Steam Tram Engines
In the steam locomotive era, tram engines had to comply with certain legal requirements, although these varied from country to country:
- The engine must be governed to a maximum speed of 16 km per hour (12 in the UK)
- No steam or smoke may be emitted
- It must be free from noise produced by blast or clatter
- The machinery must be concealed from view at all points above 10 centimeters from rail level
To avoid smoke, the fuel used was coke, rather than coal. To prevent visible emission of steam, two opposite systems were used:
- condensing the exhaust steam and returning the condensate to the water tank
- Reheating the exhaust steam to make it invisible
Read more about this topic: Tram Engine
Famous quotes containing the words steam and/or engines:
“Wisely watch for the sight
Of the supernova burgeoning over the barn,
Lampshine blurred in the steam of beasts, the spirit’s right
Oasis, light incarnate.”
—Richard Wilbur (b. 1921)
“America is like one of those old-fashioned six-cylinder truck engines that can be missing two sparkplugs and have a broken flywheel and have a crankshaft that’s 5000 millimeters off fitting properly, and two bad ball-bearings, and still runs. We’re in that kind of situation. We can have substantial parts of the population committing suicide, and still run and look fairly good.”
—Thomas McGuane (b. 1939)