Incredibly cool photos of trains
Discussion
mcdjl said:
RichB said:
English Electric Type 3...
Bonus points if you name the line it's on
I just recognised the cab shape instantly from my summer holidays bunking into various sheds around London, Stratford was great, Nine Elms still had steam and Old Oak Common was in transition. All gone... 
mcdjl said:
demic said:
I’d prefer the analogue version, at least the computer can’t shrug its shoulders and say “sorry drive, if you think I’m moving you’ve got another thing coming”
[url]Is this more to your liking?
|https://thumbsnap.com/PhemRdsX[/url]Of course these days something like a Class 37 seems like something out of the stone age and is probably just as relatively 'fault absorbent' compared to a modern Class 88 as a 37 was to a Black Five.
How about a pretty cool mechanical oddity?
This is a 151A heavy goods engine built for the Paris-Lyon-Méditerranée in the 1930s. It looks like a fairly classic Mallet articulated loco, with LP cylinders at the front, working the front two driving axles and HP ones on the three rear drivers. In fact, as the class number suggests, it is technically a 2-10-2, of a unique sort defined as a 'conjugated duplex'. The driving axles are indeed grouped into a set of two and a set of three, but the second and third driving axles are cranked and linked by coupling rods between the frames. The cranked axles are set at 180 degrees from each other so the reciprocating forces of the two pairs of cylinders were balanced out. The rear (HP) cylinders are inclined to reduce the length of the inside coupling rods. They had DABEG-type poppet valve gear, designed so that the front cylinders always worked at a shorter cut-off than the rear - to ensure a surplus of exhaust steam going from the HP to the LP cylinders, to equalise the work done between the set of three driving axles and the set of two, and to minimise stress on the inside coupling rods. The 151As were designed to work heavy freight trains up the long, steep gradient between Venarey-les-Laumes and Dijon - which they did very successfully (despite their idiosyncratic design) until the line was electrified, when SNCF transferred them to the north-east of France to work coal trains.
We talked about Garratt locomotives a while back - how about this?
This is a 231-132BT, also designed by the PLM (but built by Franco-Belge, making it one of the few Garratts not built by Beyer Peacock), this time for service in Algeria. They were also the only Garratts intended for express passenger service, with the aim of both accelerating the timings of the trains between Oran, Algiers and Constantine through the Atlas Mountains and eliminating double-heading. Hence they were 'Double Pacifics'. As well as streamlined water tanks, they had the biggest driving wheels of any Garratt (5ft 11in), mechanical stokers and Cossart valve gear with the distinctive cross-drilled operating arms driving rotary cams working poppet valves. They were scheduled to work 800-ton express trains at averages of 75mph, including much slower sections slogging up the 1-in-38 gradient at the Setif Pass. The speed record for the class is 81mph, which also makes them the fastest ever Garratt and the fastest ever articulated locomotive. Despite putting in excellent performances, they were undone by the poor quality of the water available in most of their stomping grounds which caused rapid failure of the firetubes and greatly shortened the life of the boilers. They were worked hard during WW2 which left them in a very sorry state by the late 1940s, when France was awash with Marshall Aid money and (after some fairly shady dealings involving French colonial officials, Alstom executives and large suitcases of dollars...) the line between Algiers and Oran was electrified. The Algerian War of Independence finished off any notion of the 'Express Garratts' being refurbished and used elsewhere and they were all scrapped in the early 1950s.
2xChevrons said:
The speed record for the class is 81mph, which also makes them the fastest ever Garratt and the fastest ever articulated locomotive.
I was about to challenge this, citing the T1, but then remembered that although the T1 looks articulated, it isn't.Still an impressive beast though, and most probably the fastest steam locomotive yet built (sorry, Mallard fans).
Yertis said:
2xChevrons said:
The speed record for the class is 81mph, which also makes them the fastest ever Garratt and the fastest ever articulated locomotive.
I was about to challenge this, citing the T1, but then remembered that although the T1 looks articulated, it isn't.Still an impressive beast though, and most probably the fastest steam locomotive yet built (sorry, Mallard fans).
RichB said:
Yertis said:
2xChevrons said:
The speed record for the class is 81mph, which also makes them the fastest ever Garratt and the fastest ever articulated locomotive.
I was about to challenge this, citing the T1, but then remembered that although the T1 looks articulated, it isn't.Still an impressive beast though, and most probably the fastest steam locomotive yet built (sorry, Mallard fans).
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