discussion, but for anyone who hasn't seen them, I think these simulations are fun to play with:
http://www.tcsn.net/charlied/
There are simple controls for what would be the throttle and reverser at the top center of the application, along with a slider to pause and set the whole mess in whatever position you like for examination. I like to set the throttle at a reasonable speed then slide the reverser back and forth and you can see the effect on the rod positions and the valve timing. That's why I'm a geeky mechanical engineer...
Walschaerts is in file 10A. My personal favorite is Southern, in file 10B. That eccentric rod really flies around! It's really cool how some of the rod motion changes dramatically as the reverser position changes.
Ray
excellent link ...thx
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