Old tech saves the day
Dec. 23rd, 2009 03:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bellinghmanAs seen here: Passengers rescued by Tornado.
It's rather wonderful in its way that when the electric-driven trains were being disabled by ice and snow, a good old-fashioned A1 Pacific steam loco could carry the stranded passengers to London.
He said: "It was a nice way to finish for Christmas, though I think some of the rescued passengers didn't realise they'd even been travelling on a steam train until they got off."
Hmm. I wonder what they thought the plume flowing back along the train from the front was, then.
(Steam trains are wondrous things, but I wouldn't really want them back in bulk. Electrics can run in almost any weather, as the Swiss can demonstrate, and they don't have to run on hydrocarbons.)
It's rather wonderful in its way that when the electric-driven trains were being disabled by ice and snow, a good old-fashioned A1 Pacific steam loco could carry the stranded passengers to London.
He said: "It was a nice way to finish for Christmas, though I think some of the rescued passengers didn't realise they'd even been travelling on a steam train until they got off."
Hmm. I wonder what they thought the plume flowing back along the train from the front was, then.
(Steam trains are wondrous things, but I wouldn't really want them back in bulk. Electrics can run in almost any weather, as the Swiss can demonstrate, and they don't have to run on hydrocarbons.)
no subject
Date: 2009-12-23 05:19 pm (UTC)Speaking of brakes not coping, the French have been investigating magnetic brakes for very high speed braking, which work by transferring energy to the rails by heating them up using induced eddy currents. You can't use this technique at lower speeds because you don't want to heat the rails up too much, i.e. you want to spread the heat out as much as possible.