Hi All--
Alan Richer/CAM/Lotus wrote:
>
> <put-a-submarine-engine-in-a-landy>-ly y'rs,
> Ivan;-)
>
> Care to explain this? I assume waht you're getting at here is that some
> Fairbanks-Morse Deisel locos used old WWII sub engines?
>
Um, no. <g> FM was founded in 1893, and the opposed-piston engine was
designed in the 1930s. Subs used FM opposed-piston engines:
http://www.fairbanksmorse.com/opmar.html
but mostly as auxiliary generators.
In the fifties, someone at FM noticed that these OP engines
(http://www.fairbanksmorse.com/op818.html) would make dynamite
locomotive prime movers. And they did. Low rpm, high HP, torque high
enough to peel chrome off a trailer hitch;-) and on top of everything
else, relatively quiet. OP engines have two crankshafts, one at top and
one at bottom, and two pistons in each cylinder.
They also sound like no other diesel engines on earth. Cheap good tape
recorders didn't exist when I got my chance to hear and see some FM
locos running. Sigh.
FM is still in business, but they got out of the diesel-electric
locomotive business in the sixties. RR shops weren't geared up to
rebuild the engines and didn't want to invest the money for the special
tools needed, so only a couple of hundred FM diesels were ever sold.
The Train Master, a 2400-HP unit at a time when most other locos were
maxed out at 15-1800 HP, is one of the all-time favorites of railfans
everywhere.
To find out more about the Train Master, check out
http://www.nwhs.org/ecomm_prod_snaps/book_tmaster.html
<you-probably-wouldn't-really-want-a-sub-engine-in-your-landy>-ly y'rs,
Ivan;-)
----------------------------------------------
Ivan Van Laningham
Symantec
http://www.pauahtun.org
http://www.foretec.com/python/workshops/1998-11/proceedings.html
Army Signal Corps: Cu Chi, Class of '70
Author: Teach Yourself Python in 24 Hours
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Fri Apr 20 2001 - 15:11:15 EDT