November 2008

• ...that Silkstone Common railway station near Barnsley in South Yorkshire, England, is built over the tunnel through which passed the Silkstone Wagonway, an early rail link from the coal pits in Silkstone Common via a rope-hauled incline and the village of Silkstone to the Barnsley Canal?

• ...that the Tramway de Bordeaux in France uses an Alimentation par Sol (APS) ground-level power supply system in the city centre to avoid overhead wires spoiling the view of buildings?

• ...that the Prussian T 20 was the most powerful tank locomotive to be procured by the Deutsche Reichsbahn-Gesellschaft, able to haul a train load of 2060 tonnes at a speed of 50 km/h (31 mph) on the flat, 430 tonnes at 25 km/h (16 mph) on a 25‰ incline, and even cope with inclines of up to 70‰ without needing a rack?

• ...that the EMD GP7 was General Motors Electro-Motive Division's first road locomotive to use a hood unit design instead of a car-body design, providing benefits such as lower cost, easier and cheaper maintenance, and better vision?
• ...that the Automatic Warning System, a form of limited cab signalling and train protection system introduced in 1956 in the United Kingdom to help train drivers observe and obey signals, was based on a 1930 system developed by Alfred Ernest Hudd and marketed as the "Strowger-Hudd" system?

• ...that the Orient Express, the long-distance passenger train service which has become synonymous with intrigue and luxury travel, set a world record for the longest train journey ever made when in 1988 the Venice-Simplon Orient Express made its way from France to Hong Kong?

• ...that Arriva, the train and bus company with operations in Denmark, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, and the United Kingdom, originally commenced business in 1938 as a second-hand motorcycle dealer in Sunderland, UK?

• ...that after Norfolk Southern Railway and CSX Transportation jointly purchased Conrail in 1997, the trackage in three separate areas was given to Conrail Shared Assets Operations to prevent either successor railroad from having an unfair advantage?

• ...that the Prussian P 8 class of 4-6-0 steam locomotives, of which around 2350 were built from 1906 onwards, remained in service on German railways into the 1970s?

• ...that the New South Wales Government Railways' D 57 class three-cylinder 4-8-2 steam locomotives were used on heavy coal workings over the Blue Mountains, sometimes hauling 2000 tons?

• ...that South Africa's Outeniqua Choo Tjoe, the last remaining continually-operated passenger steam train in Africa, was recently featured in a television advertisement for Stella Artois?

• ...that prior to the passage of the Staggers Rail Act in 1980, Conrail was consistently unprofitable, sometimes posting losses of a million dollars a day?

• ...that the fusible plug, a safety device to prevent boiler explosion by the water level of a high pressure boiler falling dangerously low, was invented in 1803 and widely publicised without patent by Richard Trevithick, builder of the first working railway steam locomotive, to counter criticism of his high pressure engine technology?

• ...that the Giesl ejector, which replaced the traditional blastpipe of a steam locomotive with several, small, fan-shaped, diverging blast pipes, from which the diffuser gets its flat, long-drawn out shape, enabled a claimed savings in coal of between 6 and 12 %?

• ...that South Africa's luxurious Blue Train is so exclusive, a second service called the Trans Karoo Express was introduced to convey 3rd class, 2nd class, and 'ordinary' 1st class passengers?

• ...that Samuel Spencer, first president of the Southern Railway in the United States, was killed in a train wreck in Virginia in 1906?

• ...that although the buffers in the very earliest days of railways were rigid (dumb buffers), they soon came to be spring-loaded, while those fitted to modern locomotives and rolling stock incorporate oleo-pneumatic shock absorbers?

• ...that quill drives have been extensively used in electric locomotives to connect the traction motors and driven wheels because they smooth the drive from the motors and help isolate them from mechanical shock?

• ...that the Johann Culemeyer developed the Culemeyer heavy trailer, a heavy road trailer with four axles and 16 solid rubber wheels, in 1931 to enable the transportation of goods wagons on the road for factories and other places that did not have their own railway link?

• ...that a flying junction is a railway junction at which one or more diverging or converging tracks in a multiple-track route cross other tracks on the route by bridge to avoid conflict with other train movements?

• ...that the Camden railway line in Australia, a light railway line that carried freight and passengers but was rarely busy, had steep grades and passengers would sometimes have to disembark from the train and walk alongside it, leaving their bags on board?

• ...that steam locomotive United States Army No. 101, now preserved at the National Railroad Museum in Green Bay, Wisconsin, was built for the War Department in World War I but went on to see action in three wars — World War I, World War II, and the Korean War?

• ...that the former Deutsche Reichsbahn Class 44 2-10-0 locomotive No. 043 903-4 had the distinction of hauling the last scheduled steam locomotive-hauled train for the West German Deutsche Bundesbahn on October 26, 1977?

• ...that Edward Entwistle became the world's first passenger train driver when Stephenson's Rocket began regular service between Liverpool and Manchester?
• ...that steam locomotives of the 2-12-4 wheel arrangement include only one standard gauge European example, the class 46 of Bulgarian State Railways (BDZ)?

• ...that the town of Bezdonys was the site of one of the most daring and successful train robberies in history, the Bezdany raid, when in 1908 a group of Polish revolutionaries led by Józef Piłsudski stole roughly 200,000 Russian rubles from a passenger train?

• ...that Kriegslokomotiven were German 'war locomotives', produced in large numbers during the Second World War, whose construction was tailored to wartime economic circumstances such as shortages of materials, goods transportation (in support of military logistics), ease of maintenance under difficult conditions, resistance to extreme weather, limited life and rapid, cheap, mass production?

• ...that the fictional Platform 9¾ of King's Cross railway station, featured in the Harry Potter books and films, has been commemorated with a 'Platform 9¾' sign in the actual station building, complete with a luggage trolley ‘stuck’ halfway through the wall?

• ...that rotary car dumpers, mechanisms used for unloading certain railroad cars that hold the car to a section of track and rotate the track and car together to dump out the contents, are making open hopper cars obsolete through faster unloading time and elimination of the wasted volume under the sloping bottoms of a traditional hopper car?