Hi Alan; Yeah! I've heared of it, no details, but they are beating a dead Iron horse! It's been done before, noisy, as yu say, and fuel consumption outasite, going opr standing. Union Pathetic had gas turbines back in the 50-and 60's big time, but found that Diseasels less finiky to have and hold. Like Diesel hydralics, automatic trannys were tried, too. They worked, but wrere oddball, never felt at home here, and faded away. Interestingly the Budd RDC passenger coach, Diesel hydralic tranny worked fine,we had a buncha them leftover from New Haven daze that would be still running, had anybody wanted them. They had a varriable pitch torque converter, like the old Buick Dynaflow trannys. Sorry, THAT dates me! Very smooth, and would lock in to direct drive at about 55mph, throttle had 4 positions, controlled electrically, from the control cab. Simple, solenoids on a lever linkage setup made it work, controlling the fuel rack on the Jimmy engines, 2 per car. Simple, easy to fix, and you could always limp home on one engine, as the two systems were independant. Have many fond memories of getting them up an' running when things broke! I believe a few of these still run in BC Canada, on the Non Canadian National RR up there?
Seeya on the Train Bob ----- Original Message ----- From: Alan Batie <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Bob Rice <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Wednesday, October 16, 2002 8:56 PM Subject: Re: Rail rolling resistance; comments and trains > On Wed, Oct 16, 2002 at 12:40:35PM -0400, Bob Rice wrote: > > We in USA could do better in this dept. Archaic constructins standards > > in USA have made Acela twice as heavy as the Swedish demo train we had here > > a few years ago. Amtrak had to get a FRA waiver to run it here. We just > > couldn't legally go and buy a big box of ready-to-run Swedish trainsets, and > > plug an' play. Joke at Amtrak: We can't have THESE, they work too WELL! > > Speaking of locomotives, I see that yesterday Bombardier announced a new > locomotive using a Pratt&Whitney jet instead of a diesel to power the > thing. I assume it's still powering a generator... > > I hope it works better than the GE gas turbine loco from the 50's did... > As I recall, it came into Los Angeles once and was so noisy they never > let it back in. > > -- > Alan Batie ______ alan.batie.org Me > [EMAIL PROTECTED] \ / www.qrd.org The Triangle > PGPFP DE 3C 29 17 C0 49 7A \ / www.pgpi.com The Weird Numbers > 27 40 A5 3C 37 4A DA 52 B9 \/ spamassassin.taint.org NO SPAM! > > We've got all the youth we need, how about a fountain of smart? >
