Here we go...
Photo 1) New development somewhere?
Photo 2) I guess if you're trying to explain the principle of articulated locomotives nothing succeeds like excess.
Photo 3) Last time I saw something like that it was in a "Thomas The Tank Engine" episode when all the engines got together for an indignation meeting.
Photo 4) Cool! Is that thing 1930's or what? Where can I get one? I wanna party like it's 1939!
2) Now you know why AT&SF cut them back to 2-10-2's. Maybe if they had tried the jointed boiler on these instead of the 2-6-6-2s...
1) Must be a new route.
2) Now that's a lengthy boiler and some severe articulation.
3) Miss Steam Universe contest.
4) Looks likes a monster in a sci-fi series. Just who at GM went along with this thing?
Oh goody! More fun stuff! Lemme see here...
Photo 1) Oh, good Lord, that restorer Garratt looks more like a piece of fine art or jewelry than it does like a locomotive. Well done South Africa!
Photo 2) Now wouldn't that Lombard log hauler be an absolute hit hauling people around a ski resort?
Photo 3) UP's stealth scheme ain't workin'. I can see them!
That Lombard is fascinating. If you even wondered what happened when a Coffin FWH mated with an outhouse...
UP evidently ran afoul of a Schwing pump...
1) Maybe not strange but out of the ordinary, quite beautiful and a very well done restoration from the looks of it. Narrow guage to boot!
South Africa. Restored narrow guage Garratt 2-6-2+2-6-2
2) Lombard steam log hauler. Bet that's fun to steer. Is there a fireman back there?
3) Union Pacific's stealth locomotives for spying on the competition and perhaps making away with some freight? Maybe they should get rid of the logo then.
Alas no, these are UP's remote control locomotives at Long Beach Harbour, Los Angeles , 2006
Pennsylvania Ave eh? Well you have their HQ in Philly, Broadway named after their 4 track right of way, Pennsylvania Station, Pennsylvania Railroad and now you want to call it Pennsylvania Ave.
Were I a New York City elected official I would vehemently object to this stealth annexation of the city and outright disrespect. Sneaking into the city under the water unseen as well, what kind of shenanigans is that?
No siree, vetoed. Enough of this Pennsylvania stuff. I propose Commodore Ave. just to remind them what's up around here.
MiningmanWonder what the proposed name was?
Mike found that interesting and tells me (us) that 71/2 Ave was never a reality.
Wonder what the proposed name was?
UBS Ave.? ( suggested by Mike)
Now we all know what that ARB is. Great description rcdrye and many thanks. I didn't even know it was Swiss, thought perhaps some interurban or electric line over here that I didn't know about.
Did not see any of those tell tale buffers that give it away as from 'over there'.
MiningmanAhhh...Ummm....Whaaat?!!
The swiveling snowplow belonged to the standard gauge Arth-Rigi Bahn. The ARB was, and is, a rack railway (System Riggenbach), going up from the SBB at Arth-Goldau to the summit at Rigi. The non-rack section between Arth and Goldau (now Arth-Goldau) was abandoned in the late 1950s. The snowplow has trolley poles (including a sleet cutter) for the 1500VDC overhead. The radiators at the rear indicate the presence of internal combustion power as well, maybe for the rotary plow.
The "will it or won't it" modern incarnation of the pneumatic:
Same me, different spelling!
1a Once again Ladies and Gents: The Pneumatic Railroad
1b
1c
2) The Great Hotel that never was.
3) Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the great Victorian Engineer, was the driving force behind the short lived Atmospheric Railway
4) Did they call it 7 and a halfth Ave?
The Morris County Central, a now sadly gone tourist railroad in New Jersey, had a railbus with a built-in turntable as well. Here's the railbus.
http://www.tcaetrain.org/articles/tickets/railbus/railbus02.jpg
Here's the story.
http://www.tcaetrain.org/articles/tickets/railbus/index.html
Greetings from Alberta
-an Articulate Malcontent
Miningman Ahhh...Ummm....Whaaat?!!
Ahhh...Ummm....Whaaat?!!
Looks like the attachment on the front is a snow blower. I wonder if they considered having the trolley pole rotate to stay attached to the wire? I wonder if the turn was battery powered, or if the crewman had a hand crank inside.
I think I saw something like this on the Three Stooges. Curly turns the loco and knocks over Larry. Moe says "Watch where you're going", to which Curly turns the other way and knocks over Moe.
Barstow Station
Interesting short video.
M636CMore seriously, using the style of product and logistics of an operation like Subway with a slightly wider product range would allow an acceptable level of service with lower labor costs, if that is the aim...
Interestingly, though, Peter is right for different reasons. A major original 'franchise' design and selling point was that a Subway as initially conceived could be easily built in an unimproved 20' storefront: no dealing with high heat or risk of fire, no fancy ventilation with staged grease filters, no grease traps or special floor drains, no slick walking hazard behind the line. Even when they added toasting ovens the space and power requirements did not change much, and the ability to 'turn' the space easily and relatively cheaply when desired remains high compared to almost any competing model. Firehouse Subs attempted to try approximating this with sous vide heating of a variety of hot fillings, which is intriguing even at the mass scale of a well-patronized lounge car but still has a few quirks that need better ironing-out.
Yes yes, exactly. Thank you Peter. Have to agree with Overmod, worth an attempt over on this side.
The Germans had one also...
More seriously, using the style of product and logistics of an operation like Subway with a slightly wider product range would allow an acceptable level of service with lower labor costs, if that is the aim...
Peter
MiningmanNo I mean a McDonalds restaurant car... as in a real one, as in food service ... or if not then let's assume it's Mikes private varnish.
I don't remember why the experiment foundered; I think it had something to do with Coke vs. Pepsi as the 'house' brand of soda at the time. But it would have neatly and conclusively solved a large part of onboard 'snack' food service for many of the passengers, this long before 'name brand' fast food became available at airports...
Personally, I think it is still just as practical, and just as interesting to try, now as it was then.
No I mean a McDonalds restaurant car... as in a real one, as in food service ... or if not then let's assume it's Mikes private varnish.
(1). A very sensible way to reverse an engine that has only one cab, limited visibility, etc. "anywhere" -- not just where you have fancy little turntables like the ones on that Japanese railway, or at the Gare St. Lazare. Just be really careful to turn it in opposite directions each time, lest you wind up the cables...
(2) This is actually a sensible thing for maintenance-of-way equipment; double the dorm space in an inherently high-speed-stable configuration, and adaptive use of a car that might have had one end damaged beyond economical repair. Might even be useful as a wrecking-crane tender...
Makes me think of this rather quickly: PRR G1 #2423...
https://ogrforum.ogaugerr.com/fileSendAction/fcType/0/fcOid/79987520875956327/filePointer/80973530451922645/fodoid/80973530451922643/imageType/LARGE/inlineImage/true/20170115_102942.jpg
(3) What, you mean like this?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTnslBYeeqI
Or this...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMWfJEBtBw4&list=PLJqUHb9fmj37vHh9KaqH171DMSxfVqy2e
Or everybody's favorite proof of the concept -- you should pay particular attention to Amfleet:
http://s3.amazonaws.com/rrpa_photos/123939/AMTK%20100%20-1A%20USPS%20Century%20Express%20at%20Springfield%20IL%205-20-99%20%201920LR.jpg
.
2) Another weird item from 'over there'... Watzit?
3) Maybe Amtrak should just try this.
MiningmanPeanuts compared to the The Grand Prize which has yet to be won
One of these was the V1 with Bowes drive, the thing that fancy shell design patent was made for in 1947. Much the same performance as the Ingalls 2000hp passenger unit, but almost the full 8000hp to the rails in direct, and a major percentage in assisted 'overdrive'. Pity if died before being fully documented; all that really survives of the 'freight' V1 is its cancellation for ridiculous water rate -- which, even so, was better than the Q2 in a locomotive with no augment at all.
Another was the B&O W-1, which had enough built that it 'could' have been finished if there had been a little more ready money ... a few percent of what Baldwin 'stole' from PRR on the S1 project that might well have been slower than the B&O engine. I'm frankly surprised Jones1945 hasn't had it modeled yet. Now I have my doubts that it would have held up in service, but if I can figure out how to improve it, the Beslers certainly could ... and we brought back Roosen's a half-decade later with the solution for controlling the motors, the probable torque-moment issues and, worst come to worst, how to hang motors outside the gauge and quill-drive the wheels with low unsprung mass. Personally there is still a little bit of me that wishes the good parts of the Paget locomotive had been recognized. Multiple well-jacketed cylinders with 'eccentric' short stroke posed a highly interesting analogue to what B&O was proposing as 'constant torque' and could be easily configured with just a light pair of quartered rods ... or gears, or Morse chain. Now make two of these in Garratt configuration with a multipass package boiler slung between... or a Meyer with a big,deep Lamont firebox down to rail level together with the four tall centrifugal separators...
Oh come on, it was comedy and I thought quite flattering comedy at that. Rooting for the dinosaurs?? Your analogy or example was .. errrr....fine. Just painful. ( I have to keep up appearances, pride before the fall and all that rot). Mitochondria, that's the ticket! Without it we could not be having this discussion.
Yes I came within an inch of mentioning the fireless cookers, but why ruin or belittle some attempted new technology. It worked and possibly held promise but alas not to be.
Interesting point at the end... I just have to wonder if something beautiful comes along in steam technology and everyone goes bonkers for it. Like the winning lottery ticket.. there it is.
I consider N&W J class, C&O/N&W magnificent late built steam switchers, Alleghenies, GS-4, Big Boy, Challengers, Sante Fe Northerns and Hudsons as secondary and tertiary lottery prizes. Peanuts compared to the The Grand Prize which has yet to be won, it will be, just don't think we have the winner yet.
MiningmanIts a real smack down however to use the EMC/Winton/General Motors example though. Makes me root for that fist sized rock/dinosaurs.
[quote]Also major thank you once again to rcdrye for his input on the Swiss electric/steam. A minor role shunting small one or two cars around is a start but being able to sustain itself for a while without continuous electric feed is encouraging.[quote]The thing is, this is nothing more than the fireless cooker effect -- with the relatively slow electric rate of heat transfer them being required, much slower than the usual fire less recharge technique of sparging with superheated steam...
An interesting point, not bothered with on the Tigerli but of high interest once you look at German high-pressure fireless designs, is that electrical elements can be easily sealed into pressure vessels far stronger than 'boilers' and optimized for structure as not requiring external heating. This would easily allow charge pressure above supercritical, giving very protracted run time with very high functional superheat even at high mass flow. I would have to worry about cumulative pressure cycling and the risk of catastrophic vessel failure... but it's much less than with a conventional high-pressure-boiler tube failure to the fire space as on LMS Fury...
Well at least that gives me some hope. I mean we live in a living human universe and and to think of all the random interactions that did and did not occur for us to even be here is enough to overload some brain circuitry so the possibility of two entities coming together to create a new resurgence of steam technology with things not even imagined yet could occur. I mean, mitochondria was a chance meeting and quite a stretch and without even that we would be a dull single cell organism world in perpetuity. Or an event that could have been a non event, say a fist sized rock had glanced off the asteroid a billion or two years ago changing its course ever so slightly but multiplied over hundreds of millions of years then missed the earth. You know the one that wiped out the dinosaurs .... Don't think it's a stretch to say we would not be here otherwise.
Its a real smack down however to use the EMC/Winton/General Motors example though. Makes me root for that fist sized rock/dinosaurs.
Also major thank you once again to rcdrye for his input on the Swiss electric/steam. A minor role shunting small one or two cars around is a start but being able to sustain itself for a while without continuous electric feed is encouraging. Makes sense.
MiningmanI'm beginning to think that steam technology as applied to locomotives has millions, perhaps billions of variables, and like a lottery, out of all of it, all the variables, there is one correct grand winning ticket.
Note that solutions for even something as simple as Andreas Schwander's steam monorail or 'Plandampf' conversion of Swiss commuter service are different from Porta's practical 'biomasa' projects. And both those are wildly different from Tom Blasingame's designs, or the 5AT optimization, or either the original or 'upgraded' Turbomotive 2.
The split becomes even more radical when you have to start with fuel technology 'politically' and practically suitable for purpose. (With the alternative always being properly-treated B100 or ethanol derivative from biomass, with any required additives, with DEF in an IC engine manufactured with many alternative uses and the usual higher engineered flexibility...)
I of course have beat the drum for forced waterwall circulation replacing pachinko staybolting in the radiant section of a 'Stephenson' boiler for some time. A combination of shipbuilding fab techniques and laser hybrid welding can produce a leakproof version of a Jacobs-Shupert firebox that contains suitable geometry for this, and even a 'multiple-thread screw' waterfall as in LaMont's ship boilers (each "thread" going to its own centrifugal inertial steam separator, etc.) should get you there -- the following convection stage being entirely tuned like a HRSG with common header into the separator vessels, and long-path economization down to below combustion-water condensation in the feed train -- etc.
The general consensus of whatever actual technologists remains active at SACA is that this approach scales to automobile size and is preferable to other 'modularly-scalable' boiler designs including all the flash or semiflash generators that modulate flame and water in counterflow.
If you want to go high-tech there is still promise in the enginion AG ultrasupercritical approach, which appears to have foundered more on politics and weird expediency (a German electrical-generating company bought a large stake in the company doing the development, then forced it into optimizing the design for distributed emergency grid-power generation!). This approach uses liquid fuel to generate very high-pressure steam and then superheat it separately at time of use, injected as a supercritical liquid for long expansion). While this requires relatively exotic metallurgy (with alloy elements from certain 'other lands') the absolute amounts are relatively small, as is the actual mass flow required to make power. Makeup is with highly distilled water actively treated for self-dissociation, which gets rid of the various problems with feedwater treatment cost and consequences otherwise requiring something like McMshon-Porta treatment.
And there is the Oxford Cycle, which uses a fairly cheap catalyst mixture to react methanol or ethanol fuel in water with roughly 30% hydrogen peroxide (distilled from natural sources) to produce steam directly at the maximum superheat for conventional locomotive-suitable expanders -- somewhere in the 800 to 840F range, largely hinging on required tribology. The controls are fascinatingly different from most historical steam plants, and the carbon emissions about as low as you can get with a practical non-carrier fuel formulation. Unfortunately terrorists can make a nifty hard-to-detect state explosive out of H2O2 and 'household chemicals' ... part of why we can't have nice things. (For the sake of completeness, Dave Klepper's beloved MIT has a version of this for space power that makes steam at something like 2200 degrees F; this is nifty for orbital applications but not so much for locomotive practice...)
And then there us the fascinating world of bottoming cycles, of which the poster child is the ALPS locomotive combined with the asynchronous compound. You can actually still get to much of the detail design via the University of Texas website resources (although you have to dig a bit now; start with the CEM published papers). Whenever this comes up in conversation it reminds me with the twinge of a bad tooth that it is a shame the JetTrain design was altered...
The rules of the game would be the laws of Physics.
But, like the rules in say a hockey game, the outcomes are unpredictable despite the rules. Not surprisingly there is a winning ticket out there but it makes me wonder if we have yet to encounter it.
Instead, Baldwin didn't even learn the lessons of the USRA, and Alco 'bet their company' on an alliance with GE and are gone largely as a result of it, and Lima missed the boat on where postwar Super-Power would come from...
Get that combination of savvy and morale, though, and I have some bingo moments for ya. But be advised that comparatively few of them resemble attractive legacy steam. There are very few powerplant foamers out there... perhaps for understandable reasons...
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