Gas Turbine Train - Description

Description

A gas turbine train typically consists of two power cars (one at each end of the train), and one or more intermediate passenger cars.

In a gas turbine power car a turbine engine, similar to a turboshaft engine, drives an output shaft that is in turn attached to a hydraulic or electric transmission, or (in the case of the UAC TurboTrain) a mechanical gearbox, which supplies power to drive the wheels.

A gas turbine offers some advantages over a piston engine. There are few moving parts, decreasing the need for lubrication and potentially reducing maintenance costs, and the power-to-weight ratio is much higher. A turbine of a given power output is also physically smaller than an equally powerful piston engine, often allowing the power car to accommodate passengers or cargo as well. However, a turbine's power output and efficiency both drop dramatically with rotational speed, unlike a piston engine, which has a comparatively flat power curve.

Read more about this topic:  Gas Turbine Train

Famous quotes containing the word description:

    The next Augustan age will dawn on the other side of the Atlantic. There will, perhaps, be a Thucydides at Boston, a Xenophon at New York, and, in time, a Virgil at Mexico, and a Newton at Peru. At last, some curious traveller from Lima will visit England and give a description of the ruins of St. Paul’s, like the editions of Balbec and Palmyra.
    Horace Walpole (1717–1797)

    Whose are the truly labored sentences? From the weak and flimsy periods of the politician and literary man, we are glad to turn even to the description of work, the simple record of the month’s labor in the farmer’s almanac, to restore our tone and spirits.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    I fancy it must be the quantity of animal food eaten by the English which renders their character insusceptible of civilisation. I suspect it is in their kitchens and not in their churches that their reformation must be worked, and that Missionaries of that description from [France] would avail more than those who should endeavor to tame them by precepts of religion or philosophy.
    Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)