Steam trains

Strange-looking Indian monorail with stabilising wheels on the left side of the train
http://www.freewebs.com/nrlym/

Edited by Mountain Man - 13-Sep-2012 at 22:46

The Great Western railway had its own broad gauge: 7ft rather than the standard 4ft. This provided a smoother ride, but was more expensive and ultimately scrapped due to the more widespread use of Stephenson's standard gauge
http://lionels.orpheusweb.co.uk/RailSteam/GWRBroadG/BGHist.html

Those are good looking locomotives Benzin. Great to hear they're still around

Mountainman, was it the Magnesium Monorail?
http://public.fotki.com/ChuckDoan/model_projects/death-valley-monorail/

The Russians also experimented with streamlining, as this P34 locomotive demonstrates.

Originally posted by Nick1986 What was the purpose of the unusual funnel Mountainman? Was it an attempt to condense the steam and re-use it in the boiler?

Nope.


Edited by Mountain Man - 21-Oct-2012 at 21:03

Originally posted by Nick1986 What about preventing the smoke obscuring the driver's vision?

Yes for the bottom two, but specifically while passing through tunnels, and to prevent the engine crew from passing out.  This problem led to the famous cab forward design used, I believe, by Pennsy.  There was an incident in which the engineer and fireman were asphyxiated while passing thought the Alpine Tunnel in Colo90rado due to stack gases and lack of a ventilation system.



A number of systems were tried out including the European "elephant ears" in an attempt to keep from obscuring the engineer's vision, although no one seems to have ever considered how to alleviate the almost total elimination of forward vision by the bulk of the late-model locos themselves, some of whiich were over 100+ feet long to begin with.

European elephant ears:



The other image is a smokestack specifically designed to lift smoke above the two-story carriages.

I've thought long and hard about this one Mountainman. Was it an attempt to adapt a standard-gauge locomotive to run on broad-gauge tracks?