Locomotive Drive Shafts
The Shay, Climax and Heisler locomotives, all introduced in the late 19th century, used quill drives to couple power from a centrally mounted multi-cylinder engine to each of the trucks supporting the engine. On each of these geared steam locomotives, one end of each drive shaft was coupled to the driven truck through a universal joint while the other end was powered by the crankshaft, transmission or another truck through a second universal joint. A quill drive also has the ability to slide lengthways, effectively varying its length. This is required to allow the bogies to rotate when passing a curve.
Cardan shafts are used in some diesel locomotives (mainly diesel-hydraulics, such as British Rail Class 52) and some electric locomotives (e.g. British Rail Class 91). They are also widely used in diesel multiple units.
Read more about this topic: Drive Shaft
Famous quotes containing the words locomotive, drive and/or shafts:
“The American people have done much for the locomotive, and the locomotive has done much for them.”
—James A. Garfield (1831–1881)
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.... I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Marriage has, for its share, usefulness, justice, honour, and constancy; a stale but more durable pleasure. Love is grounded on pleasure alone, and it is indeed more gratifying to the senses, keener and more acute; a pleasure stirred and kept alive by difficulties. There must be a sting and a smart in it. It ceases to be love if it has no shafts and no fire.”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)