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No, it's true. He had difficulty finding an artist who understood that things like Belpaire fireboxes existed and were important to draw correctly. Henry's rebuild was because the original artist had made such a hash of it that he looked more like a green Gordon than anything else, so when a...

Kipling did it with machines too. Steam engines, no less. .007 is the story to check out. With a michnai - ghignai - shtingal! Yah! Yah! Yah! Or even the parts of machines, see The Ship That Found Herself.

IIRC when the 20th century tunnellers checked out the trial bores left by the 19th century tunnellers they found the remains of a 19th century machine still down the hole.

Well there was the Furness loco that fell into a sinkhole that opened up under the track and IIRC is still down there. Which made it into the books as Thomas falling down a mine, illustrated with pictures that strongly resemble photos of the original incident. Thomas of course got rescued before...

Indeed, runaways due to steam engine crews passing out from fumes in tunnels have happened on several occasions. There was quite a spectacular one on the S&D, for instance. And there were probably plenty more incidents that never made the record because the crew woke up again in time to sort it...

That makes a generator, with the mechanical input provided by whatever is pushing the train along. It doesn't transfer power from the track. If whatever is pushing the train along is a traction motor running off the generator output, then you have a perpetual motion machine; essentially a more...

No they do not! Eddy currents in the core represent loss and you want to minimise them as much as possible. That's why transformers have cores made of a stack of laminations instead of a solid chunk of iron. The laminations are oriented with their minimum-area cross section perpendicular to the...

A pulse jet is different again; it uses Kadenacy effect and (in some cases, including the V1) ram effect for scavenging, but there is next to no compression, which contributes to the abysmal fuel consumption. It is arguably even simpler than a ramjet - some designs there is no argument - but...

The real advantage is on high power routes, so an intensive suburban service with lots of trains repeatedly accelerating hard from rest definitely qualifies. Also, operationally, the fewer incompatible systems you have and the less intermingled they are, the easier things get. See also the SR...

Bring back guards' vans! One of the biggest problems with railways is that the stations are never where you want them, so they can't be a complete journey solution in themselves. Some auxiliary conveyance is required at either end of the journey. That isn't too hard at the home end, but at the...

It could have gone up the Lune all the way from Lancaster through Kirkby Lonsdale - indeed lines along most of this route did get built, though they didn't form a direct alternative. Would probably have been less of a struggle gradient-wise as well. There was a proposal involving a tunnel -...

Yes, but it was the conceptual suckitude I was thinking of. What the WR wanted was not only something that didn't have the electrics they had found awkward on the gas turbines, but also a lightweight machine with a low axle load and a high power to weight ratio - exactly what things like the...

Yes, they were intended to match the ETH capability of AC electrics so they could preheat WCML rakes and bring them from Camden to Euston. Fine for that, but painful in passenger service. One thing I did manage to dig up off the system for concealing all human knowledge was that although they...

Track circuits or treadle bars? Incompatibility between wheelbases and treadle bars certainly did exist as a problem, but I don't know if that was or could be relevant in this case.

No, it doesn't. The reason there isn't a proper source is that I can't remember where it did come from.

Circular argument, since the concepts are only meaningful in the context of a system which includes the function of hosting parasites in the first place. It neither compels nor justifies the inclusion of that function.

They sucked though... How to take an interesting alternative traction idea and remove all the differences that were supposed to be advantageous, so that what you're left with retains only the differences that made it awkward. And have it built by a company that doesn't understand metric...

Not just any ETH, but massive ETH, with an index of 66, which was about a third of the total power output. Chug chug trundle trundle. I've also read that the ETH conversion was something of a crude bodge, and at least in some implementations meant that that power wasn't available for traction...

Not sure about that. They had a mechanical linkage for the regulator and a chain for the whistle, but I don't think there was a connection for a bell wire. The fireman knew what the driver was doing from the movement of the regulator and the brake vacuum gauge, and he was expected to operate the...

"Ne vous derangez pas, monsieur. Push the ticket under the door." At least a timer would be predictable, unlike the existing system of doors that just come open unexpectedly at random times.