Juniatha @ Modelcar: >> Much of modern railroad engine design / construction now dictated by $$$$ << .. or €€€€ in no different ways – sure . Yet , I refuse this excuse for what results from indifferent or even appallingly unaspiring plain levels of engineering . After all , the ‘face’ of an electric locomotive is the first thing , an identification mark , waiting travellers at the platform see of their train coming in – there should be a minimum of pleasing and inviting attractiveness about it : an air of dynamic locomotion , blended with comforting solidity and railroadish trustworthiness , , all in an overall expression of technical state of the art fast yet easy travelling . What railway management often seem to miss : * these are times when travellers have got options to choose from , * decisions on travelling by road , by air or by rail are not just made upon strictly rational considerations but at least to some degree upon ‘liking’ – why , car advertisings are all about that ! Some railway management still seems think in terms of old pre-competition times when a railway could tell travellers when to go , what to pay and possibly where to end up, too . Those times are long since gone . It sure is an engineering challenge to put up a design with an expression , without busting the budget , yet it can be done with a little extra effort of imaginative thinking . Elvis : his performances in his early years were something of its own , at that time he seems to have been a cheerful unassuming character and – all in all – a nice guy . He was singing his way because singing was his way of feeling alive . Sadly , he changed later on – or the music business changed him , on the other hand he allowed to become distorted . The end was an unfitting one . Regards Juniatha
@ Modelcar:
>> Much of modern railroad engine design / construction now dictated by $$$$ <<
.. or €€€€ in no different ways – sure . Yet , I refuse this excuse for what results from indifferent or even appallingly unaspiring plain levels of engineering . After all , the ‘face’ of an electric locomotive is the first thing , an identification mark , waiting travellers at the platform see of their train coming in – there should be a minimum of pleasing and inviting attractiveness about it : an air of dynamic locomotion , blended with comforting solidity and railroadish trustworthiness , , all in an overall expression of technical state of the art fast yet easy travelling .
What railway management often seem to miss :
* these are times when travellers have got options to choose from ,
* decisions on travelling by road , by air or by rail are not just made upon strictly rational considerations but at least to some degree upon ‘liking’ – why , car advertisings are all about that ! Some railway management still seems think in terms of old pre-competition times when a railway could tell travellers when to go , what to pay and possibly where to end up, too . Those times are long since gone .
It sure is an engineering challenge to put up a design with an expression , without busting the budget , yet it can be done with a little extra effort of imaginative thinking .
Elvis : his performances in his early years were something of its own , at that time he seems to have been a cheerful unassuming character and – all in all – a nice guy . He was singing his way because singing was his way of feeling alive . Sadly , he changed later on – or the music business changed him , on the other hand he allowed to become distorted . The end was an unfitting one .
Regards
Juniatha
Juniatha.....I agree with most of what you related on the railroad styling and engineering. As for engineering, I believe engineering the operation capibilities of the new engines are probably world class. Example: Wheel slippage, fuel consumsion, reliability, and so much one does not see as it passes by.
But for the appearance of these creations...it seems streamlining or "designs" are not the top priority they {RR Companies}, care to pay for. And it seems...sadly, they care not what passengers think of their operations and lack of incentives to court passengers
Major railroads wanted out of the passenger business back when...Well, Amtak was created to try to retain some semblance of passenger service.
We do seem to have interest in many cities with light rail to move the workforce and of course others as well.
I wish we had more passenger service in this country, and somehow a much better network of rail lines to work with....I wonder if politicians are even going to allow HSR to get a foot hold....Believe the jury is still out on even that...Guess we can hope it might happen some day.
Elvis. He came to a sad ending. Seems, considering from where he came from, and the acceptance he attained, and all the notoriety it produced....I believe it got to the point of getting out of control for him and he just was brought down from all of what it took to continue. Very sad, in my opinion, he was one of the best and produced some beautiful music. The live program we saw...was awesome...!
Quentin
And Raymond Loewy was one of the best Industrial designers....He produced many beautiful items. In the automotive industry as well...Even some furniture....I've read of him doing the trash cans in the late Great Penn Station in NYC.
And of course just one example in the auto world was the design of the Avanti.
Hi Modelcar
>> As for engineering, I believe engineering the operation capibilities of the new engines are probably world class. Example: Wheel slippage, fuel consumsion, reliability, and so much one does not see as it passes by. <<
Sure , absolutely ! ( you have modern high traction diesel locos in mind – I have modern high output synchronous electrics in mind , yet each for it’s purpose involves a lot of brain work in engineering )
That’s the tragedy :
the content is excellent , however the packing is so-so , no-so or even no-no and in my personal view again this applies to both sorts of locomotives – and you can see equivalent deterioration of style in automobile and yacht design – tech-no-logical tragedy !
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6M_bdmKbeA&feature=related
Raymond Loewy : Gee – his metal sculptures certainly had quite a personal touch , for me he reached his eclipse in car sculpturing with the Studebaker Hawk series . And as I wrote in one posting : no , the Lockheed Super Connie did not materialize from Raymond’s drawings . However what he did to the Pennsy S1 already bound to lead a mostly unhappy life that was in my view totally amiss , une grosse fatalité en couture intempestif !
Well , the locomotive – the longest and fastest ever of all express steam locomotives – had eventually been scrapped …
… which leaves us with the task of reversing this formidable historical error …
( the Brits have done it with ‘Tornado’ , now can we stand behind ? ‘course not , I say !) …
… however , this time dressed in vastly improved haute couture styling , please !
Juniatha:
Yes, the Hawk series...As you can see from my "modelcar" ID, I might have model cars, and we do here in our home office. Right above me I have a line up of "fifties" car models. Among others.
One is a '53 Studebaker Starliner, still a beautiful low profile coupe.
Another is the Golden Hawk with the supercharger assisted engine.
Speaking of car designs: Take a peek at the new Chevy Caprice Police PPV car import via GM from Australia. Saw my first one this week.
I really didn't expect to see them here yet. You can find a dozen or so photos of it in a GM website. Hope they get a civilian version to market soon.
Again, for style in Locomotives, I don't expect to see much emphases applied to sharp styling in our near future.
But I do wonder what the new {next generation}, Amtrak power might look like if Congress doesn't kill the whole system first.
Sure would be nice if our {American Co.}, here in Muncie, could get the contract to build them when / if, they do become reality.
Juniatha, said:
"...Raymond Loewy : Gee – his metal sculptures certainly had quite a personal touch , for me he reached his eclipse in car sculpturing with the Studebaker Hawk series . And as I wrote in one posting : no , the Lockheed Super Connie did not materialize from Raymond’s drawings . However what he did to the Pennsy S1 already bound to lead a mostly unhappy life that was in my view totally amiss , une grosse fatalité en couture intempestif !
Absolutely correct about the Pennsy S-1, but Loewy's designs still live in the Paint scheme of the 747 Air Force 1. and in the Baldwin 'Shark noses' (admittedly stil sequestered in that building in Michigan (?). and he also designed the former MoPac logo "Screaming Eagle" as well.
samfp1943 Juniatha, said: "...Raymond Loewy : Gee – his metal sculptures certainly had quite a personal touch , for me he reached his eclipse in car sculpturing with the Studebaker Hawk series . And as I wrote in one posting : no , the Lockheed Super Connie did not materialize from Raymond’s drawings . However what he did to the Pennsy S1 already bound to lead a mostly unhappy life that was in my view totally amiss , une grosse fatalité en couture intempestif ! Well , the locomotive – the longest and fastest ever of all express steam locomotives – had eventually been scrapped … Absolutely correct about the Pennsy S-1, but Loewy's designs still live in the Paint scheme of the 747 Air Force 1. and in the Baldwin 'Shark noses' (admittedly stil sequestered in that building in Michigan (?). and he also designed the former MoPac logo "Screaming Eagle" as well.
.....And he had his designing thoughts and work in all kinds of stuff....Even the Carlings Beer Bottle label.
I really thought the creations he designed looked great....Loved Art-Deco. Still do.
Happy Thanksgiving everyone...wherever you may be!
...Sure, we too wish a good day for all. Have a bit of fog here this morning, but it's to be sunny when it finally clears. Seasonal temp this morning...Low 40's.
Expect sunny and warmer tomorrow.
Wasn't Lowey the designer of the Northern Pacific's two tone green paint scheme for the North Coast Limited?
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2011/11/27/automobiles/27farewell-slideshow.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/27/automobiles/involuntary-layoffs-even-for-cars.html?_r=1&ref=automobiles
Another one for the car buffs:
1960 Lincoln Continental Mark V
http://collectiblecars.nytimes.com/View_Listing.asp?ListingID=COL8110210&From=F
Hi Murray
Well , I saw the site – yet what struck me more was this :
http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2011/10/09/automobiles/09motion-slideshow-2.html
See pictures #2 and #4 : Chevy Camaro 1st Gen by BALDWIN !
Gee , Baldwin , alright ? ok , it was a dealer by that name .. yet I feel confirmed : in my personal ‘equations of company characters’ Baldwin has always stood for Chevrolet , ALCO for Ford and Lima for Chrysler Mopar .
About the 1960 Lincoln Continental : I wonder how , if at all , they had kept the car body from twisting without a roof – but then again : wasn’t that a time when the Twist was en vogue ? Maybe the Continental was still built in the traditional way with a separate chassis – yet with that massive engine and long wheel base I guess on a bumpy road there was an appreciable degree of shaking going on . The new 1961 pontoon style with the vis-à-vis opening doors was said to have been even more sloppy .
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frB4z6EqK-4
Black 1961 drive by – almost an UFO , an encounter of the uncanny kind in between bug-shaped modern cars
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DA1mb-fVHjQ&feature=related
Advertising – gee , those enthusiastic voice modulations of the era , advertisings freely and innocently telling you wonders and tall tales for a bargain . One personal remark : looking at the video , it came to me at Ford automobile styling intriguingly never seemed to find a matching back end once they had a good looking front : that ’61 back end arguably was a tongue-in-cheek effort , with a slight reminiscence of infamous gorp styling like the Turnpike Cruiser’s only a few years before .
Chrysler , my favorite , unfortunately not too fortunate American automobile manufacturer . I wish they had more persistently pursued some of their very innovative ideas like gas turbine , torsion bar suspension ( front end only – the rear end remained what it always was with leaf sprung live axle ) and high performance engines and classy styling as it had sprung up in some years only to die away all too soon , like desert flowers spring up after a wash of rain to die away again – wish they still were independent ..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhtOoLABXfc&feature=related
Chrysler 1960 advertising ; in this one they were really offering an intro to some automobile technology , even dragged Bob Rodgers away from drawing board and pencils ( looks like they didn’t have to drag him too hard for that ) to opt on a little teaching in engine engineering ( he’s kind of a combination of an engine nerd and Frank Sinatra ) and by this occasion , casually yet inevitably , giving us an idea of what a marvelous car the 1960 Chrysler 300-F was – with 413 Wedge engine and optional 4-on-the-floor Pont-à-Mousson gear box that came from their co-operation with Facel Vega , in those years a member of the family of super sports cars .
Uuh-uuh-uuh , hold on a second – now earnestly : how were those swivel seats meant to go with a sporty image ? Ok , skirts were long then – in later Swinging Sixties mini skirt a woman wouldn’t necessarily want to swivel that seat all that much in certain circumstances . A centrally posed tachometer – equally remote from road look out for driver and passenger , yet ideally impartial in case they wanted to engage in a spontaneous discussion about best revving range to be used for sensible driving . The AstroDome instrument panel – gee , that’s just what I mean : styling was imaginative , innovative , sometimes even daring in those years .
Having talked slightly detached so far , Bob then reaches a point where it’s really at : “You know , to get the feel of this automobile and the thrill you *r-e-a-l-l-y* have to drive it !” Oh , I can see why ! Then he kind of warns like ‘beware , this car is not for the average driver’ – on the other hand , who would admit he or she is the average driver ? not me certainly ! If I had lived back then and had been told something like this I’d have almost felt compelled not to step back from buying it ! Listen to how he explains ram charging to the more unassuming mind . And isn’t that 413 looking cute with gold colored air filter housings and what appears to me like copper / orange ram ducts ? mind , this was the real thing , not a plastic cover on ‘what-ever’ engine ! I think it must have been quite an engine , with two four barrel carbs on each side and crossing ram effect intake – a challenging arrangement to tune properly ( on you tube you can hear a couple of dual four carb or six-pack carb Hemi engines idling quite roughly – which probably isn’t just because of aggressive custom cams alone .
Finally , see the car passing by at the Chelsea testing ground oval in high banked curve – I like the subdued yet powerful engine sound , telling of its ease at the job . Bob said peak ram charging was tailored to a revving speed range best useable for hill climbing – yet at test plant hill climbing acceleration from standstill ( see 8:56 ) to my view it’s at the very start the F gained its lead and didn’t much enlarge it on the climb when engines were revving . Well , we don’t know what they had done to gear ratio or rear axle ratio – it struck me , though , there was absolutely no wheel spin to be heard at the start . Not that it can’t be avoided by a sensible foot , however they wanted to exclude influence of ‘lighter’ or ‘heavier’ foot , didn’t they ? Never mind , it’s in that sound where the thrill was – still is ! Only Mopar BigBlocks had that specific smooth , yet powerful sound !
One thing I’ll never get , though : inexplicably the ’55 / ’56 body was longer than the swift swept look ’57 – ‘59 !?? Never saw a ’55 / ’56 Chrysler – so , really how big were they ?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssxzPTa0l8k&feature=related#
A ride through a city highway tunnel (probably in France) in a 57 Chrysler New Yorker with a 392 Hemi
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6sXkDIeymg
See my favourite youtube example of what a Mopar could do : American Scream Machine against European Aristocat
( winning hands down even though having to lift momentarily to stop a slide , half way down the run ) .
edit:
replaced wrong link - it should now let you see the drag race Chally / Lambo
add on Chrysler turbine cars : sadly , they have all been scrapped ( minus some very few then hidden away by private initiative against company intentions )
.....I keep forgetting to look at the "New York Times", Auto section.
Murray, you find interesting stuff....
.....Just a comment on one thing Juniatha mentioned in her post...
The Chrysler Turbine....Looked like a slightly smaller 4 seat Thunderbird.
Had a chance to set in one and see / hear it run over in Somerset, Pa., back in the early 60's.
We were going to head out for a ride, and unfortunately, the fellow that had it....{Owned a lumber yard business, etc...}, got a phone call, and in a few minutes he had to head to some destination.
So....no ride....Bummer.
We did get to hear / see the engine run. It was full of {stuff}, under the hood. It idled at about 18,000 rpm.
You can still pull up a picture of them on the internet here....
To quote >> The Chrysler Turbine....Looked like a slightly smaller 4 seat Thunderbird.<<
That was the last of turbine car designs . I think there were 50 of them built and handed out to selected customers . Then they were recollected again only to be scapped when management had decided to dump this engineering effort .
Chrysler at times seems to have had quite a capable engineering and testing staff and I believe they could have achieved much more than they were allowed to . Unfortunately , with Studebaker having turned bankrupt and American Motors always labouring along fighting not to crush on the riffs , Chrysler was the smallest of the Big Three and maybe management was looking to keep from getting into shallow waters more than anything else – in hindsight maybe too much . There are several examples of smaller makers surviving competition by making the most of their better agility as compared to big companies and offering special automobiles the big competitors wouldn’t want to engage on because they were invariably looking for mass production . Porsche is an example of how a small manufacturer can be very successful although specializing in what was originally considered niche market with high performance sports cars . I think it must always have been hard for Chrysler to stay competitive with Chevrolet and Ford in the bread and butter car market and equally difficult to gain recognition in the high price luxury car market that was dominated by Cadillac ( Ford with Lincoln division found it almost as difficult because in America luxury was then spelled Cadillac , no matter what ) . Still , Mercedes sold S-class cars quite successfully – their luxury sedan , of almost compact size by American 1960s / ’70 standards .
So I tend to think Chrysler could have been successful pursuing a path of Advanced Technology and Quality Automobile Manufacturing . This would have meant to quit bringing up some feature , explaining how indispensable it will be in the next future and then dropping it silently , trying another new feature only to drop it too – there was no consistent building up on advanced technical features so they could be combined to multiply effects and to form a company image of progress and class that would have been clearly above both GM and Ford . Second stumbling stone was varying and at times wanting quality : each time they had a car that customers rushed at , they equally rushed the cars off the production plant , within a year or two accumulating a formidable level of frustration with customers , consequently finding it hard in years following to sell just any car no matter what technical or styling features or improved quality . So , the Chrysler House of Usher has had times of swell business followed by times of depressing austerity , repeatedly had fought their way back only to get on the same merry-go-round .
When Daimler-Benz was merged with Chrysler mainly by Juergen Schremp’s driving initiative , it was like the solid middle-aged German banker marrying the American good looking yet unpredictably wild daughter of High Society – at times partying on ends , about to commit suicide next time , somehow making it to start all over again . Once married , sorry , merged it was party time again for Chrysler – or so it seemed ( it didn’t take long for Schremp to repeat Alfred E Perlman’s boasting when he blew his mind to reporters on the alleged merger of equals in fact having been “a take-over , frankly” – and that proud moment of his was to cost Daimler about as much as the PennCentral disaster ) . For some time there was an effort at improving quality – yet it’s conduct was not all that sensitive and perhaps lacked some imagination . With Dieter Zetsche rushed in for quality management while at the same time trying to re-establish Chrysler as something like an American budget Mercedes , or Not-Quite-Mercedes , I feel the venerable marque of Walter P Chrysler was clearly sold below value and all in all it was about the same aspect of insult by the Germans insensitive bullish approach from Stuttgart as the British must surely have felt when BMW of Munich tried to twist Rover into a budget Not-Quite-BMW affiliate . Both efforts ignored national character of the marques and turned out nowhere’s . Customers probably didn’t know what to think of D-C and besides , quality management wasn’t that successful neither with Mercedes then all by themselves having lots of quality problems back home .
The way Daimler , after some years of trying to ‘run’ Chrysler or run as Daimler-Chrysler double bubble Inter-Trans-Atlantic argumentation corporation , went panic and paid out ( again very much divorce-like ) at almost any price I saw as yet another undignified treatment . After all , how was Chrysler to explain to workers why to stay with the torn corpus of the company and please will you do a good job , too ? Now , with Marchionne of FIAT ( at the same time said to have financial problems by itself ) having bought in on Chrysler , sell-out continues as Chrysler cars are to be sold as Lancia in Europe . However , shrewed Marchionne may have marched on a bit too nonchalant with that simple a scheme of re-labelling : customers who had formerly been devoted to Lancia , an earlier times renown Italian maker of fine medium to high price automobiles , will see through it and those who were willing to buy a Chrysler will not know if to think of it as an Italian American or an American Italian car while feeling haunted by some rather unfavourable connotations about certain infamous figures of the 1930s .
Well , as usually , let’s hope for the best – what else can we do !
....And good morning J:
You covered a wide spectrum of automotive lore, and very much in detail. Can't disagree with any of it.
On the Chrysler Turbine....I agree, 50 was the number, and I believe the selected people to have the Turbine cars, if I remember correctly, was on a rotation basis. Think it was a 90 day period.
They must have pulled out one or two to save for museum units. I think I've seen photos of two in such a location. Of course, the others crushed.
Item: Back in about 1989, we received {in a closed secure semi}, one of the original prototype Vipers...here at our Lab in Muncie....{BWA}.
We {BWA}, was in line to supply the six speed manual transmission for that car in production. It was complete, but a little rough around the edges, being a prototype. Car was used to help final fine tuning of the 6 speed for that application.
Had the original version of the V-10....300hp.
That 6 speed transmission and tooling and some other manual units {5 speed}, were later sold to Tremac and believe it's still produced.
Of course it was used in the Corvette too.
These units came out of the same "Lab" as the much earlier T-10 4 speed unit.
This was my place of employment for many years. In the Lab.
On Chrysler....Again, they have tried to make a jump forward with the 012 model year, 300. We'll see how they do with that effort. It has been given quite a "facelift"....
I hope you do not mind a few comments/questions from outside. Just remember when your #2 2 one has to try harder.
Was Chrysler able? In practicle terms remember the voyager Mini Vans? May not have been a work of art but very practicle.
I am kind of a little nutty about my vehicle likes. I did own an AMC Pacer Station Wagon.(silver).
Personally I would love to have driven a turbine powered car. Closest thing I ever got there was a lot heavier in the Army.
Many Thx IGN
Hi
>> Personally I would love to have driven a turbine powered car. Closest thing I ever got there was a lot heavier in the Army. <<
Ah , I see . Well , this at least could take you to the sky !
.. which neither Merc nor Caddy nor Rolly can as yet do and likely never will
and actually no Ekranoplan neither .
= J =
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OnD_SG35GM
narig01 I am kind of a little nutty about my vehicle likes. I did own an AMC Pacer Station Wagon.(silver). Many Thx IGN
Have not seen any comment on the Pacer vehicles for some time. I'll make one: We {at work}, had a Pacer for a time in the Lab for transmission work. I am not recalling now if it was the SR-4 or our T50 5-sp, but I do remember driving it.
One impression I still remember: It had really a comfortable seating position for the driver. Chair height. And of course, we remember it had two different size doors....Difference between left and right side.
Also, believe that design was also one of the cars that was made to accept a rotary engine. High center tunnel....to accept the high drive shaft height.... the center line of the Wankle engine.
But it never happened. Same story on the Chevrolet Vega. Saw prototype vehicles that were finished, and looked ready for production, but that too, never happened. Program stopped at the last minute.
The AMC Pacer that we had(my wife & I) had a 3 speed automatic. I think the manual transmission was also a 3 speed.
Room in the Pacer wagon for a small vehicle it was huge. My wife is on the large size and when she was pregnant with out oldest son it was about the only vehicle she was comfortable in.
I had this for a number of years and was also using for courier/packet work in the SF Bay Area. Someone else still has the vehicle believe it or not. It is out of registration in California but can not pass a smog test at this point.
Thx IGN
I saw a Pacer driving down the street yesterday. I couldn't help but smile. They just tickle my funny bone.
Thanks to Chris / CopCarSS for my avatar.
My older brother had a '77 Pacer Wagon. What a piece of....um.....uh......What an interesting car!
The Electro-Motive Division's (EMD) BL2 would be the stepping-stone for the company’s legendary early GP series, the GP7 and GP9 (two of the most success diesel locomotives ever built).
http://www.american-rails.com/bl2.html
Would this be the locomotive equivalent of the AMC Pacer?
The Pacers had an interesting nick name especially if it was silver "MOON BUGGY"
Also the turbine vehicle i got to drive for 15 minutes in the army, an M 1 Abrams Main Battle Tank.
narig01Also the turbine vehicle i got to drive for 15 minutes in the army, an M 1 Abrams Main Battle Tank.
GM built several turbine-based concept cars in the fifties - the "Firebirds."
The first two had very distinct jet-like styling. I had a model of the Firebird I. The last came closer to "normal" styling, but it was still very futuristic. It has a single stick for driving it - forward to go, back to stop, left and right to go, well, left and right. Reverse required a quarter turn of the stick itself.
Alas, I was far to young to drive it at the time, but according to my father (who worked at GM's Proving Grounds at the time), a number of staffers, including secretaries, got to drive it around GMPG. I understand it was quite the lark.
It made an appearance (on a flatbed) in Milford's 125th Anniversary celebration parade in 1959 - the only time I saw it in person.
Larry Resident Microferroequinologist (at least at my house) Everyone goes home; Safety begins with you My Opinion. Standard Disclaimers Apply. No Expiration Date Come ride the rails with me! There's one thing about humility - the moment you think you've got it, you've lost it...
Quentin :
Oops ? They did built the Vega , see :
http://money.usnews.com/money/blogs/flowchart/2008/12/19/the-chevy-vega-the-worst-detroit-car-ever
However , maybe your sentence relates to Felix Wankel’s rotary piston engine not being applied . (btw : [ger] ‘wanken’ means to waver , teeter (waffle) – quite fitting for the motion of the rotary piston which doesn’t exactly rotate but sort of wavers inside a space in the engine block of a shape called ‘trochoide’ , somewhat like two interweaving circles where the crossing points have been rounded off .
A contemporary info motion picture published by NSU car maker for their rotary engine Ro 80 – at it’s time a really innovative car :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckOpGfsVr6U
As far as that it’s all fine and convincing – trouble was to be with the sealing , mainly with circumferential strips that were to isolate the three chambers (curved strips to the sides of the rotary piston were less critial : NSU forever kept laboring with materials and wear patterns , it proved extremely taxing to meet all the various requirements of heat resistance , dimensional trueness and mechanical wear resistance , demands on these sealing strips proved much higher those on piston rings of a conventional piston engine .
To mention just two points : as you can see by the motion of the triangular rotary piston , sealing strips ran over circumferential wall at varying slanted angle of contact . That caused them to develop a rounded contact tip which made for a very thin line of contact of sealing strip to wall that for low wear would ask for relatively low spring load , actually , at higher rpm speed centrifugal mass force might have been sufficient by itself . In contradiction with that the rounded tip shape provided for combustion pressure to cause an inwards pointed force on one side of the shoulders of the rounded tip and this worked against sealing , demanding counteraction by spring load . Further , what was praised in the information picture as an advantage , namely the concept’s high intensity of power producing stroke i e angle of rotational movement against non-productive stroke i e angle of rotational movement caused problems with lubrication and heat dissipation – which again caused wear problems which were difficult to contain with consequential high demands on material characteristics and qualities .
See a Ro80 featured on topgear in 1994 :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TMgo7DfT9o
Intriguingly , it seems the Wankel engine concept’s obvious advantage of light mass and compactness related to output never came to fruition in car racing , or not as far as I know – maybe because using rotary piston engines was made illegal or rules were tailored to cause set-back severe enough to discourage the engine’s application .
Although Madza became quite successful later on in solving most all of the inherent mechanical problems , the rotary piston engine was doomed when it proved practically impossible to meet modern standards of clean combustion and high energy efficiency – which was an problem caused by the typical squeezed shape of combustion space and thus was inherently characteristic of the Wankel engine . Even Jeremy concedes there is something special to the Madza RX8 with 1.3 liter 220 hp rotary piston engine :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRiPSlx8PxA&feature=related
Victrola1
>> Would this be the locomotive equivalent of the AMC Pacer? <<
Dunno – why , AMC never was as successful as EMD …
As for mass production as well as for relative horse power , each in it’s context , I think the early EMD diesels were to locomotives what the VW beetle was to cars :
A round nosed standard model mass produced in vast numbers – with an austere short list of options , except for colors – pathetically under-powered both in absolute value and in specific power to mass ratio , yet ‘economic’ if only you looked at it from a suiting angle – for a long time selling like mad to replace about any previous engine / car – for years with no ends an inescapable sight , a ubiquitous part of the scene everywhere and going all places in all kinds of utilization – late models got their power pepped up with parallel decline of reliability – to be handed down to second and third users – with a used parts scrap market – outer shape never changed until the model was dropped and replaced by completely new model with straight angular lines and various options of more powerful engines …
Narig01
Ooh , sorry – I usually think of jet airplanes when talks is of gas turbines ,
Tree68
I looked up some photos – dunno why they always had this drive for making the body ‘turbine-shaped’ somehow , or rather : shaped the way people were supposed to believe a turbine might look . There even was a Formula One turbine race car some time in the Sixties – trouble was it took some time for the turbine to realize a ‘floored’ : power was abounding by the end of a straight or in the middle of a chicane – when it was no more exactly wanted . A driver had to ‘plan ahead’ and that would seem up-set natural car handling .
"Oops, they did build the Vega". Yes, J, you're so correct on that. I related {in former post}, the Wankel engined version that was about ready for production is what was stopped, just short of production.
{Item}...They did produce a hot rod version in production: A Cosworth Vega....Pretty rare. Believe that engine {4 cyl}, was just 122 c i. But had overhead cams / 4 valves, etc.....Aluminum. There is still one here in our area, and it can be seen in the Summer Car meets around the area.
All the points you relate in your post re: The problems with the Wankel certainly were there. Especially the oil sealing situation.
If I remember correctly, one of our test vehicles was a 3 rotor version of the engine, and with the Vega weight, that made it a real hot rod...!
More engine than that car could handle.
Another experience I had with Wankel....In a German Capri. Again, our action with it was transmission. I experienced a rapid ride in that one on a Motorway in U K @ 220 Kmh. After leaving off the throttle, the smoke poured out the tail pipe, obviously, {as your article said}, burning oil. That car didn't handle that speed very well either. Was glad to get out of that one.
Edit: Turbine race car....Check out the data on the Turbine Indy car that just about won the Indy 500 back some decades ago...Entered by Andy Granatelli. Believe it "broke" with just about 10 mi. remaining, while leading the race...! And the part that failed, was a couple dollars in value...
All this talk about cars makes me wish "They" would just quit foolin' around and bring back the Model "A"!
Weird questiion.What difference would a different method of transmission make? I have always wondered if a Gas Turbine would make more sense with an electric transmission like RR locomotives use. IE have the engine drive an alternator or generator. Then have that drive a electric motor.
Kind of like hybred automobiles. From what I remember about turbines the main disadvantage is they are sloow to load up. Iln a hybred all you would be doing is running the engine to charge batteries and or provide a boast.
I have been wondering for a long time.
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