for those interested in lateral thinking.O. Bullied while CME of Eire National Railways in 1950,s built and ran a Locmotive somewhat like a small Jawn Henry [N&W] in looks,,it had piston valved engines in each bogie[truck] a boiler which was double ended and fired by stoker in a firebox at the middle with turf from a hopper, this loco ran successfully at its designed speed of 70MPH, was very quiet in running [fan drafting at both ends of the boiler] and tracked like a 6 axle diesel.. it was planned to supplement diesels in case of Oil shortages, but did not proceed..in use it burned about 90lbs of turf /mile, since turf ahs about half the BTUs of coal,this was a pretty good boiler/engine design when compared to average coal burning locos of the time..the small bore high speed steam engines in the bogies had characteristics similar to electric motors and this was a deliberate part of the design to give similar acceleration to D/E locos..very interesting!
