Were John writing today, he'd be a perfect candidate for a blog - - or this forum ! - which would probably be referred to more often than not as a "rant". It sure seems that his ghost or alter ego is in some of these posts, including some quite a bit above, and some long past threads.
Seeing what RWM has written about John above and over on the Coal Loading/Unloading thread, I think you had to take John with a grain - no, a big pinch of salt. He covered a lot of subjects, many of them not closely railroad-related, such as politics and governments. As to those, I "consider the source" when evaluating them, the same as I do for pronouncements by politicians, the pop culture crowd, and sports figures, etc. (among others) about subjects outside of their areas of acknowledged expertise.
I may start another thread on John, rather than lose that subject in and clutter up this one with that. If so, I'll post a link to it here as well.
- Paul North.
Just a note on Mr. Kneiling. On another thread, a person who identified himself as his son, stated that his father passed away in 2000.
I actually found John Knieling fascinating...if only because he urged one to think outside the box before the phrase became popular. His concept of unit trains was the one thing where he was on target but he also made one's mind wander through what could be done differently than the sameold.
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henry6I actually found John Knieling fascinating...if only because he urged one to think outside the box before the phrase became popular. His concept of unit trains was the one thing where he was on target but he also made one's mind wander through what could be done differently than the sameold.
Interesting phrase as one place where Knieling was spot on was advocating the use of containers for general freight. He was also on the right track about reducing tare weight, with the articulated "Fuel Foilers" and double-stack cars being an incremental approach to his ideal of the integral train.
I'll side with RWM with his comment on Knieling's mechanical ideas. As an example, Knieling proposed using a combined cycle gas turbine plant with single phase AC drive - the combined cycle turbine would have been too large and single phase AC is not a good choice for traction motors.
Another Knieling mistake was his criticism of traction alternators versus traction generators - completely missing the limitations of DC generators in high HP locomotives.
Summing up, Knieling had a lot of high level insight, but missed some of the details.
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