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Admiral Biscuit


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  • Tuesday
    March Music Monday 4

    March Music Monday 4

    For all the :yay: . . . guff I pile on my manager, he occasionally dispenses pearls of wisdom, or names songs that it turns out that I really, really like.


    Source

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    26 comments · 158 views
  • 1 week
    March Music Monday 3

    I think I mentioned in the first one of these that my manager always plays the same top-40 Country station all day every day.


    Source

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    14 comments · 209 views
  • 2 weeks
    March Music Monday 2

    Alrighty fellow music lovers, it's another Monday in March, and you know what that means!

    ... 'cause you read the title :heart:


    Source

    This one doesn't have as much of a back story.

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    9 comments · 211 views
  • 3 weeks
    March Music Monday 1

    This is pretty much what it says on the tin.

    See, ponies like music, I think that's pretty well-established canon. I like music, too, and I thought I'd introduce you to some music you might not have heard before. After all, I've been introduced to music by other people through the years, oftentimes something I'd never have found on my own.

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    29 comments · 295 views
  • 5 weeks
    MECHANIC: The Most Boring One Yet

    I hesitate to even suggest you grab your favorite beverage, you're just gonna skim this one. But, if you're game:


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    17 comments · 318 views
Apr
30th
2020

Story Notes: Through the Ice · 2:38am Apr 30th, 2020

First off, a big thanks to Somber, ROBCakeran53, and SirNotAppearingInThisFic for pre-reading!



Source

Warning: spoilers beyond the break.


This is one of those stories where I’m sort of at a loss about what to put in the blog post, so we’ll begin with facts.

Back in Ye Olde Times, liveries were a place were you could rent a horse or several, a wagon, a wagon with horses to pull it--including a driver, even, if you weren’t so good at driving horses yourself. Sort of like U-Haul, I suppose. Depending on what else was available nearby, they might offer shoeing services, veterinary services, or other services.


Source

Without digging into historical records, I don’t know if any of them typically had contracts with shippers, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they did.

Ponies, of course, wouldn’t need to rent drivers, but they might need to rent wagons, or even other ponies if they had more to haul than they could haul themselves. And of course, ponies could certainly get jobs at a livery, either part-time or full-time, depending on skill and strength.


Back in the days before cars, roads weren’t plowed. Instead, large rollers were used to compact the snow.


Source

That was fine for horses and wagons. Thin wheels could cut through the snow, or wagons could be fitted with skis.


Back in the days before widespread mechanical refrigeration, ice was used to keep stuff cold. Traditionally, the ice was cut from inland lakes and kept in ice houses until it was needed. Just like milkmen, ice delivery services would make sure you always had a block for your icebox.

Obviously, going out on a frozen lake or river and cutting chunks of out of it could be a risky pursuit.


Source

Even after the days of mechanical refrigeration, the technology wasn’t adapted all at once, so there were still icehouses making blocks of ice for refrigerated box cars and for home iceboxes.


C.O.D., for all y’all too young to remember, is “Cash on Delivery.” That means that you pay the deliveryperson for your product when it arrives. That’s mostly gone in the US, at least for residential deliveries, but it’s still alive and well for business deliveries--at the shop where I work, we have accounts with some of our larger suppliers; we pay others with a check when the delivery guy brings the part. And I suppose pizza delivery still often works on the C.O.D. model.


Source (YouTube)


All ponies are OCs. Ancona is named for a breed of chicken (which is in turn named for the city of Ancona, capital of the Marche). Garden Stone is named for a variety of turnip, which probably no longer exists. Most of the rest of the ponies are named for USCG Cactus-, Mesquite-, or Iris-class ships.


Source


In the Irish Hills area of Michigan, there’s a lake called Devil’s Lake. Allegedly, at the bottom of the lake is an ice wagon . . . and the team of horses who were pulling it when it went through.

Cars sometimes fall into bodies of water, and sometimes they aren’t found for years or decades; presumably, sometimes they’re never found. Generally, I’d assume, they were driven by people who made a mistake and found themselves in the water unexpectedly, and if they can’t get out of the car fast enough. . . .

Comments ( 44 )

Educational horse facts make for fun blog posts.

Glad you write these more detailed explanations about teh stories. In this case itmeans I can still be traumatised without even having to read the actual story.

Then again, its stories like this that make me work on how to make it so it eventually doesnt have to happen again, then I get people complaining about me saving them work by taking away their right to work themselves to death just for the possibility of achiving their dream instead of reaching it a little later but far more surely. :pinkiesad2:

Thats why the Wagon my OC hauls is an Artifact. Thats what you get when you throw a more than a decade of single minded effort in solving a particular problem. But, theres only one. And I still know nothing about the world of Equestria to be able to even start to work out what travel involves.

Sorry, bit distracted, its late, am tired, and just watched the firebrigade put the car out in front of the house on the other side of the road. They might need to replace their front door and possibly window.

Wish you an yours all the best.

Sorry for the meandering.:twilightoops:

Occasionally, snowmobiles can be found at the bottom of lakes too, a natural consequence of driving a heavy object over an ice sheet of varying thickness. Kansas has a few too many of them, because we don't get much chance to use snowmobiles here, and people get ambitious. Darwin thins them out, though.

An excellent tragedy.

Fantastic tragedy - that's the risk of taking shortcuts in bad weather :applecry:

(I've not read the story yet, as I'm not that interested in reading the sort of sad story it looks to be at the moment, sorry, but I'm finding the blog post interesting. :))

"Even after the days of mechanical refrigeration, the technology wasn’t adapted all at once, so there were still icehouses making blocks of ice for refrigerated box cars and for home iceboxes."
Aye, I recall that. Before mechanical refrigeration was practical for home use, there were plants making ice with it. After all, the ice utilization and distribution system already existed, but now ice could be produced more locally and at any time rather than only in winter and, often, far away, requiring more storage and longer shipping.

re pizza delivery by buggy:
Neat. :D

I've thrown the word "icebox" into my stories when I needed a character to have a refrigerator, though I had never given any thought as to where the ice comes from.

Reading this post got me to thinking: That's obviously the earth pony way of acquiring ice, and it becomes more inconvenient during the summer. I wonder whether pegasi have ice-making businesses. They could transport water high, high into the atmosphere to force the colder air to freeze it.

(While looking to see whether my science was right on that, I read a web page about how supercooled water instantly freezes when it comes into contact with a solid. Which would create its own life-endangering occupational hazards, as pegasi are solid objects.)

Well, time to go distract myself with something else so I don't think about that ending. It's worse when you don't expect that your last day will be your last day.

5253112

Educational horse facts make for fun blog posts.

Of course they do!

And in this case, I’d say funner than the actual story.

5253806
I dunno about that one. I think sad things are fun.

5253149

Glad you write these more detailed explanations about the stories. In this case it means I can still be traumatized without even having to read the actual story.

Heh, you’re not the only one who’s commented this sentiment.

Then again, its stories like this that make me work on how to make it so it eventually doesn't have to happen again, then I get people complaining about me saving them work by taking away their right to work themselves to death just for the possibility of achieving their dream instead of reaching it a little later but far more surely. :pinkiesad2:

Even with all the safety measures in place, people will still find a way . . . but anything that helps change a moment’s inattanion from a life-changing (or ending) experience to one that’s unfortunate but survivable is worth striving for. Yeah, the guardrail isn’t good for your car if you run into it, but the car’s replacable.

Sorry, bit distracted, its late, am tired, and just watched the firebrigade put the car out in front of the house on the other side of the road. They might need to replace their front door and possibly window.

That sound exciting! Maybe your neighbor doesn’t think so.

Wish you an yours all the best.
Sorry for the meandering.:twilightoops:

:heart:

5253151

Occasionally, snowmobiles can be found at the bottom of lakes too, a natural consequence of driving a heavy object over an ice sheet of varying thickness.

Around here, cars too, for the same reason. Why walk to an ice fishing shed when you can drive to it?

Kansas has a few too many of them, because we don't get much chance to use snowmobiles here, and people get ambitious. Darwin thins them out, though.

There are trails up in northern Michigan that are meant for snowmobiles. And annually, an over-the-ice route to Mackinac Island which is supposed to be safe for people and perhaps people with horses. Possibly snowmobiles, too, although they’re not allowed on the island AFAIK.

5253271
It is. If there’s a moral at all, it’s don’t go places if you don’t know for sure what those places are.

5253297

(I've not read the story yet, as I'm not that interested in reading the sort of sad story it looks to be at the moment, sorry, but I'm finding the blog post interesting. :))

That’s understandable . . . it turns out just like you’d think it turns out.

"Even after the days of mechanical refrigeration, the technology wasn’t adapted all at once, so there were still icehouses making blocks of ice for refrigerated box cars and for home iceboxes."

After all, the ice utilization and distribution system already existed, but now ice could be produced more locally and at any time rather than only in winter and, often, far away, requiring more storage and longer shipping.

Yeah, that and the obvious situation where not everybody could upgrade all at once kept them going at least into the 50s, possibly later (not entirely sure). And of course you can still get commerical ice; there are coolers at gas stations around where I live and I’ve bought it before when I need a bunch of ice all at once.

Neat. :D

I’ll be honest, I was hoping to find something on Mackinac Island (where cars are banned), but apparently they’re boring and deliver by bicycle.

5253477

I've thrown the word "icebox" into my stories when I needed a character to have a refrigerator, though I had never given any thought as to where the ice comes from.

And now you know!

Bonus fact, back in Ye Olde Days, box cars that needed to keep their contents cold were also cooled with blocks of ice, and there was a whole industry around that, loading platforms and the whole works. They typically had roof hatches where the ice was loaded in.

walthers.com/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image/441x300/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/i/c/icing_platformdock_293-7015.gif
(it’s only a model :P)

Reading this post got me to thinking: That's obviously the earth pony way of acquiring ice, and it becomes more inconvenient during the summer. I wonder whether pegasi have ice-making businesses. They could transport water high, high into the atmosphere to force the colder air to freeze it.

You’re not the only one to think this. :heart: I figure that you’ve got a lot of farmponies who don’t have much work in the winter, and cutting blocks of ice is a way to get a few bits in an otherwise unproductive time, which I feel lends itself to the traditional, Earth model. However, in places where there weren’t lakes and rivers naturally freezing, and large numbers of ponies who have nothing better to do than harvest ice, there would be a possibility of pegasus-made ice being marketable. Or a lousy winter cutting ice stocks short--certainly for the ponies, it’s an option that humans never had, and might actually serve to keep prices steady (I have no idea how volatile the Earth ice market was). But it would also serve to drive down demand for other types of refrigeration--if you could pay a consistent rate to keep your food cold, let’s say a bit a month, you might consider that smarter than paying a fortune for some kind of mechanical device that would do the same.

If that’s a topic you want to explore, there’s plenty of historical materials about how ice houses were designed to keep ice year-round without the advantages of mechanical refrigeration, and I’ll be honest, a lot of it feels very pony.

(While looking to see whether my science was right on that, I read a web page about how supercooled water instantly freezes when it comes into contact with a solid. Which would create its own life-endangering occupational hazards, as pegasi are solid objects.)

I figure that to an extent they’re immune from cold, but (to quote myself):

Small hailstones were sticking to her and freezing on, upsetting her balance. Her face was numbing with the cold as she fought on, desperately searching for a way out. Even without looking, she could feel her wings stiffening as the accreting ice began to entomb her mid-flight.


Well, time to go distract myself with something else so I don't think about that ending. It's worse when you don't expect that your last day will be your last day.

:heart:

5253808

I dunno about that one. I think sad things are fun.

It’s very much a YMMV thing.

Its only because of generators and power lines that ice transport is less effective, as even with refrigeration heatpumps, it seems the energy absorption capacity of melting ice per pound is at least equal to that useable from Lead Acid batteries powering the refrigeration electric motor?

Always wondered how much a block of ice the size of Mammoth cavern or a decent iceberg could generate in a properly designed power station as the cold sink?

5253816
Yeah, thanks for making it clear rather than an unpleasant surprise.

Right. And good point about it even still being available; of course, it is, but I hadn't thought of that.

Heh, sorry. :)
[wikis]
Neat about Mackinac Island, though; I don't think I'd heard of it before!

5253812
"Possibly snowmobiles, too, although they’re not allowed on the island AFAIK."
Wikipedia says snowmobiles are allowed, actually.

5253826
Some passenger car air conditioning systems also used ice.
(There were quite a variety of systems before HEP-powered ones became basically the standard. Ones using ice, ones using steam ejectors from the heating line, ones driven mechanically from an axle, ones driven by a car-mounted propane engine...)

"if you could pay a consistent rate to keep your food cold, let’s say a bit a month, you might consider that smarter than paying a fortune for some kind of mechanical device that would do the same"
Also, there's the question of what runs the mechanical device.

Even after the days of mechanical refrigeration, the technology wasn’t adapted all at once, so there were still icehouses making blocks of ice for refrigerated box cars and for home iceboxes.

Much before widespread use of mechanical refrigeration (ie, in homes, in rail cars, etc), mechanical refrigeration was first really adopted by ice houses. Cutting lakes into cubes was a risky pursuit... and labor intensive, and I'd imagine one ice house probably owned ice rights on one lake, so that kind of sucked for the little guys. Early mechanical refrigeration was cumbersome and needed lots of maintenance, but that's no problem for industry, so artificial ice became a thing. There was even push back from the big ice houses that tried to smear artificial ice as 'unclean.' Which is probably bullshit, because 'natural' ice was filthy lake water to begin with. I'm sure the big ice houses came around to the idea of artificial ice when they realized that they didn't need a huge insulated building to store ice in year round, when they could just make ice and ship it out the same day.

I feel like mentioning that most houses and apartment buildings in Chicago that are built in the 1920s have provisions for ice boxes. Many have doors on the back porch that would've allowed the ice man to put the ice straight into the icebox without stepping in the kitchen and tracking in mud and horseshit. Not to mention flirting with the lady of the house. I recall seeing an old advertisement describing that exact scenario, and the ice man was portrayed as a dapper gent in a straw hat. When in reality, he would've been a big burly man with a big piece of leather draped over one shoulder.

My friend's apartment building has the icebox doors AND a drain system for the iceboxes, that drains onto the floor in the basement, by a floor drain. So you didn't have to dump out the drip tray every morning like some kind of peasant.

ROBCakeran53
Moderator

It was sad to preread, but at the same time, it's a thing that happens. I almost wanna see a sequel where they find her wagon, and bring closure... but that doesn't always happen.

5253859
As you probably know, ice service was still a thing after mechanical refridgeration was invented; the infrastructure was in place and people still had their iceboxes and railcars still had their ice hatches--at least in the US (I’d imagine the UK was similar). In fact, my Mom mentioned, after reading this story, that she remembers seeing ice trucks as a kid (1950s) . . . her grandfather had a grocery store business which IIRC also delivered coal for furnaces; I don’t know if they were still doing that in the 50s.

Always wondered how much a block of ice the size of Mammoth cavern or a decent iceberg could generate in a properly designed power station as the cold sink?

I hadn’t thought of using naturally-sourced ice on the backside of a stirling engine or some other heat engine--that might work. I do know from historical books I have, you can keep ice for a surprisingly long time in a properly designed ice house. I havne’t found any specific references to it, but I have to imagine that back in the day, some enterprising farmers were making their own ice in the winter; just build forms that are the standard size, set them outside in the winter, put in water, wait a few days, and you have free ice. Repeat as needed.

5253901

"Possibly snowmobiles, too, although they’re not allowed on the island AFAIK."
Wikipedia says snowmobiles are allowed, actually.

Huh, I didn’t know that.

Some passenger car air conditioning systems also used ice.
(There were quite a variety of systems before HEP-powered ones became basically the standard. Ones using ice, ones using steam ejectors from the heating line, ones driven mechanically from an axle, ones driven by a car-mounted propane engine...)

I’d never looked into the history of automotive A/C, but that doesn’t surprise me. My grandpa owned at least one car that had a gasoline-powered heater as an add-on.

Also, there's the question of what runs the mechanical device.

There is.

I’ve never put the effort it, but it has occured to me on more than one occasion that I could build an insulated box, and if I made ice all winter long (usually not a problem in Michigan), and if I had a proper cold place where I could keep that ice, I could refrigerate my food for free all year long. Heck, back in college, I used the window well in one of my dorm rooms as an icebox during the winter. Natural springs were also used historically for keeping food cold, even when my Mom was a kid.

5253926

mechanical refrigeration was first really adopted by ice houses. Cutting lakes into cubes was a risky pursuit... and labor intensive,

I haven’t found a source to confirm yet, but I’d imagine that the idea of freezing ice in the correct size in molds was done in places where they had cold weather but no appropriate sized lakes--that would be safer, too--and it wouldn’t be a stretch to imagine that a place like that would practically be set up to transition to mechanically freezing their ice.

I'd imagine one ice house probably owned ice rights on one lake, so that kind of sucked for the little guys.

I would expect so. Not too far from me is Zuckey Lake, which used to have an industrial icehouse--I don’t remember all the history, but along the bike trail I sometimes ride, they’ve got a marker for it and a brief history. Honestly, even without rights, I can’t imagine most lakes having enough local competition that that would be an issue, and I can’t imagine a second icehouse setting up on a lake where one was already operating unless it was a really big lake, although I don’t know for sure. I did some quick googling, and while I didn’t find an answer for ice rights, I did find out that ice stored in makeshift enclosures, packed with sawdust and covered with tarps, lasted until the 60s for use in local events, and that sounds like a ‘small guy’ operation.

Also, 7-11 got its start as an ice store.

There was even push back from the big ice houses that tried to smear artificial ice as 'unclean.' Which is probably bullshit, because 'natural' ice was filthy lake water to begin with.

Now, one of the local bag-ice companies (Polar Ice, IIRC) advertizes their ice as being more pure than the stuff you make at home. :rainbowlaugh:

I'm sure the big ice houses came around to the idea of artificial ice when they realized that they didn't need a huge insulated building to store ice in year round, when they could just make ice and ship it out the same day.

That’d be my guess, too. They’d save a fortune on warehousing.

I feel like mentioning that most houses and apartment buildings in Chicago that are built in the 1920s have provisions for ice boxes. Many have doors on the back porch that would've allowed the ice man to put the ice straight into the icebox without stepping in the kitchen and tracking in mud and horseshit. Not to mention flirting with the lady of the house. I recall seeing an old advertisement describing that exact scenario, and the ice man was portrayed as a dapper gent in a straw hat. When in reality, he would've been a big burly man with a big piece of leather draped over one shoulder.

I didn’t know that!

There’s a common trope in older literature of the delivery guy (of whatever) hooking up with the lady of the house (one of my favorite plays has the main character discover the Fuller Brush Man is his actual father); I’ve never used that in a story but it would totally fit in my vision of Equestria. Lots of delivery ponies to pick from.

My friend's apartment building has the icebox doors AND a drain system for the iceboxes, that drains onto the floor in the basement, by a floor drain. So you didn't have to dump out the drip tray every morning like some kind of peasant.

That’s also clever!

One of my rental houses in college had some sort of drain arrangement under the fridge, so when it was defrosted, it didn’t make a puddle. Or else the water just went away through cracks in the linoleum; the house was old enough and rough enough that’s also a possibility.

5268486

It was sad to preread, but at the same time, it's a thing that happens.

My dad, who served in a lot of rural parishes, said that this type of scenerio wasn’t all that uncommon with farmers. And I’ve heard of plenty of recent cases with cars going off the road into bodies of water.

I almost wanna see a sequel where they find her wagon, and bring closure... but that doesn't always happen.

I have actually considered that. It’s certainly plausible, either somepony thinks she might have fallen in a lake and goes looking specifically, or else a diver just stumbles upon her, or even a pegasus looking down on a particularly clear day. . . .

ROBCakeran53
Moderator

5272132
One of my former customers when I delivered newspapers lost her son 100 feet from their driveway. The ditch on the road is so deep, he slid off and got knocked out in his truck.

He was buried under the snow. They didn't find the truck until the spring. I can't remember if he had regained consciousness or simply was suffocated. It was back in the 80s. That ditch scared the shit out of me before she told me, and after that... bleugh.

5272127

There’s a common trope in older literature of the delivery guy (of whatever) hooking up with the lady of the house (one of my favorite plays has the main character discover the Fuller Brush Man is his actual father); I’ve never used that in a story but it would totally fit in my vision of Equestria. Lots of delivery ponies to pick from.

Yeah, the milkman trope. idk how often it really happened, but I would assume often enough that the man of the house who was at work all day would be more than a little concerned that his missus was interacting with several men every day. Let's see, you got the milkman, the ice man, the coal man, the grocery man... then occasional salesmen like the brush man, knife sharpener (another door-to-door job people often forget about), vacuum cleaner man, appliance repairman, and that's all I got.

So I was trying to find that old advertisement, and I couldn't, but I got a kick out of this picture, simply because of the phone number. :rainbowlaugh:

i.pinimg.com/736x/37/dc/ce/37dcce3ef8caee62b9d435b19958d420--ice-storm-wheels.jpg

Speaking of apartment buildings, I may have mentioned before, but fairly recently I did some work at a 1920's building, and although most of the evidence was completely gone, there was a board up high on a wall in the basement, directly underneath the pantries, and it was clearly a refrigeration manifold. Big copper lines, and small ones, one set for each of the three apartments above it. Actually the building was a 6 unit, two three-flats joined at the hip, so there would've been one big refrigeration plant in the basement handling 6 refrigerators. So it had central refrigeration. I asked on a vintage refrigerator forum, and they seemed to mostly agree, only having had general knowledge of such a thing, but one guy pointed out that the manifolds were Frigidaire manifolds that are identical to those used in 1930's standalone refrigerators. I thought it was pretty neat.
https://imgur.com/iNlHuJY

5272116
"I’d never looked into the history of automotive A/C, but that doesn’t surprise me. My grandpa owned at least one car that had a gasoline-powered heater as an add-on."
Oops! Sorry, context could have been clearer there, I suppose. I was following on from what you said about box cars and referring to passenger rail cars, not automobiles; I don't know much about the history of automotive air conditioning.
I didn't know about the gasoline-powered heaters, though, so I did learn something as a result of the mistake, at least. :) I'm now remembering a line from an old radio program that stuck with me; as I recall: "Maybe they've got a heater in their car." (It was a comedy, and at that particular point, two characters had opened up a roadside stand selling cold punch. On the side of a curve, on a hill, at night. They didn't make many sales, even of the hot dogs (that one customer just couldn't wait for them to get the fire started...). :))
...I'm curious, though: do "HEP" and "the heating line" mean something in an automotive context there? I could see the brain skipping over them, but if not, I'm wondering what they are.

Neat!
But yeah. And conversely, I'm remembering seeing a very early home mechanical refrigerator in a documentary. As I recall, it could cool a volume of about one wine bottle, and its power source was a servant pumping a handle up and down, constantly. Needless to say, it was not a practical mass-market item, even before its apparent tendency to leak dangerous gases was taken into account.

5272177

One of my former customers when I delivered newspapers lost her son 100 feet from their driveway. The ditch on the road is so deep, he slid off and got knocked out in his truck.

Some of those are in the country, and not guardrailed. My mom wrecked a car in one on a winter day; luckily, she was fine. The one accident I got to when I was driving wrecker where they were still trying to rescue the guy, the water was shallow enough that most of his Blazer was still out of the water (it was upside down), but they weren’t able to save him.

They didn't find the truck until the spring. I can't remember if he had regained consciousness or simply was suffocated. It was back in the 80s. That ditch scared the shit out of me before she told me, and after that... bleugh.

Yeah . . . it doesn’t take much. Apparently a few years ago, there were a couple of people who were actually stuck snowbound on a road in the UP for days or weeks before they were discovered . . . I don’t remember all the details of it.

5272260

Yeah, the milkman trope. idk how often it really happened, but I would assume often enough that the man of the house who was at work all day would be more than a little concerned that his missus was interacting with several men every day.

My guess would be less often than the media depicts, but not never.

Let's see, you got the milkman, the ice man, the coal man, the grocery man... then occasional salesmen like the brush man, knife sharpener (another door-to-door job people often forget about), vacuum cleaner man, appliance repairman, and that's all I got.

Encyclopedia salesman, tinker, pizza delivery man :P, breadman, the doctor (’cause they still did house calls back then), the mailman ... a quick look at Henry Ford’s digital collection of delivery wagons, they also had meat and produce delivery wagons, kerosene wagon, candy wagon, and depending on your arrangement, you might have occasional visits from the night soil man. . . .

So I was trying to find that old advertisement, and I couldn't, but I got a kick out of this picture, simply because of the phone number. :rainbowlaugh:

Before phone numbers were standardized, there would have been lots of low-digit numbers; in fact, some businesses probably wanted those if they could get them.

i.ytimg.com/vi/LoOiMgT3TWE/maxresdefault.jpg

Speaking of apartment buildings, I may have mentioned before, but fairly recently I did some work at a 1920's building, and although most of the evidence was completely gone, there was a board up high on a wall in the basement, directly underneath the pantries, and it was clearly a refrigeration manifold.

Huh, I’ve never seen that. So the idea was, I assume, that you’d have a central compressor and evaporator, then the freon (or whatever) would be plumbed up into individual, probably built-in refrigerators for each apartment?


One of our group homes had a built-in stereo system, complete with a fold-down record player in the dining room. They took it out when they remodeled, which was a shame.

5272363

Oops! Sorry, context could have been clearer there, I suppose. I was following on from what you said about box cars and referring to passenger rail cars, not automobiles; I don't know much about the history of automotive air conditioning.

Oh, gotcha. Yeah, I knew about the refrigerated box cars with their ice hatches on top; dunno how they did it in passenger cars but I wouldn’t be surprised if they had a similar arrangement on at least some.

...I'm curious, though: do "HEP" and "the heating line" mean something in an automotive context there? I could see the brain skipping over them, but if not, I'm wondering what they are.

In the railroad sense, they mean something.

Passenger railcars were originally heated with stoves, but of course that had its own dangers. So they plumbed some steam from the locomotive to the railcars and used that for heat. In the early days of diesel locomotives, lots of passenger cars were still steam-heated, so they actually had steam generators on locomotives built for passenger service, and in some cases that’s an easy way to tell the difference between a locomotive built for passenger service and one built for freight service (the gearing was also typically different, but that’s hard to see externally).

i.ytimg.com/vi/XjuT7W0QYdU/maxresdefault.jpg
In the above photo, you can see some euipiment on the back of the roof on both the yellow and green locomotive and not on the red one--that’s steam generator stuff, so the red one wasn’t built to haul passenger cars. [You might also notice that the yellow UP locomotive has one more fan on the roof; that’s for the dynamic brake which the other two locomotives don’t have.]

Historically, a lot of train stations had steam lines that you could hook to the cars while they were in the station to keep the heat working if the locomotive wasn’t attached.

HEP, or Head-End Power is what replaced the steam heat; now they have an extra generator to provide electrical power to railcars.

I don’t know what they used to provide electricicty to railcars back in the day. Some cars had wheel-mounted generators; obviously, those only work while the car’s moving. They might have had batteries to power them when the train was stopped in a station, they might have hooked up to an electrical supply line, or you might not have been able to use the electricity when the train was stopped in a station. You couldn’t use the toilets when it was stopped in a station back in the day.

But yeah. And conversely, I'm remembering seeing a very early home mechanical refrigerator in a documentary. As I recall, it could cool a volume of about one wine bottle, and its power source was a servant pumping a handle up and down, constantly. Needless to say, it was not a practical mass-market item, even before its apparent tendency to leak dangerous gases was taken into account.

I suppose if you’ve got a lot of servants, having them pump handles to keep the wine cold is one way to do it.

A lot of houses had root cellars, and some of them had spring-fed sheds that were even cooler (obviously, local conditions prevailed with whether you could build that or not). Sometimes, stuff was kept chilled in the well.

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Huh, I’ve never seen that. So the idea was, I assume, that you’d have a central compressor and evaporator, then the freon (or whatever) would be plumbed up into individual, probably built-in refrigerators for each apartment?

Condenser* but yeah. Because the parts are off the shelf, I'm assuming the refrigerators would just be stand-alone refrigerator cabinets, just minus the compressor and condenser. Also, up until the 20s, it seems the most common refrigerant was ammonia, though in those days it was mainly for big industrial applications. It's still considered the most efficient refrigerant. Though the central home refrigeration might've been sulfur dioxide, which would become more common for small applications in the 30s. Interestingly, carbon dioxide was also used for big industrial applications, though much less common than ammonia, it was common enough to have advertisements for CO2 gas and equipment in contemporary refrigeration magazines. And now some car makers are looking at using CO2 at 3000psi for a/c. We've come full circle!

One of our group homes had a built-in stereo system, complete with a fold-down record player in the dining room. They took it out when they remodeled, which was a shame.

Aw... that sounds cool :fluttershysad:

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Right.

"In the railroad sense, they mean something."
Well, yes; that's why I was using them. :)
I'm guessing you're going into detail there for the education of others, and in case you happened to know a detail I didn't (quite possible), which I don't object to at all. :)

Aye, the general system for axle generator rolling stock was charging batteries which then ran the car's electrical systems; when florescent lights and shavers and such came in, as I understand it, motor-generators were used to convert the battery power to AC. Some rolling stock also used onboard generators, sometimes propane-fired. Long distance trains, at least in the US, stuck with that sort of system, with steam heat and local power, right up until, and a little after, the formation of Amtrak, but commuter systems, with more frequent stops, went over to HEP earlier due to difficulty keeping the batteries charged.
Interestingly, there was actually some back-and-forth in the history of local power vs. HEP. As I understand it, in the early days, once there was electrical power at all, it was local, from axle generators or just batteries swapped out in stations. These had limitations, though, so some railroads started fitting baggage cars with steam-driven electrical generators run off the heating line and providing power to wires run down the train. These also had limitations, though, being limited in the power they could generate (among other things, by that time the heating line was low-pressure steam, after people realized that maybe running high-pressure steam down the train for heating was not only unnecessary but unnecessarily dangerous; the electrical technology at the time also required an operator on duty for the steam generator system), and the technology for axle generators improved enough that railroads mostly went back to that. Then HEP improved, and of course having all those systems on every single car increased maintenance, so eventually HEP came on even on the long-distance trains.

(By the way, regarding steam generators in diesel locomotives, here are some plans I found online for EMD F7 A and B units, showing them.)

As for the toilets, that was because they discharged directly onto the track - hopper toilets, those are called. Flush them while the train is moving and the results spray over a long strip and quite likely not around anything; flush them in the station and it just, ah, plops right there in full view and waft of the platform.
Interestingly, this system lasted much longer; the Amfleet II cars were originally built with it in the 1980s, as far as I know (though the Amfleet Is, built earlier but for service in denser areas, had retention toilets), the Superliners originally had hybrid systems with small retention tanks and macerator pumps that would hold waste until the train got up to speed, then dump it (not the first time toilets were enabled or disabled based on train speed, which I've read led to some speed restrictions on bridges), Via Rail in Canada still uses hopper toilets with, due to budgetary issues, as far as I know no current plans to change that, and mainline trains in the UK were still using some in 2019, and I'm not sure they've fully eliminated them either. And that's just some of the countries one might have thought did away with them a while ago.

"I suppose if you’ve got a lot of servants, having them pump handles to keep the wine cold is one way to do it."
Yeah, but so are ice buckets. I rather suspect that that was more to show off that you did have the servants, as well as the money and interest/connections to get the gadget.

"A lot of houses had root cellars, and some of them had spring-fed sheds that were even cooler (obviously, local conditions prevailed with whether you could build that or not). Sometimes, stuff was kept chilled in the well."
Aye, I've heard of some of that. :)
There was also a cooler design, the name of which I unfortunately don't recall at the moment, which was basically just a closet with slatted shelves and two vents to the outside, one at the top and one at the bottom.

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"Before phone numbers were standardized, there would have been lots of low-digit numbers"
I also think I recall people asking the live operators for "<place name> <number>". In media, that is, not in my direct lived experience.

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Condenser* but yeah.

That’s what I meant :derpytongue2:

Also, up until the 20s, it seems the most common refrigerant was ammonia, though in those days it was mainly for big industrial applications. It's still considered the most efficient refrigerant.

Yeah, there are lots of alternatives to Freon, but most of them are problematic. CO2 systems are probably okay in the home, but not a great idea in a car because a leak from the evaporator (for realsies this time) could make the interior lethal; ammonia’s got the same problem. Propane works, too, except for the flammability/explosivity of it.

Interestingly, carbon dioxide was also used for big industrial applications, though much less common than ammonia, it was common enough to have advertisements for CO2 gas and equipment in contemporary refrigeration magazines. And now some car makers are looking at using CO2 at 3000psi for a/c. We've come full circle!

Also CO2 systems operate at ludicrious pressures. Then again, we’ve got GDI, so those are pressures the automakers know how to deal with. . . .

I generally prefer my windows-open solution, but now that four out of my last five cars had semi-functional AC systems, I’m getting soft. :P

House still hasn’t got it, though. Sometimes on the hottest, humidest days of summer, I consider a window-rattler, at least for the bedroom, but usually it cools off before I get around to buying one.

Aw... that sounds cool

It was! I’m totally blanking on the brand, although it’s one you’d know. Pretty sure it wasn’t Zenith.

5273149

Well, yes; that's why I was using them. :)

Sorry, I can’t always remember what my readers know about what. :heart:

I'm guessing you're going into detail there for the education of others, and in case you happened to know a detail I didn't (quite possible), which I don't object to at all. :)

Well, yes, and the above as well.

(Since you do know your way around railroads, in case you missed it in the blog post, the locomotive Reuben the engineer was named for was a 0-10-0 that got that odd wheel arrangement since it only had one function--push trains up a hill (or pull, I don’t know which end they put it on). Apparently, it did that quite well; I can’t imagine it would be good at turning corners unless it had blind drivers.

Aye, the general system for axle generator rolling stock was charging batteries which then ran the car's electrical systems; when florescent lights and shavers and such came in, as I understand it, motor-generators were used to convert the battery power to AC. Some rolling stock also used onboard generators, sometimes propane-fired. Long distance trains, at least in the US, stuck with that sort of system, with steam heat and local power, right up until, and a little after, the formation of Amtrak, but commuter systems, with more frequent stops, went over to HEP earlier due to difficulty keeping the batteries charged.

I can’t help but imagine that there was a whole hodge-podge of systems over that time, surely with each railroad claiming they had the best, and some poor long-suffering railroad employee is constantly changing batteries or drive belts . . . then again, that’s job security.

These had limitations, though, so some railroads started fitting baggage cars with steam-driven electrical generators run off the heating line and providing power to wires run down the train. These also had limitations, though, being limited in the power they could generate (among other things, by that time the heating line was low-pressure steam, after people realized that maybe running high-pressure steam down the train for heating was not only unnecessary but unnecessarily dangerous; the electrical technology at the time also required an operator on duty for the steam generator system), and the technology for axle generators improved enough that railroads mostly went back to that.

I do vaguely recall comeing across an ad for a baggage car with a steam generator, now that you mention it. Yeah, high-pressure steam through the cars would be dangerous (although perhaps less so than oil lamps or coal stoves), I’ve never really looked into the tech but had assumed they would have used the last dregs of steam after it had done all its work to heat the cars. I did see a video where they were starting a steam locomotive, and as it got enough pressure to cut in the dynamo, the lights ramped up with the turbine speed. Not a problem when your only electrical use is incandescent bulbs, but maybe a problem when you’re running something that wants more stable power.

Also, in case you didn’t know, one of the reasons that the SPD-40s might have been prone to derailments was the water for the steam boiler slosing around in them. I don’t know if that was ever officially cited, but the railroads that bought them, stripped out the steam generators, and used them for freight didn’t have the same problems with them falling off the tracks as Amtrak did.

As for the toilets, that was because they discharged directly onto the track - hopper toilets, those are called. Flush them while the train is moving and the results spray over a long strip and quite likely not around anything; flush them in the station and it just, ah, plops right there in full view and waft of the platform.

I knew that, and now I know that you know that. :heart:

Interestingly, this system lasted much longer; the Amfleet II cars were originally built with it in the 1980s, as far as I know (though the Amfleet Is, built earlier but for service in denser areas, had retention toilets), the Superliners originally had hybrid systems with small retention tanks and macerator pumps that would hold waste until the train got up to speed, then dump it (not the first time toilets were enabled or disabled based on train speed, which I've read led to some speed restrictions on bridges),

I remember as a kid riding Amtrak trains where you’d flush the toilet and could watch the ballast below during the flushing process. I didn’t know that the Superliners had a system that selectively dropped it on the tracks. Looking back at it, that’s a really bad system, and I can’t help but wonder if the early airliners also used the hole-in-the-floor method of getting rid of the contents of the toilet (obviously, not the pressurized ones).

Via Rail in Canada still uses hopper toilets with, due to budgetary issues, as far as I know no current plans to change that, and mainline trains in the UK were still using some in 2019, and I'm not sure they've fully eliminated them either. And that's just some of the countries one might have thought did away with them a while ago.

Yeah, I’m surprised that anyone in the ‘civilized’ world still uses them at all. I’d’ve thought they’d all be gone by now. Although, last time I was in France (80s), we rode on a train that had been built . . . well, I don’t remember, but their new railcar had been built in the 30s. Some of the towns we went through had manually-operated crossing gates.

Yeah, but so are ice buckets. I rather suspect that that was more to show off that you did have the servants, as well as the money and interest/connections to get the gadget.

Probably--there’s a lot of that with rich people. “Oh, you don’t have staff to crank your wine cold? We do.”

There was also a cooler design, the name of which I unfortunately don't recall at the moment, which was basically just a closet with slatted shelves and two vents to the outside, one at the top and one at the bottom.

I feel like I’ve seen pictures of that, but am totally drawing a blank at what it was called.

I also think I recall people asking the live operators for "<place name> <number>". In media, that is, not in my direct lived experience.

Usually with phone numbers back in the day, you’d have an exchange which was a name (and that’s in some older songs, i.e., BEechwood 4-5789 is a phone number. BEechwood is the exchange, the 4 is becuase it’s the fourth (there’d be a BEechwood 1, BEechwood 2, etc.) and then the last four digits are the subscriber number. There were lists of exchange names, and usually the first two letters were capitalized. There was no Q or Z. That’s why rotary phones have numbers under the digits; it wasn’t so you could text with a rotary phone.

I would imagine even after general usage of automated exchanges, there were a lot of local systems, like in a hotel, where to get an outside line, you’d have to call the hotel telephone operator and request the number through her. Nowadays, most PBXes (Private Branch Exchange) accept 9 or 99 to dial an outside line.

Also, fun fact, in a lot of PBXes, you have to dial the full number from outside, but when you’re in it and dialling another number in it, you only need the last four digits. For obvious reasons, none of those last four digits can start with 9 or 99, and they may or may not be able to start with zeros (i.e., the lowest valid phone number in a PBX might be 1000).

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No problem. :D

:)

(Oh, I saw that, indeed, but thanks for making sure!
[looks up "blind drivers"]
Ah, yes, and it may well have; they'd presumably want it to be able to negotiate yard and siding curves and the like.
(I knew about blind drivers already, it turned out, just not by name.))

Oh, indeed. Which caused problems when Amtrak took over and started mixing rolling stock. Railroad A had people trained to maintain the systems Railroad A favored on its rolling stock, and all necessary servicing infrastructure along its routes. Railroad B, same. But try to run a passenger car built for B over A's tracks or vice versa, and problems can start cropping up.

Ah, neat.
And yeah, I don't know why they didn't just use low-pressure steam in the heating line from the start, but no, apparently someone had to think of that after they'd had, I'd think predictable, problems.
Oh, they didn't use exhaust steam, at least in standard practice; that all went up the blast pipe, and that'd only give heat when the engine was moving, anyway, unless a separate valve was added. It was just a separate valve out of the boiler set up to provide saturated steam into the train line, controlled from the cab.
And yes, a lot of later locomotives did feature small steam-driven generators to power their own systems -- but at the time, as you say, that basically mean "lighting". Sure, there were a lot of other systems on the engine that needed power, but there was already a lot of technology for running them either directly off steam or off some other product of systems already on the locomotive.

I think I may have heard that. Not sure. But yeah, Amtrak had lots of reasons for wanting to go all-HEP.

:)
(There's some debate, apparently, about exactly how unhygienic dropping sewage at speed actually is. As far as I know, no one's arguing that it's a positive from the standpoint of anyone outside the train (though for those inside the train, it does mean that the retention tanks can't fill up and stop the toilets working until the next stop where they can be pumped), but there are some who say that, well, it's raw sewage being dumped directly on the ground, and others who say that actually the combination of aeration and the properties of track ballast makes the stuff a lot safer.
Of course, that doesn't help so much if the train is moving slowly. Or going over a bridge and dumping into a drinking water supply (or onto boaters; I heard, I believe, that a train dumping onto some government official one day was one reason why hopper toilets finally got banned in the United States). Or if there's just someone standing by the side of the tracks, or who has to go along later. Or if there's blowback onto the parts of the car itself (which definitely happens in at least some systems, from what I've heard) and someone has to clean it off later.)

I've only see those sorts of toilets in railway museums -- where, of course, they were not in use.
(Though, speaking of Superliners and seeing the ballast go past, while I've never been in one myself, from what I've heard, you can look down through the lower level public shower drain and see that. Most retention systems are just for black water, with grey water still usually just dumped, as far as I know, and with that shower right above the track, there's nothing in the way.)
And yeah, apparently that system indeed did not work terribly well.
(And the hypothesis about early airliners I have no idea about, but now I do wonder...)

Nope, definitely still out there. There are logistical advantages, and particularly if you're working with older rolling stock that would have to be modified, it's cheaper and might avoid some other compromises. And while I don't think anyone likes raw sewage just being dumped out the side, it's been in use for well over a century by now; plenty of time to find and address problems, and show that it doesn't lead to immediate epidemiological catastrophe or the like.
(But, yeah, just imagine the reception you'd get proposing adding this to a system that didn't already use it.)

Right. Nevermind how much simpler, safer, and cheaper an ice bucket is; anyone can afford one of those...

Ah, pity. But yeah, that's a thing too, whatever it's called...

Neat; thanks. :)

That seems likely, aye.

Also neat, and also thanks. :)

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Ah, yes, and it may well have; they'd presumably want it to be able to negotiate yard and siding curves and the like.
(I knew about blind drivers already, it turned out, just not by name.))

I came across them from model railroading, where the model has to negotiate far tighter curves the than the prototype, but it turns out that it was actually a problem for real railroads as they added more drivers for more traction. Now that I think about it, some of the many-wheeled electrics might have also had some blind drivers; I honestly don’t know.

Oh, indeed. Which caused problems when Amtrak took over and started mixing rolling stock. Railroad A had people trained to maintain the systems Railroad A favored on its rolling stock, and all necessary servicing infrastructure along its routes. Railroad B, same. But try to run a passenger car built for B over A's tracks or vice versa, and problems can start cropping up.

Pales in comparison with Union Pacific trying to run Southern Pacific like Union Pacific . . . that was a heck of a disaster. Should have known that a railroad with a paint scheme that was primer might have been operating on a shoestring rather than by theoretical best practices.

Oh, they didn't use exhaust steam, at least in standard practice; that all went up the blast pipe, and that'd only give heat when the engine was moving, anyway, unless a separate valve was added. It was just a separate valve out of the boiler set up to provide saturated steam into the train line, controlled from the cab.

Huh, I didn’t know that. If I’d designed it, I would have used waste steam because it’s still plenty hot and you don’t need it any more. Since hooking up to steam lines in stations was a practice some places, to my mind that’s a better solution than piping the fires of doom thorugh all the passenger cars.

Sure, there were a lot of other systems on the engine that needed power, but there was already a lot of technology for running them either directly off steam or off some other product of systems already on the locomotive.

Yeah, I’ve never really dug into it, but I have to imagine that there was a mechanical solution to a lot of things that are electric these days . . . heck, I had the priveledge of driving a wrecker with a failed alternator, and since it was an older mechanical diesel, the engine didn’t need battery voltage to ikeep running. All the sundries kept dropping out, one-by-one; I lost the radio and the overhead lights and the headlights and the dash and the radio. . . .

(There's some debate, apparently, about exactly how unhygienic dropping sewage at speed actually is. As far as I know, no one's arguing that it's a positive from the standpoint of anyone outside the train (though for those inside the train, it does mean that the retention tanks can't fill up and stop the toilets working until the next stop where they can be pumped), but there are some who say that, well, it's raw sewage being dumped directly on the ground, and others who say that actually the combination of aeration and the properties of track ballast makes the stuff a lot safer.

It’s probalby not the worst thing you could do environmentally, but human waste is always a problem in terms of pathogens. I suppose spraying it out over a few hundred feet of ballast isn’t all that bad, and it’s not likely that there are going to be many people walking there in danger of getting somehing (and most likely, those who are will get hit by a train, rather than get cholera or what have you).

I suppose it could be akin to airplanes dumping fuel, where if they’re above a certain altitude, it atomizes to the point that it doesn’t rain down on the people below. . . .

Of course, that doesn't help so much if the train is moving slowly. Or going over a bridge and dumping into a drinking water supply (or onto boaters; I heard, I believe, that a train dumping onto some government official one day was one reason why hopper toilets finally got banned in the United States). Or if there's just someone standing by the side of the tracks, or who has to go along later. Or if there's blowback onto the parts of the car itself (which definitely happens in at least some systems, from what I've heard) and someone has to clean it off later.)

I could imagine that somebody unintentionally dropping a deuce on a VIP in the river below would be enough motivation to get things done. And while I never tried it, back in Ye Olde Times we were told not to use the toilets while the train was in station, but I don’t know if they were actually disabled by some mechanism, or it was more the honor system.

(Though, speaking of Superliners and seeing the ballast go past, while I've never been in one myself, from what I've heard, you can look down through the lower level public shower drain and see that. Most retention systems are just for black water, with grey water still usually just dumped, as far as I know, and with that shower right above the track, there's nothing in the way.)

I don’t remember about the showers--it’s been a few decades since last time I was in a Superliner shower. That might actually be a detail in Silver Glow’s Journal--now that you mention it, I do recall seeing one video that mentioned it.

Nope, definitely still out there. There are logistical advantages, and particularly if you're working with older rolling stock that would have to be modified, it's cheaper and might avoid some other compromises. And while I don't think anyone likes raw sewage just being dumped out the side, it's been in use for well over a century by now; plenty of time to find and address problems, and show that it doesn't lead to immediate epidemiological catastrophe or the like.
(But, yeah, just imagine the reception you'd get proposing adding this to a system that didn't already use it.)

A year or two ago, we got to ride behind PM 1225 on a fantrip. Our car was a commuter car (ex Penn Central, IIRC); like a lot of tourist (for lack of a better word) rail fleets, the passenger cars are whatever they could get for the right price. I wasn’t thinking about it before, but if they had cars which had drop-on-tracks toilets, would they have to disable or retrofit them, or is that a legal grey area?

And now that we’ve been talking about bathrooms on various types of transport, interstate busses now have sewage tanks AFAIK; I wonder if they always did, or if a wise motorist knew not to tailgate a Greyhound bus?

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...Hm. Interesting question about the many-wheeled electrics; I don't know either. I tried looking into the GG1 just now, as a famous example, but I didn't find something conclusive (which probably means flanged drivers as a default, but not necessarily). Did get distracted for a bit trying to understand how its quill drive works, though... :)

Oh? I don't think I'm familiar with this incident/series of incidents.
...I have just learned, though, that apparently Sprint, the telecomm company, was originally "Southern Pacific Railroad Internal Networking Telephony". Huh.
...Also huh, quoth Wikipedia:

Ironically, although the Union Pacific Corporation was the dominant parent company, taking complete control of the Southern Pacific Transportation Company, the Union Pacific Railroad was not the dominant railroad and instead the Union Pacific Railroad was merged into the Southern Pacific Transportation Company, the Southern Pacific Transportation Company becomes the "surviving railroad"; the Southern Pacific Transportation Company changed its name to Union Pacific Railroad. The former Southern Pacific Transportation Company retains the name "Union Pacific" for all railroad operations. The former Southern Pacific Transportation Company becomes the current Union Pacific Railroad.

I mean, it says "citation needed", but still, I'm getting the sense there's a somewhat tangled history here.
And I didn't manage to find out which railroad was using primer as its paint scheme in the time I put towards this (other things I need to get to). Would you care to elaborate, please, since it sounds like it's both something interesting and something you do know? :)

Ah, but they do still need it; the blast pipe is a vital part of the engine, not just where they happen to dump the exhaust, and a lot of work through the steam age went into improving their performance. Without the blast pipe, you need some other system to generate draft, which could be either a jet of steam directly from a second pipe directly from the boiler (which most locomotives had to generate draft when the locomotive wasn't moving, but when moving it was less efficient since, unlike the exhaust, that was steam you wouldn't generally otherwise be venting) or some sort of mechanical system, as some condensing locomotives tried with various results but generally necessarily increased complexity.
Also, it occurs to me that blasting the exhaust all the way down the train is going to put varying back pressures on it from the engine's perspective as well as giving the passengers inconsistent performance (and possibly more noise, as exhaust noise is a major part of the noise of a steam locomotive; one of the things I recall reading about at least one condensing locomotive was how quiet it was... and now I'm wondering what it would sound like to have the engine exhaust pulsing back through every passenger car on the train), unless some sort of balancing valve system to only pass so much was added... which is more complexity.
On the other hand, using a blast pipe provides pretty consistent characteristics in that aspect of the engine and automatically and naturally provides more draft when the engine is using more steam, while a separate valve to take low pressure steam from the boiler and feed it down the train provides isolation and controllability for that.

"Yeah, I’ve never really dug into it, but I have to imagine that there was a mechanical solution to a lot of things that are electric these days . . ."
Aye. I find it rather cool to think about. :)

"heck, I had the priveledge of driving a wrecker with a failed alternator, and since it was an older mechanical diesel, the engine didn’t need battery voltage to ikeep running. All the sundries kept dropping out, one-by-one; I lost the radio and the overhead lights and the headlights and the dash and the radio. . . ."
Neat! I knew that was possible in theory, but this may be the first actual case I've heard of. :)
(Though I do expect there are more out there.)

Right.

And right.

Annd right, yes. :D
As for the disabling, as far as I know, it varied from car to car (and railroad to railroad and era to era, more broadly). As I recall, sometimes, yes, just the honor system, sometimes a railroad employee would walk over and lock the bathroom door, sometimes there was a mechanism operated by an employee that would disable flushing, and sometimes it was automatic speed-based system.

Oh, neat. :D
(And I remembered seeing either a picture or video of that somewhere, but wasn't able to find it now, sorry. Oh well.)
(...Also, to be honest, a little envious you've been in one at all. I don't get to do anywhere near as much train travel as I'd like. :D)

"A year or two ago, we got to ride behind PM 1225 on a fantrip."
Neat!

"Our car was a commuter car (ex Penn Central, IIRC); like a lot of tourist (for lack of a better word) rail fleets, the passenger cars are whatever they could get for the right price. I wasn’t thinking about it before, but if they had cars which had drop-on-tracks toilets, would they have to disable or retrofit them, or is that a legal grey area?"
Hm. Interesting question. I tried to look up the answer but, again, failed in the available time.
I did find this, though, which I thought you might find something interesting in.

...Huh. I'd be inclined to guess that they just didn't have toilets aboard, but I don't know.

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...Hm. Interesting question about the many-wheeled electrics; I don't know either. I tried looking into the GG1 just now, as a famous example, but I didn't find something conclusive (which probably means flanged drivers as a default, but not necessarily). Did get distracted for a bit trying to understand how its quill drive works, though... :)

I also did a bit of googling around and didn’t come up with anything conclusive. A lot of the electrics, even though it appears that they had an continuous, unbroken set of drive wheels, really didn’t--at least, if I’m reading the Whyte arrangements correctly (Milwaukee EF-1 is a 2-B+B+B+B-2, for example, which IIRC means two leading axles, two drive axles, two drive axles, two drive axles, two drive axles, two trailing axles).

Oh? I don't think I'm familiar with this incident/series of incidents.

The gist of it was that SP operated on a shoestring and had lots of ways of doing things that weren’t the most efficient, but were the only way they could operate with what they had (for example, one yard would stop functioning once it got over 60% capacity, and they’d just send out however much complete of a train they had to clear space); UP had ideas based on the paper railroad, and didn’t listen to the old heads at SP that said it wouldn’t work like they thought it should. At the height of the catastrophe, railcars sent to Texas took six months to get back out.

...I have just learned, though, that apparently Sprint, the telecomm company, was originally "Southern Pacific Railroad Internal Networking Telephony". Huh.

I did not know that.

I own a train phone!

...Also huh, quoth Wikipedia:

There’s surely a interesting legal reason for that. As I recall, after the failed SF/SP merger, D&RGW wound up as the ‘owner’ of SP, despite their smaller size. Reading more into that would either be really fascinating, or an incredible boring tour into corporate accounting. :derpytongue2:

And I didn't manage to find out which railroad was using primer as its paint scheme in the time I put towards this (other things I need to get to). Would you care to elaborate, please, since it sounds like it's both something interesting and something you do know? :)

That was SP.

It wasn’t really their paint scheme, but come on. Grey locomotives? Apparently in some dirty areas, they hardly ever washed them; according to one railfan, the only reason he knew they had red noses was because he’d seen pictures in magazines.

Ah, but they do still need it; the blast pipe is a vital part of the engine, not just where they happen to dump the exhaust, ...

I’ll be honest with you, most of my railroad interest involves either first-gen diesels or whatever we see on the rails today, essentially because the first-gen stuff was what I saw as a kid (local shortline), and the new stuff ‘cause I’ve kept my interest in trains. My knowledge of the nuts and bolts of steam locomotives is mostly that you build a fire in ‘em, steam happens, most of it makes the wheels go and some of the extra is used for other things. [We could talk about my interest in cars as well, largely focused around the late 70s/early to mid-80s for the same reasons, with a few outliers for other reasons.]

I should spend some time delving into steam locomotive systems, because let’s be honest, they were complicated beasts and very cleverly engineered.

Neat! I knew that was possible in theory, but this may be the first actual case I've heard of. :)
(Though I do expect there are more out there.)

General aviation aircraft are also typically able to fly with a completely failed electrical system--the engine runs on dual mags, and doesn’t need any electrical input to keep going (although like the wrecker, all your other accessories are going to stop working as battery voltage drops).

I got an 80s Suburban with a 6.2 diesel, and after it’s started, AFAIK it doesn't need an electrical system. I’d assume my 1980 P-van with a 3.9 Cummins is the same, although I haven’t delved into its operation; given the vintage, it’s probably purely mechanical once the engine’s turning.

As for the disabling, as far as I know, it varied from car to car (and railroad to railroad and era to era, more broadly). As I recall, sometimes, yes, just the honor system, sometimes a railroad employee would walk over and lock the bathroom door, sometimes there was a mechanism operated by an employee that would disable flushing, and sometimes it was automatic speed-based system.

Yeah, I never tried to go into the bathroom when the train was stopped in a station . . . and now that we’re talking about it, I kind of which I had so I could provide an answer. :heart:

(...Also, to be honest, a little envious you've been in one at all. I don't get to do anywhere near as much train travel as I'd like. :D)

I don’t get as much as I want, either (mostly a lack of free time), but we did ride to and from Chicago on Amtrak about a year ago--I got some pics on my blog. Depending on schedules, I could probably do a few weekend daytrips locally; I’m less than an hour from at least two different Amtrak stations. We’ve also got a few tourist lines in the state, and of course occasional specials . . . .

Neat!

Yeah, that was a lot of fun. Next time, if I get a chance, I’ll pay extra to reserve a caboose. I think it would be worth it for the experience.

Hm. Interesting question. I tried to look up the answer but, again, failed in the available time.
I did find this, though, which I thought you might find something interesting in.

That’s an interesting link! The Buscarril train is similar in concept to the French train we took from Dijon to Nice sometime in the 90s (or possibly late 80s). I also noticed that the Turkish train had squat toilets--I feel like that’s something that ponies would generally use. I seem to recall encountering them in Germany once, can’t remember where.

...Huh. I'd be inclined to guess that they just didn't have toilets aboard, but I don't know.

I don’t remember them mentioning them, and it’s possible that the solution for fantrips is to just lock the door. If people can’t get into the bathroom, there’s no problem.

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Right; the GG1 had bogies too, for instance.
As for the Milwaukee EF-1 and the notation you give... I don't actually think that is Whyte notation? That doesn't use letters, as far as I know. Yeah, the Wikipedia page for the EF-1 lists that as AAR wheel arrangement notation. And I'd guess that's four bogies, two fully-driven two-axle bogies in the center with two six-axle bogies, outside axles undriven, on the ends.
Aaaaannd...
...I'm wrong! Oh well. :D
...Complicated-sounding wheel arrangement, that one...

Ah, thanks.

:)

:D
(You know, I imagine some people might not see why you seemed at all excited about that? But I have to imagine relatively hard. If I'd happened to have a Sprint phone, I imagine I'd have quite a similar reaction. :D)

Huh... ...Yeah, I don't plan to dive in either, sorry. :D

Thanks!

And thanks!

Eh, no one knows everything. :)
(Cars, for instance, while I tend to find your blogs interesting, I doubt I could keep up with you on, much less tell you something you didn't already know. :D)
But yeah, the first-gen diesels can be neat. And aesthetically nice; I don't know why no one seems to build locomotives with that sort of styling these days. I mean, sure, freights wouldn't want the expense for not much benefit (well, for their revenue trains, at least), but it seems like there'd be a passenger market.

Oh, aye, especially some of the ones from the end of the steam era. I you do such delving, I hope you enjoy. :)

Aye, as I recall that's part of why they use magnetos in the first place.
(...I wonder if modern aviation diesels can fly without electricity? I'd guess so, for safety reasons. The historical ones I'm sure could, of course, unless there's something I'm really missing.
I'm not really sure why there was such a big gap in diesel aviation engine development, either...)

Neat. :)

Hah, sorry. :)

Nice. :)
Have fun, if you do take one or more of those trips!

Have fun if you do that, too! :D

Ah, glad you found the link so; I did too. :)
And neat!

Oh, I meant for the buses, on that one; sorry about the confusion.
...That is, it looks to me like you still mean the turned-tourist railcars there; if not, are you now talking about bus fantrips or something?

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As for the Milwaukee EF-1 and the notation you give... I don't actually think that is Whyte notation? That doesn't use letters, as far as I know.

You’re right; I got Whyte and AAR confused.

...Complicated-sounding wheel arrangement, that one...

I did some more digging and came to some conclusions. Since I couldn’t find anything in Wikipedia, I started looking up reviews of models, since they have to negotiate far tighter curves than the prototype, and figured that I might find either “the model XX has blind drivers where the prototype didn’t” or “the model has blind drivers like the prototype.” None of the many-wheeled electrics I could think of had them, and that’s what lead to my second conclusion--

Because of rigid frames and wheel mounts due to side rods, and larger wheels, steam locomotives would have a problem. Most of the electrics I found only had two or three drive wheels per axle, and of course they’re far smaller in diameter than on a steam locomotive, so the spacing between axles would be smaller. So I don’t think that they’d actually have that problem on the prototype electrics.

(You know, I imagine some people might not see why you seemed at all excited about that? But I have to imagine relatively hard. If I'd happened to have a Sprint phone, I imagine I'd have quite a similar reaction. :D)

Most people are boring. :P I never really thought about the origin of Sprint--never had a reason to look it up, and just figured they were one of the companies that sprung out of nothing when cell phones became a thing.

(Cars, for instance, while I tend to find your blogs interesting, I doubt I could keep up with you on, much less tell you something you didn't already know. :D)

Oh, I have no doubt you could find something I didn’t know; one of my readers figured out what a COPENPLAT was on a Ford, for example--and I really only pay attention the the vehicles we see; just Saturday I cruised by a Hyundai SUV I’d never seen nor heard of before.

But yeah, the first-gen diesels can be neat. And aesthetically nice; I don't know why no one seems to build locomotives with that sort of styling these days. I mean, sure, freights wouldn't want the expense for not much benefit but it seems like there'd be a passenger market.

Most railroads have gone back to the wide cabs for various reasons; I think that they don’t do the cowl carbodies any more for maintenance reasons. As I recall, a lot of passenger railroads back in the late days of steam wound up removing the streamlining from some of their locomotives because it was a maintenance headache, and I think that most people travelling by public transport don’t care so much what the vehicle that picks them up looks like on the outside; they prefer the interior comforts and price.

I am intrigued by the new Siemens Chargers, though . . . I’ve googled around and haven’t found an answer yet, maybe you know--why is the engine compartment brightly lighted from inside?

Oh, aye, especially some of the ones from the end of the steam era. I you do such delving, I hope you enjoy. :)

Aye, as I recall that's part of why they use magnetos in the first place.

It is. My brother, who’s an aeronautical engineer, complains bitterly about it. In cars, electronic ignition is pretty reliable, and you could of course put two coils per cylinder, just like they do with mags.

(...I wonder if modern aviation diesels can fly without electricity? I'd guess so, for safety reasons. The historical ones I'm sure could, of course, unless there's something I'm really missing.
I'm not really sure why there was such a big gap in diesel aviation engine development, either...)

Yeah, they probably could fly without electricity.

I think that the main reason why there was such a gap was technology and weight. Diesels are traditionally heavy and not very fast, which is a disadvantage unless you don’t care about either. The last successful diesel airplane that I know of was the Folke-Wulf Condor, which was a recon airplane mostly; it would fly over Allied convoys all day long reporting their positions. From what I heard, they could circle over convoys all day long, high enough that the AA batteries couldn’t hit it, and there was bugger all we could do about it.

Heck, blimps fit a similar niche. Nobody’s gonna buy a blimp ticket to Europe, but if you want something that can cruise around above a sportsball match for hours and hours and be stable in the air, that’s what you want.

Oh, I meant for the buses, on that one; sorry about the confusion.
...That is, it looks to me like you still mean the turned-tourist railcars there; if not, are you now talking about bus fantrips or something?

Oh, I meant rail buses, maybe there’s another term for them that I don’t know. Now they’ve got sleeker trains, but back when I rode them, this is what they had.

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No problem.

...Two or three drive wheels per axle? Talking of rack locomotives, or... what?

But yeah, I could see the electrics not having a problem, for I think the reasons you're saying. Not that there's not still an advantage to using bogies/trucks, of course.
(And if you weren't aware, not all steam locomotives were single-rigid-frame.
Articulated locomotives.
(Also, though you might, looking at the PRR T1, think that, like the Big Boy, it's an articulated locomotive, it's actually a duplex locomotive; the two separate driver sets, with their own pistons and drive rods, are still fixed to the same frame, but the split allows the reciprocating masses to be lighter, as I understand it.))

"Most people are boring. :P"
:D

"I never really thought about the origin of Sprint--never had a reason to look it up, and just figured they were one of the companies that sprung out of nothing when cell phones became a thing."
I think I'd put even less thought into it than that.

"Oh, I have no doubt you could find something I didn’t know; one of my readers figured out what a COPENPLAT was on a Ford, for example--and I really only pay attention the the vehicles we see; just Saturday I cruised by a Hyundai SUV I’d never seen nor heard of before."
Ehhh, I don't know, you know a lot about cars, and me not much.
I mean, I assume you already know about the early history of electric and steam cars and trucks and such? I'm hardly an expert there either, but they're at least more obscure.
Hm.
I suppose you might find this interesting; I found it while looking for something else I remembered (except for its name...) and failed to find.
...Hm. Still not what I was looking for, but perhaps this would be of interest to you?
And I think I'll stop looking now, as I do very much need to be getting on with things, sorry. :)

"Most railroads have gone back to the wide cabs for various reasons; I think that they don’t do the cowl carbodies any more for maintenance reasons."
Well, they do still make cowl units (which are basically hood units with extra-big hoods, distinct from cab units where the skin is structural, as I understand it).
I was thinking more of the particular styling they had then, particularly around the noses.

"As I recall, a lot of passenger railroads back in the late days of steam wound up removing the streamlining from some of their locomotives because it was a maintenance headache"
Aye, but steam locomotives generally needed much more maintenance, and just lubrication, for instance.
(...Kind of random, but something I think I recall watching a while ago and was able to find again that's sort of related and that I thought you might find interesting when I thought of it now:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gH_o5xZ8wRU)

"and I think that most people travelling by public transport don’t care so much what the vehicle that picks them up looks like on the outside; they prefer the interior comforts and price"
Eh. Well, locomotive styling did used to be important for attracting passengers, and I'd say it actually still is, but you may be right on the reduce importance and least from the operator's perspective. Especially if it'd mean a lot more extra cost than it seemed worth.

"I am intrigued by the new Siemens Chargers, though . . . I’ve googled around and haven’t found an answer yet, maybe you know--why is the engine compartment brightly lighted from inside?"
Huh. I didn't know that it was.

"It is. My brother, who’s an aeronautical engineer, complains bitterly about it."
Oh? Are they particularly tricky to work with?
I do recall reading or hearing somewhat that in earlier days of aviation, one advantage diesel planes had was that they could be fitted with radios usable in flight. The radios of the time would be interfered with by the spark-ignition aviation engines of the time.

"In cars, electronic ignition is pretty reliable, and you could of course put two coils per cylinder, just like they do with mags."
Hm. Do you know what's behind it, then?

"Yeah, they probably could fly without electricity."
Seems an odd capability to be left out, aye.

"I think that the main reason why there was such a gap was technology and weight. Diesels are traditionally heavy and not very fast, which is a disadvantage unless you don’t care about either."
But they were actually built and used successfully...
found while looking at Wikipedia for the next reply: Ahh, but I found a mention of them being outcompeted particularly by turboprops, rather than spark-ignition piston aviation engines, which makes sense for the situation at the time, to me, I think.

"The last successful diesel airplane that I know of was the Folke-Wulf Condor, which was a recon airplane mostly; it would fly over Allied convoys all day long reporting their positions. From what I heard, they could circle over convoys all day long, high enough that the AA batteries couldn’t hit it, and there was bugger all we could do about it."
...Huh. Interesting, but looking at the Wikipedia page for it, "diesel" isn't mentioned, and the engine they do list looks like a spark-ignition one to me. Maybe you're getting it combined in your head with the Blohm and Voss BV 138? Wikipedia says that used a trio of Junkers Jumo 205s.

"Heck, blimps fit a similar niche. Nobody’s gonna buy a blimp ticket to Europe, but if you want something that can cruise around above a sportsball match for hours and hours and be stable in the air, that’s what you want."
Well, people did fly across the Atlantic successfully on the LZ 127 and R100 (if the latter only during testing, but especially the LZ 127, as far as I'm recalling). But, uh, yeah, there were quite a few other airships that had... less successful careers.
(And, well, the R100 was promising, but maybe it would have eventually ended badly too.)
And airships do have efficiency problems in some roles, yeah. Just, as you say, efficiency advantages in others. :)

"Oh, I meant rail buses, maybe there’s another term for them that I don’t know. Now they’ve got sleeker trains, but back when I rode them, this is what they had."
Oh, neat! Yeah, sorry about the confusion; I thought you meant road busses, with the connection just being "land vehicle toilets". I'm guessing rail busses (which are indeed probably what you meant) either had no toilets or conventional-at-the-time onto-the-tracks rail toilets, quite possibly just the latter.
...I think that's what we were talking about in this conversational thread? :D

5287707

...Two or three drive wheels per axle? Talking of rack locomotives, or... what?

Gah, I meant per truck (or bogie, depending on where you’re from) . . . the dangers of commenting tired. :P

(Also, though you might, looking at the PRR T1, think that, like the Big Boy, it's an articulated locomotive, it's actually a duplex locomotive; the two separate driver sets, with their own pistons and drive rods, are still fixed to the same frame, but the split allows the reciprocating masses to be lighter, as I understand it.))

I did know about the T1, and IIRC there was a difference between duplexes and articulateds. Obviously, the side rods couldn’t bend no matter what, so if you’ve got x number of driving wheels off one set of cylinders, it can’t bend between them. IIRC, the PRR did the T1 for speed, ‘cause a 4-8-4 would have had a shorter wheelbase and the same number of drive wheels.

Also, the T1 is one of my favorite steam locomotives, ‘cause it’s fast and sexy.

I mean, I assume you already know about the early history of electric and steam cars and trucks and such? I'm hardly an expert there either, but they're at least more obscure.

Like, not super in-depth, other than knowing that they existed, that in some cases the electrics appealed to a different crowd--can’t remember the model, but Grandma Duck’s electric car is modeled after it, and it was supposed to be for ladies and be appointed like a parlor rather than a car.

Also, in regards to the links--the first reminds me of a set of books I bought at the library--practical uses of electricity, printed in the 20s. The second--I didn’t know about gasbag cars, but I did know about wood-smoke fueled cars; that came back in vogue (slightly) in the 70s. One downside was that plumbing leaks would kill the occupants of the car, another was that carrying around a wood fire also has its set of disadvantages.

Steam was proven tech and had a lot of advantages vs. early ICEs but for car purposes it’s disadvantages quickly became a hobble (mostly, I’d imagine the voracious appetite for water); likewise, electric had a lot of advantages early on, but battery tech didn’t advance as fast as gasoline tech. Nowaways, many of the battery tech problems have been solved, and electric cars are more and more practical every year.

And I think I'll stop looking now, as I do very much need to be getting on with things, sorry. :)

Ah. the joys of the internet rabbit hole. :heart:

Well, they do still make cowl units (which are basically hood units with extra-big hoods, distinct from cab units where the skin is structural, as I understand it).
I was thinking more of the particular styling they had then, particularly around the noses.

Building locomotives where the body is also structural is probably not preferred except for in certain niche applications (maybe subways, light rail, etc.), since it can cause maintenance problems. I’ve seen normal body-on-frame locomotives undergoing heavy repairs, and lifting off the carbody to get access is normal--you probably can’t do that on covered wagons (i.e., F-units).

It’s interesting you mention the noses. On one hand, it’s something we’ve produced in the past and could again; on the other hand, as design styles changed, companies that had the dies to make that kind of thing ceased to. Chevy had that problem with the SSR (a retro pickup)--nobody could stamp the curves needed for the fenders with their equipment, despite that being common tech back in the 40s. Likewise, the group that’s trying to make a reproduction T1 is apparently running into issues with a frame--while back in the day, there were plenty of companies who could cast a frame that large, there aren’t any more, because it just isn’t done.

(...Kind of random, but something I think I recall watching a while ago and was able to find again that's sort of related and that I thought you might find interesting when I thought of it now:

I found a video a while back where some tourist line was starting one of their steam locomotives . . . it was a long video, and there were oodles of things to lubricate and adjust during the starting process, as you’d imagine. Not as easy as turning a key or pushing a button to make it go.

Eh. Well, locomotive styling did used to be important for attracting passengers, and I'd say it actually still is, but you may be right on the reduce importance and least from the operator's perspective. Especially if it'd mean a lot more extra cost than it seemed worth.

Like, it’s not totally out of public consciousness, but most people aren’t going to reject a trip on a train because it’s got a F40 at the head rather than a Siemens Charger or what have you. If the traveler pays attention at all, as long as it looks reliable they’re most likely going to be more concerned with interior appointments and/or cost rather than what’s actually pulling it.

Huh. I didn't know that it was.

Yeah, and it really stands out at night. They practically glow in the middle, and there’s no reason why they should, AFAIK.

Oh? Are they particularly tricky to work with?

No, just stupidly obsolete.

I do recall reading or hearing somewhat that in earlier days of aviation, one advantage diesel planes had was that they could be fitted with radios usable in flight. The radios of the time would be interfered with by the spark-ignition aviation engines of the time.

I hadn’t thought of that, but makes sense. I know that you used to be able to make a pretty good radio jammer with cheap automotive coils and some simple electronice.

Hm. Do you know what's behind it, then?

I’m assuming mostly bureaucratic inertia. “This is the way it’s always been done, so this is the way we shall do it.”

"Yeah, they probably could fly without electricity."
Seems an odd capability to be left out, aye.

found while looking at Wikipedia for the next reply: Ahh, but I found a mention of them being outcompeted particularly by turboprops, rather than spark-ignition piston aviation engines, which makes sense for the situation at the time, to me, I think.

Yeah, I could see that. Didn’t consider turboprops, but IIRC that was the logical propeller innovation from the jet engine.

...Huh. Interesting, but looking at the Wikipedia page for it, "diesel" isn't mentioned, and the engine they do list looks like a spark-ignition one to me. Maybe you're getting it combined in your head with the Blohm and Voss BV 138? Wikipedia says that used a trio of Junkers Jumo 205s.

I won’t take the blame for that, ‘cause I read it somewhere on the internet, and it was that guy who got his facts wrong :rainbowlaugh:

Well, people did fly across the Atlantic successfully on the LZ 127 and R100 (if the latter only during testing, but especially the LZ 127, as far as I'm recalling). But, uh, yeah, there were quite a few other airships that had... less successful careers.
(And, well, the R100 was promising, but maybe it would have eventually ended badly too.)

Yeah, they did, and at the time blimps had advantages. But the world moved on, and they got superseded by long-range propeller airplanes and then jets which weren’t as big on amenities but were a hell of a lot faster, and I have to imagine that for most people, a really nice blimp that takes three days to arrive vs. a jet that takes seven hours--well, it’s not really much of a choice.

Modern blimps are reasonably safe--I don’t think Goodyear’s ever lost one (but didn’t research it) but very much a niche market. Better tech replaced them, same as the ocean liners.

And airships do have efficiency problems in some roles, yeah. Just, as you say, efficiency advantages in others. :)

I'm guessing rail busses (which are indeed probably what you meant) either had no toilets or conventional-at-the-time onto-the-tracks rail toilets, quite possibly just the latter.
...I think that's what we were talking about in this conversational thread? :D

I didn’t go looking; I think I do vaguely remember that there was a toilet on the railbus . . . but when I rode it was back in the 80s or maybe early 90s, so my memory isn’t perfect in that regard.

And yes, that’s what we were talking about, train toilets. :heart:

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Ah. :D And I'm guessing "axles" rather than "wheels" too, then?
And no problem; I've commented tired too. :D

"I did know about the T1"
Ah, nice.

"and IIRC there was a difference between duplexes and articulateds"
...Didn't I say that? Or are you agreeing? Bit confused, sorry.

"Obviously, the side rods couldn’t bend no matter what, so if you’ve got x number of driving wheels off one set of cylinders, it can’t bend between them."
Right.
Well. It can, but that's generally a sign that something has gone very wrong. :D

"IIRC, the PRR did the T1 for speed, ‘cause a 4-8-4 would have had a shorter wheelbase and the same number of drive wheels."
Yep, as far as I know.

"Also, the T1 is one of my favorite steam locomotives, ‘cause it’s fast and sexy."
It is nice. :) And apparently quite possibly a better runner than it was given credit for at the time; as I recall, it turned out that it often wasn't run quite right.
Also, it's quite possible that one or more of them outsped the Mallard, which would make them the record holders for fastest steam locomotives, but the speed wasn't recorded at the time. Partly, as I understand it, because they weren't supposed to be running that fast, but some engineers thought it better to, as it were, apologize to the mechanics later than to the customers now. :D

"Like, not super in-depth, other than knowing that they existed, that in some cases the electrics appealed to a different crowd--can’t remember the model, but Grandma Duck’s electric car is modeled after it, and it was supposed to be for ladies and be appointed like a parlor rather than a car."
Oh, neat. This would be one of the Disney characters?

"Also, in regards to the links--the first reminds me of a set of books I bought at the library--practical uses of electricity, printed in the 20s."
Neat!
One time while I was in Huntsville for my master's degree, there was an, ah, issue with the plumbing in the building my apartment was in. As I recall, that was the time I woke up to find a waterfall descending from my bathroom ceiling, and I think I heard the people on the other side of the hall had it worse. Anyway, I decided that it was a good time to take a walk, and I happened to find a used book store. One of the things I found there, which I have on a shelf behind me now, is The Elements of Railway Economics, printed, it appears, in Oxford, England, in 1905. It says "Price Two Shillings net" on the cover. No idea how it got to a small used book store in Huntsville, Alabama, and most of it I've not read, but still, I picked it up. :D

"The second--I didn’t know about gasbag cars, but I did know about wood-smoke fueled cars"
Wood gas, I assume you mean? Or is this something I've not heard of?

"that came back in vogue (slightly) in the 70s"
Oh, neat.

And aye, steam cars had problems with water supply primarily, as I recall. Also initially with start up time, but I think that got solved later on, mostly, with faster-heating steam generators. Still, by that point, gasoline had started to dominate.

:D

"Building locomotives where the body is also structural is probably not preferred except for in certain niche applications (maybe subways, light rail, etc.), since it can cause maintenance problems."
Hm, actually, from the "Locomotive frame" Wikipedia page:

Diesel and electric locomotives with a traditional, full-width body, known as cab units in North America, tend to have their strength in an internal structure. This style of construction is still popular elsewhere, but North American locomotives nowadays are overwhelmingly hood units—with a strong frame beneath the superstructure that carries all the load, and bodywork made of removable panels for easy maintenance.

I don't see a link to details on "elsewhere", though.
But know the GE Genesis, the P42DC version of which is Amtrak's primary road locomotive, has a monocoque body.

"I’ve seen normal body-on-frame locomotives undergoing heavy repairs, and lifting off the carbody to get access is normal--you probably can’t do that on covered wagons (i.e., F-units)."
Aye, I'm guessing not.

"It’s interesting you mention the noses. On one hand, it’s something we’ve produced in the past and could again; on the other hand, as design styles changed, companies that had the dies to make that kind of thing ceased to."
Oh, aye, but styles change anyway; I'm not sure why a given next new nose-shaping process couldn't do a bulldog nose, or one of the other old styles.

"Chevy had that problem with the SSR (a retro pickup)--nobody could stamp the curves needed for the fenders with their equipment, despite that being common tech back in the 40s."
Huh; interesting.

"Likewise, the group that’s trying to make a reproduction T1 is apparently running into issues with a frame--while back in the day, there were plenty of companies who could cast a frame that large, there aren’t any more, because it just isn’t done."
I may have heard that. Not sure, but I think I vaguely recall it, and I certainly could have heard it; I've looked in on news on the T1 Trust's progress every now and then. :)

Aye, indeed.

I mean, that does make sense, but these styles were used in the past; F-units, for example, were used on freight trains, even.
(Though my opinion is probably skewed by just liking trains, yes. :))

Huh. Interesting. Yeah, now I'm wondering too.
[looks up some pictures]
...Huh...

Oh. But if they still work fine, is that really a reason to complain bitterly about it? Would electronic ignition be that much better in that application?

Oh, neat.

Possible, aye, at the least for why they're (as I'm guessing they are?) required.

There was the Napier Nomad, which achieved extremely good fuel efficiency, as I understand it... at the cost of extremely high mechanical complexity.

Hah, sorry. :D

Right. And WWII had scattered paved airfields all over the place and produced a lot of people skilled in designing, building, and operated fixed-wing land planes.

I don't know about Goodyear's accident rate either.

Ah, no problem. Thanks, though. :)

:)

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