by Emmett Smith
The Watercress Line official website…
http://www.watercressline.co.uk/
…has some very good, very detailed and illustrated sections on actual steam locomotive boiler operation and maintenance:
http://www.watercressline.co.uk/tw/pages/mutual.htm
These pictures are worth the many words that go with them:
http://www.watercressline.co.uk/tw/pages/howworks.htm
This English heritage steam railway line, in Hants, is operated by volunteers to enable steam engines to haul trains on the long, steep gradients of the Hampshire countryside.
And, as a comprehensive and detailed source of technical detail in one site, it is among the best “how to” ones I’ve found yet!
[Bodwyn Wook all text-rights reserved & all other rights revert to holders 10 July 2009]
These UK restored trains are always shiny. Mainly they go in for these greens, and I see that one of US the southern railroads had really neat green lcomotives. That heavy duty black all the time is really depressing I think, but I suppose as hot as the engines got it made sense, since any paint job either has to be touched up all the time or else it just chars. Our US steam excursion hobby lines keep their locos pretty shined up though, I suppose that is central to the whole plan.
It would be cool to take for example a Q-2 and put wheels on it and drive on the highway! I got the Drury book and I see he said that the PRR had built a locomotive during WW II that was “a hippotamus.” This was when everybody else was going in for decapods and _hippotamus_ is the word for it. You have some pictures you posted earlier of this one. There was a guy in hs who went to state in greco-roman wrestling, we said he was a herbivore and a hippotamus and he seemed to think these were compliments. Maybe so, he was a real mellow guy!
I guess they’d bust your ass on account of the weight tearing up the road, but it would be a gas to waltz into the DVR and tell the lady “I want plates for a locomotive!” People saw you coming and they would pull out their cell phones out of their so called brains and DRIVE! Away I mean.
Why not just win a lottery and build a railroad and replica Q2 for yourself, and drive it and say “private property!” and “Scram! Beat it! Go away!” Now THAT would be Libertarian in the travesty sense that indeed some Libertarians themselves take it to be the /whole/ of the Word and the Gospel. They are the ones anyway who scare the Bejesus out of leftists: “Selfish!”
IS it a stereotype?
I think you misread Drury, the context seems to be that PRR built a hippopotamus of a decapod (nearly 400,000 pounds) while other railroads were trying to optimize decapod lightness /and/ spread traction over ten driving wheels. Also, the western PRR divisions built an even heavier 2-10-0, even closer to 400,000 pounds.
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