Reblogged
Reblogged otthonzulles
Russian fiber optic FPV cables strung across trees on the Kursk front
Reblogged grandground
Armored Wickham Trolley on the rail line between Saigon and Tan Son Nhut, Vietnam. August 1967
Reblogged trainsgenderfoxgirl2816
The California High Speed Rail Song
"Cali — speeding down the Central Valley"
Who needs to hear this? Everybody @transit-fag @espee-southernpacifc
We've been trying to do high speed rail in California since the early Southern Pacific days!
The electrification of the CalTrain corridor was on the drawing board back in 1904, when SP was indeed headquartered in the Southern Pacific Building in San Francisco. 1904 — only finally electrified with overhead catenary in 2024!
Today, in 2025, we sadly have nothing like the famous Coast Daylight and the overnight Lark (deluxe all-room sleeping car service!) ...the Central Valley used to see SP's Sacramento Daylight and San Joaquin Daylight passenger trains, and the sleeper trains Owl and West Coast. (Not to mention all the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe passenger trains that I'm ignoring... Sorry @qstation !)
OFC there's airplanes, Uber, and I-5/99/405/etc — not to Ignore California's indispensable yet fractured Capital Corridor, Caltrain, Metrolink networks.
What's this opinionated former-docent of the California State Railway Museum (as I'd describe myself) ranting about again? Oh, yes:
We need California High-Speed Rail:
Reblogged rawrrpurruwurawr
bro you can't do up the detachable fuel tank like that... aint no one discarding that
Reblogged typhlonectes
man, i just love a keeled scale. not that there are bad scales, keeled scales are just so good.
I'm assuming you will like this gorgeous little friend...
Hairy Bush Viper aka Rough-scaled Bush Viper (Atheris hispida), family Viperidae, found in central Africa
Venomous.
photograph by Cristian Torica
photographs by Mark Kostich
Reblogged copper-crowned
4 of a San Joaquin at the New Emeryville Station by Marty Bernard Via Flickr: AMTK F40PHR 380 with a San Joaquin at Emeryville, CA on September 28, 1994. As can be seen, SP was doing a lot of track realignment at the time.
Saw one at that last spot a little while ago!
I didn't get the train number but 4-set Capital Corridor running cab-car forward probably to Sacramento, not Bakersfield
Source: flickr.com
Reblogged dangerousbride
Kawazu Zakura blooming in town ( 河津桜祭り).
Kyoto, Japan.
Reblogged
The Embodiment of Streamline Moderne
Most steam streamliners have shrouds to bring the engine into a Moderne style. Be that styling the engine to look as new as its consist does on the inside, OR embracing a look that borrows from contemporary diesel power.
Seems the Pennsylvania Railroad T1's were the exact opposite, at least at first. A futuristic design concept by Raymond Loewy was adapted to fit the outline of a steam engine
Just look between these two and the resemblance is clear
The T1's are already fairly modern machines as far as steam locomotives go. True, they are reciprocating machines so they still use cylinders and rods compared to individual steam motors, or a steam turbine drive. However, there's two or three aspects about them to complement their forward styling.
First is the duplex drive. The concept was to create a locomotive that was easier on the track at higher speeds by splitting up the driving wheels. More cylinders are needed, but the actual reciprocating mass is reduced. The T1's weren't the first iterations of this, on or off their home railroad, but they came with something else.
Second is poppet valves; more familiar with stationary steam engines, and persist today in internal combustion engines. Compared to piston valves, poppets allow for more precise timing of admission and exhaust to the cylinder, thus more power can be obtained. Poppet valves were tried a few times in the US in the 20s, and saw use elsewhere, but almost nothing like what the T1's had
Lastly is the Franklin System of Steam Distribution. This is a form of valve gear, large based on Lentz gear as it uses oscillation cams and has valves positions more like a piston. However, there's multiple sets of these valves, and the actual reciporicating mass is miniaturized and housed in a gearbox casing. In addition to the slight power boost offered by poppet valves, this further reduction of weight means the engine puts less energy into moving itself compared to its train. In addition, this protected the motion and meant maintenance requirements were actually lower compared to conventional valve gear.
If you know anything about the T1 that last part may sound odd, but the first engine to use the Franklin system did indeed require less maintenance than others in its division. The streamlining made access tricky, but it was really a problem when it came to making repairs not general maintenance.
All this and more set the T1 apart from anything that came before, or really since. It's only fitting they look the part of being a vision of the future. Just had no idea where the styling originated for them to look so much more modern on the outside, when they were already steps forward on the inside.
The best part about the iconic profile is that it never really left. I don't just mean the later T1's or the similar looking diesels. The prototype T1's kept the Loewy influence up front right til the end. Just iconic
My thoughts exactly!
Wheelslip is definitely one of those quirks that drew me in, and probably the most infamous aspect of them. After about 9 years I think that has a bit to do with the T1's being duplexes, but more with to do with being OP as fuck
- Poppets: Sharper valve timing means a greater surge of force at any given cutoff; bonus points for encouraging stronger drafting
- Front-End Throttle: Admits steam from boiler to cylinders already superheated (whereas dome throttles admit boiler steam to be superheated, then sent to the cylinders)
- Heat Exploits: T1's have short boilers (< 18' length) so the heat from fire to smokebox doesn't drop much
No other high-pressure engines on the PRR had such raw power without something to hold them back and the only engine with Franklin A still had a fairly conservative 205 lbs of steam to work with. The fact some crews found the T1's easier to handle by gimping them on starting.
Another thing that I’ve heard caused their wheel slip was a weight imbalance! To keep the weight down so they wouldn’t exceed the weight limits on some bridges, they tried to lighten it by making a good chunk of the front end aluminum! (I believe mostly just the streamlining for obvious reasons, but for all I know some other minor components were also aluminum). This then caused the front end to be significantly lighter than the rear, meaning there was more weight holding the rear set of drivers to the rails in comparison to the front! So simply just by design it was much easier to break the front set free when starting or opening the throttle.
If I recall correctly that weigh imbalance is one of the things they’re aiming to fix (and by extension at least part of the classes iconic wheel slip), with the T1 trust’s new build. I believe that’s where I got that information, but if I’m wrong please do correct me!
Oh there were definitely a lot of Aluminum used, but the spring imbalance problem was only really a thing with the originals. The two driving sets on the prototypes were equalized with each other, so the weight would shift back and forth between them if just one of them slipped. The production engines never had this issue, as they were built with the driver sets equalized with the adjacent trucks.
Strip away that casing, and the T1's don't have that much weight directly on the lead engine. The actual front of the smokebox doesn't even reach the front cylinders!
If anything 5550 will need adjusting springs to account for how much weight isn't carried by the pilot, and how that will affect the drivers.
Noted noted! Thank you for the information! I know it will serve me well and I’m sure a lot of other people will find it interesting if not useful! And thank you for informing me properly! A lot of the thing I’ve heard I don’t have solid sources on and can’t find anything supporting or denying it online. What I’m looking for is likely in old documents scoured away in museums, lost to time or passed on by word of mouth, or in some book that’s well out of print and rather rare these days. So thank you!!
Q-2 was the 4-4-6-4 duplex, allegedly having more tractive effort for freight. I was looking for something to back up a half-remembered point about the duplexes in general that I thought I wanted to make, couldn't find it; have this bit of fine Linn Westcott prose from Kalambach's Cyclopedia comparing the Loewy bodywork to "strip-tease" instead:
Reblogged anumberofhobbies
March 1943. “San Bernardino, California. Trinidad Gutierrez (left) and Molly Alcanto, women ‘suppliers’ who work at the Santa Fe roundhouse. Their job is replacing lamps and oil cans on incoming locomotives. Mrs. Gutierrez has four children. Her husband is in the hospital after an injury at the Kaiser Fontana steel mill. Miss Alcanto’s boyfriend is in the Army.” Acetate negative by Jack Delano for the Office of War Information. View full size.
Source: shorpy.com
