British Steam vs A,merican Steam

[jlethbri]

Having read several British Steam Locomotive magazines, I have become addicted to learning about the British design including their use buffers between their cars and using a varience of the link and pin to couple their cars. How did this come about, and why didn't they chsnge over to knuckle style couplers like ours. Also, their prefences for triple cylinder engines, very light, (to our American heavy weights), tank engines, for (universal knuckel couplers styles). The use of compounding on even smll branch line engines and extensive use of belpair style boilers. Are any of these differecces capable for performing better that our eqiuivelent locomotives?