Re: European freight yard operations vs US Operations

On 9/3/2009 12:48 AM Twibil spake thus:

In an interesting and little-known sidelight; the Southern Pacific's
cab-forwards had a built-in advantage in the weight-transfer
department: where a normally oriented articulated would *lose* weight
on the pivoting driver set as the locomotive climbed a grade -possibly
causing a loss of traction- the pivoting set on cab-forwards actually
*gained* more traction on grades, which explains why these locos had
such an outstanding reputation for not slipping.

Warning: tangent.

Speaking of cab-forwards: in retrospect, with 20-20 hindsight, that design makes *so* much more sense than the traditional cab-behind one (including the weight advantage you mentioned). Makes me wonder, naively, why it wasn't adopted much earlier and universally. Why was a clearly inferior arrangement taken as "the way it must be done"? Why force the engine driver to control a huge locomotive with its train from a vantage point with limited sight, as if peering through a small peephole?

(As a further tangent, it always cracks me up to think of all those letter "F"s painted on early diesel locomotives, so the hidebound steam engineers would know which way was supposed to point forwards. When was this practice dropped?)


--
Found--the gene that causes belief in genetic determinism
.

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