OK, here we go...
Photo 1. A tunnel magically appearing? You suppose there's a First Nations shaman riding in the caboose?
Photo 2. A flywheel to steady power output and solve balancing problems? Why not, they tried everything else!
Photo 3. Another "Whiskey-Tango-Foxtrot."
Photo 4. Man, that's some spectacular ironmongery! I don't know where it is, but I'll bet Dave Klepper does!
Photo 5. That's so sweet I need an insulin shot!
Isn't this Forum the best? Beats the hell out of the other one with all those grumpy sourpusses!
Flintlock-- You bet it does, far more history, insight, railroads and fun!
Overmod -- Could well be vehicular pacman ... we can test your theory, you drive through and I'll run the video at a safe distance....chomp!
Miningman Let's see how much I can get wrong this time! 3) Is this really a good idea? Talk about beating up the rail!
Let's see how much I can get wrong this time!
3) Is this really a good idea? Talk about beating up the rail!
This looks like something for the British Army about the time of the First World War. The tractor could haul vehicles without steam and smoke that might draw the attention of enemy gunners.
OHMS stands for "On His Majesty's Service" and the uniforms look British to me,
Douglas Self has of course addressed these...
http://douglas-self.com/MUSEUM/LOCOLOCO/roadrail/roadrail.htm
The wagons look as though they could run on rail or road using a groove in the tread, while the driving wheels straddle the rail intentionally.
Peter
Prototype hi-rail?
Greetings from Alberta
-an Articulate Malcontent
Leave it to the Brits to come up with a smokeless, steamless, steam engine and On Her Majesty's Service to boot... must be James Bond 007 at the controls.
Regardless, great info M636C, hats off to you sir!
regardng this photo"
Fairly recent photo, from the rear of a northbound D train, or B before six or seven years ago, about to enter the tunnel from which the train below is exiting. Between 9th Av. nd 36th St.Stations. The ramp to the right going overhead in the above photo leads to the 39th Street Yard.
Miningman ... and On Her Majesty's Service to boot...
I suspect you'd make an indifferent Canadian historian; would that not almost surely be "His" at the time of the photo?
I thought long and hard about that... should I put him? .. almost edited to him/her but I stuck with the 'Spy' reference and besides in this day and age of self identified gender neutrality who knows what to use.
At that particular time in history it was a Him. Which reminds me, Lizzy's been the Queen for virtually all my existence. I'm actually not a fan of the monarchy at all. All those Governor Generals and pomp, huge bucks and for what, also the nonsense and pretence. All this bowing, walking backwards and ' your majesty' stuff kind of sticks in my craw. However, I do believe it could serve a more functional purpose for something like a more vigorous and renewed Commonwealth connected to free trade and economic power, involving widely varied and differing cultures. A block composed of Australia, Hong Kong, India, and all the others to numerous to list, heck even Saudi Arabia, perhaps Egypt could be quite a startling force for prosperity and a better world.
There was a time when Peco track in the modelling world was considerably less expensive in Canada than the USA due to the Commonwealth trade ( as an example).
I was no more than 50' from the Queen at the Queens Plate in Toronto. Took me mom. She was thrilled.
Miningman ...I'm actually not a fan of the monarchy at all. All those Governor Generals and pomp, huge bucks and for what, also the nonsense and pretence. All this bowing, walking backwards and ' your majesty' stuff kind of sticks in my craw.
...I'm actually not a fan of the monarchy at all. All those Governor Generals and pomp, huge bucks and for what, also the nonsense and pretence. All this bowing, walking backwards and ' your majesty' stuff kind of sticks in my craw.
LOL. You make my day, Miningman.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVOrF92NIc4
Jones 3D Modeling Club https://www.youtube.com/Jones3DModelingClub
Miningman.. almost edited to him/her but I stuck with the 'Spy' reference...
007 (in the books) was famous for driving a '30s Bentley, almost certainly pre-abdication ... but that thing is much older, and probably Edwardian. But not Victorian. I can't see 007 running that tractor; on the other hand I'd pay money to see Kristanna Loken ... but that's another matter.
We're going to find out how the term changes in not too many more years. Unless the tech the Russians used on Andropov has been 'transferred' to Britain quietly...
... and besides in this day and age of self identified gender neutrality who knows what to use.
Really quite simple for Elizabeth, really. Probably no more complex for Wills. I grant you I'm not quite sure what to use with Charles if he gets a shot at it, but likely not much question either.
Since my days as a NCTE laureate I have strongly opined that we should use the same gender-neutral shift we did for the second-person pronouns for the third: just use the appropriate conjugations of 'they' in the way we now use 'you'. Not only does this have hard historical precedent, it cuts the feet out from under the whole 'gender-specified pronoun of choice' crapfest at a single stroke, and it makes learning English grammar somewhat more direct and effective for TOEFL candidates and other learners.
daveklepper regardng this photo" Fairly recent photo, from the rear of a northbound D train, or B before six or seven years ago, about to enter the tunnel from which the train below is exiting. Between 9th Av. nd 36th St.Stations. The ramp to the right going overhead in the above photo leads to the 39th Street Yard.
There you go! I KNEW David would know where it was!
What a guy! Thanks David!
Miningman Leave it to the Brits to come up with a smokeless, steamless, steam engine and On Her Majesty's Service to boot... must be James Bond 007 at the controls. Regardless, great info M636C, hats off to you sir!
"On Her Majesty's Secret Service" was, I think, one of the original novels.
The most common use of "OHMS" was on official correspondence where the envelope did not need a stamp since the government operated the post office (and the telephone system). I think even telephone bills came in OHMS buff envelopes.
At the time that Ian Fleming wrote the novel, OHMS would be familiar to most of his British readers. We had the same buff envelopes in Australia until the 1960s at least...
In the case of the tractor in the photo, I suspect the letters were put on by the builder of the tractor to indicate that it was on loan to the Army for trials, the letters being inspired by the recognisable "official" indication that may have appeared on the letters arranging the loan.
Had the tractor been owned by the Army, it would have had a more meaningful local designation.
Oh, they got the guns to the front all right, but even the Royal Marines had trouble stopping that German juggernaut.
But stop 'em they did. With a bit of help from the rest of the British Expeditionary Force.
Thank You.
One amazing piece of machinery!
I think this qualifies as Very Strange...
FD21-3128M rebuilt with a Syromyatnikov superheater.
A detailed explanation and diagram can be found at:
https://books.google.com.au/books?id=z1-hCwAAQBAJ&pg=PA196&lpg=PA196&dq=syromyatnikov+superheater&source=bl&ots=C4slzRKV6l&sig=ACfU3U0GV25eIfVpPm-PIO955Z1MOzBliQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiB3vOuksPmAhWCzTgGHXENAxYQ6AEwCnoECAgQAQ#v=onepage&q=syromyatnikov%20superheater&f=false
I'm disappointed that Douglas Self hasn't included this in his listing of strange Russian locomotives. Comments on the Russian site suggest that rather more insulation could have been applied to the very long external main steam pipes.
Nice to see others contributing to this Forum with pics and topics to discuss, so thanks for that M636C.
The Russian FD-21-3128M certainly qualifies. With what I could read about the locomotive it seems the initial results were outstanding but each subsequent test after that yielded less and less success all the way down to unsuccessful. It also seems to suggest a lot of maintenance was required almost right off the go.
M636CFD21-3128M rebuilt with a Syromyatnikov superheater.
The link provided produces nothing but 'you have exceeded your reading limit' messages on any system I have.
I paid $10.94 for the 'ebook' and can provide some further details on what this is. Syromyatnikov thought (as would Tom Blasingame for a while in the early 21st Century) that only a comparatively small part of the convection section actually boiled much water, and that conventional Schmidt-type superheater elements (no matter how sine-curved or finned) didn't provide an adequate degree of superheat (at least not under typical Russian running conditions). Accordingly, there are firetubes only in the rear one-third of the "boiler", up to where the boxlike section begins.
In the center 'third', the middle box section, are a number of pendant-type superheater elements (the diagram shows three loops, but does not show their detail design) with the header going Russian-fashion to the outside of the boiler shell, first to what in the diagram appears to be a multiple front-end throttle arrangement of some kind and thence, passing under the sand dome, on the outside, as a pair of flow-streamlined external headers direct to the inside-admission ports on the cylinders. (I concur that this arrangement requires MUCH better insulation than appears to be pictured; remember, this is the part of the steam circuit that Chapelon on 160 A1 implemented as effective jacketing!) I can't make out the throttle linkage either in the photo or the diagram; in America this might easily be provided via one of the designs of air throttle.
The forward third of what would have been the boiler shell is an enormous combustion-air preheater, and it is the ducting from this back to the firebox that shows as so queer on the outside -- I presume but can't prove that this duct is symmetrical on both sides, and not just on one side.
I believe the tank on the upper part of the somewhat-abbreviated smokebox is a coil-type FWH that is part of a draft-fan arrangement (this looks to the unwary like an oversized headlight in the diagram, but the photo makes it clearer) with the pipe presumably being an external steam line to drive the fan, and the possibly lavish fan exhaust being used as a stage in the feed-heat train.
An interesting note: the Soviets apparently built at least one locomotive with pirated Snyder-style preheaters (exhaust steam in piping adjacent to primary-air inlets on the sides of the firebox instead of complicated air preheat arrangements up at the smokebox that couldn't be kept clear of cinders and char) but didn't get anticipated results out of them. It would be interesting to see pictures of the arrangement as a guide to whether the vaunted success of the Snyder arrangement in postwar American testing is warranted.
Soviets also reportedly worked on front-end stoker arrangements, at right around the time B&O was implementing them on what was said to be a fairly large assortment of locomotives. Distressingly the book's author has no technical details on what was done, and provides no references I could find for how the devices operated (other than they were fairly briskly 'not proceeded with'.
The link works for me, although I have seen that message as well but then it bounces back to the book pages . Suggest try again or just wait a few seconds, perhaps start scolling down and it kicks in.
Well that's got to be one of the weirdest, if downright ugliest locomotives I've seen, although I know there's others out there weirder and uglier.
I know with the Russians it's "function follows form," and with the Russkies it doesn't have to look good, it just has to work.
So, simple question looking for a simple answer, did it work?
Simple answer-- NO
Another from the same source:
This is a Latvian locomotive from the 1930s
It has everything: superheating, feedwater heater, even cylinder relief valves.
But a 2-2-2T?
It seems to be a development of the Bavarian Pt2/3 that was built into the 1920s.
This was a 2-4-0 with the coupled axles well to the rear. Has anybody a good reason for building a single driver version?
Miningman Simple answer-- NO
Thanks!
I can't help but be reminded of the old aeronautical engineer's saying, "If it looks good, it'll fly good!" Certainly true, some of the best airplanes in history were sweethearts to look at.
Sometimes I think the same applies to locomotives.
M636C Another from the same source: This is a Latvian locomotive from the 1930s It has everything: superheating, feedwater heater, even cylinder relief valves. But a 2-2-2T? It seems to be a development of the Bavarian Pt2/3 that was built into the 1920s. This was a 2-4-0 with the coupled axles well to the rear. Has anybody a good reason for building a single driver version? Peter
The only reason I can think of is concentrating more weight on the drivers. If that locomotive was intended for say, commuter service, or local transportation, where frequent stops and starts would have to be made it would make sense. Sort of.
Flintlock76So, simple question looking for a simple answer, did it work?
mThe real 'simple answer' is "not as well as electrification".
To my knowledge, no locomotive with pendant superheaters has actually run effectively in normal railroad service. (I think the same is true for radiant superheaters in the firebox and chamber, and in fact for superheater elements extending too far back in their flues particularly on oil-fired engines).
I suspect the greatest issue though is the relative lack of proportion in the convection section. It is difficult to have a bright yet relatively small fire (as Chapelon, for example, could get on his 4-8-0 conversions) to optimize the radiant transfer but not have so much gas mass that the gas exhaust still has high heat after its relatively-short-TOF passage through relatively slow heat-transfer pure-superheater and air heater sections. On the Russian locomotive you'd likely see TRULY crazy high superheat at sustained high speed 40% cutoff, and enormously hot gas coupling with steam to choke the blast, perhaps a reason for the odd small-double-chimney front end. In this case it BADLY needs a Franco-Crosti pass, perhaps of some length, as an economizer in the feed train and more air preheat, to extend the gas path practically -- or change up the train of recovery forward of the superheaters.
I think there is an answer in here, though, to the idea I had of running the convection section completely full of water as in HRSGs, with a great many additional flues in what was the steam space now populated with more superheater circuits, and completely passing the steam separation to a separate chamber. That would be simple to accomplish on Russian clearances. Likewise a Lamont, with or without forced draft (which the air-preheat ducting would facilitate) would be a 'natural' for this layout, even if weirdly conceived as the East Germans apparently did.
In connection with the mention of Chapelon, we might remember that Joe Burgard did the actual thermodynamic calculations to optimize the partition between 'steam generation' and 'economized feedwater heat' (at the lower gas temp supposedly no longer contributing well to steam generation) on the PRR T1 and found it was less than 4' from the end of the tubes in the sectional convection section, so by comparison here the little convection section at the rear should have had tubes 16' or more... and flues populated with short Schmidt elements there in addition to the pendant superheaters, although these might be centered in oversize flues to give adequate combustion-gas flow at high temp to keep the pendants effective. This would require repackaging of the air preheat, perhaps in a partial reverse pass, and it would be interesting to see how conversion of those side ducts would be reconsidered to provide that.
Flintlock76The only reason I can think of is concentrating more weight on the drivers. If that locomotive was intended for say, commuter service, or local transportation, where frequent stops and starts would have to be made it would make sense. Sort of.
Actually, it's the reverse... Instead of a 2-4-0, it actually puts less weight on the drivers.
Translating the German Wikipedia; The class was originally designed to lower operating costs so that light passenger trains would be competitive against railcars/railbuses. (This implies either steam railcars or gas/diesel ones with either high cost or low availability of oil, or both).
I'm not sure if they had an American-style system where crews were paid according to weight on drivers. Otherwise, it might've been an attempt at reducing mechanical complexity? But not with the superheat and feedwater heater...
They apparently had a compressed air system to increase pressure on the driving axle at starting, but even with the adhesion boost they were too light for suburban trains.
Built as 5ft gauge, they were designed for easy gauge conversion (standard gauge), and during WWII the invading Deutsche Reichsbahn actually bothered to convert them!
Two ended up in Germany, two ended up in Poland, and the rest were presumably disposed of in the USSR somewhere. One of the Polish units (class OKa1) survives in the Warsaw Railway Museum (and in pretty good condition).
Fascinating. Thanks!
Less weight on the drivers? I'd have assumed otherwise, but what do I know?
Man, oh man, I leave you guys for a few weeks and I can't believe what you get up to.
THAT is "THE SUBWAY" between Millicent and Patricia on the abandoned Bassano Sub. For a few decades it might have been the only grade separated crossoing on the CPR in Alberta outside of Calgary.
Dad used to dispatch that Sub as part of the East Dispatcher job in Calgary. I forget the details, but he was either working or knew the crew that made the picture. This was after the mixed had been pulled and periodicaly Wayfreights worked the Sub. on long multi-day jobs. The crew's time was pretty much their own, and they decided to do a parody of the famous publicity photos taken at the Spiral Tunnels when the Multimark was introduced. The line ran E/W and the picture was taken from south of the track, late in the afternoon.
In about '67 or '68 my uncle took my brother and me out there in his company truck to look into some issue with the Irrigation system he worked for. To the left of the curve on the other side of the track were a large number of beehives. When we were going under the track my uncle told us to roll up the window and when we got to the other side we were surrounded by bees. I still think about that and I don't care for it.
It was very well known it that part of Alberta, because the high fill used in the area precluded regular grade crossing for a significant number of miles. It was felt that to have no grade crossings for such a long distance was a public safety issue, so in an uncharaceristic moment the CPR and the Provincial Government cooperated on building the structure.
If I don't get back here before then, I hope everyone has a Merry Christmas.
Bruce
So shovel the coal, let this rattler roll.
"A Train is a Place Going Somewhere" CP Rail Public Timetable
"O. S. Irricana"
. . . __ . ______
Wow. What a great story and historic information on this picture. Had no idea when I posted it. Thank you for that contribution Bruce.
So Overmod driving thru under the tracks in his convertible would be swarmed by bees as he exited on the other side and I have it all on video.
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