For those of you who know what goes on under the bonnet of our motors, I found something rather interesting tonight...
As we all know, out engines are mostly 4 cylinder in-line powerplants, with the odd V6 thrown in for good measure. if you carry on up the scale, you get your V8's, 10's and 12's. You can add turbo's, superchargers, etc till your heart's content...
You can also look at the Boxer engines, Porche's Flat 6, TVR's Straight 6, the VR6's from VW, and then the W12 engines from the same manufacturer.
These are all different ways to configure the cylinders in an engine, for various purposes and power outputs. What I came across tonight is a little different...
As an engineer by trade, I've always been fascinated by how things work. Planes, trains, automobiles, all get equal attention from me - and trains are one of the msot overlooked ways of transportation when it comes to the powerplant. Ye Olde Steam Engine used pistons and cylinders, it just pumped high pressure steam into them and used the piston motion to move the wheels. Electric trains take huge AC currents from overhead wiring or a third rail and change it into DC for the traction motors at the wheels. Diesel locomotives, however, are slightly different...
You'll have seen them all over the place - pumping out huge plumes of black smoke but most people haven't a clue what goes on inside them - they're just called Diesels...
Simply put, they use diesel engines to drive an alternator which provides the power for the wheels. Sounds a bit like a Honda Prius to me, but in a nutshell that's all they are. What varies is how the power is generated. Mostly used in the old 70/80's diesel locomotives are 12 cylinder marine engines. However, various other types have been tried, and in the course of this study I came across the Deltics...
I swear I have never seen anything like this in my life...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napier_...note-dkbrown-0
Imagine putting that in a Vectra....
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