Commenting on the first film: Note than only about one per-cent of the coummuting workforce appears to be feminan.
Nomber would be about 20% today, I would guess.
They understood it; the SM was one of the finest flowers of French technology. The chief problem with the SM was also quintessentially French; they had to make a gas-saver out of it, and they applied the same technique as with the DS (which, remember, was supposed to have a V-4 with a separate 2-cylinder engine running a supercharger (!) and wound up with an engine little better than a glorified hydraulic pump). Was the SM capable of running all day at 130mph with the V6? certainly! Did the SM reflect the concern with oil cost and the environment that killed off so many interesting supercars by the early '70’s? Yes, it did. But just imagine eight cylinders in that advanced chassis. Or a supercharger…
Overmod:
Locals were gathered around tinkering with it when KAPOW! six gallons of so of hydraulic oil blew out, as I recall helped by the engine pump, and the car settled into the mud all the way around, leaving no way to lift it to get to the underside. <<
That’s why I wrote >>So they ruined a Citroen there … probably by misunderstanding it.<<
Now you write >>They understood it;<<
and I post:
???
But just imagine eight cylinders in that advanced chassis. <<
That’s like eating in a fine restaurant in Paris (before corrosive Corona) and when the waiter comes to take the dishes away and asks “was everything ok?” saying “Uh-well, in Texas we have bigger T-bone steaks!”
But I should have to keep quiet with my “European” Atlantic type after I got the calculations back. Gee [:)]
SARA 05003
Flintlock,
what I noticed about Delaware and Hudson 302 was that it changed rhythm of the exhaust beats from first to second and even to third, like "tche-che-che-che then che-tche-che-che and then che-che-tche-che. I heard this often in US steam. It is something that just doesn’t exist in our locos, if one has the emphasis on the first beat, she always has it. It may become more pronounced when linking up but it never changes to another beat. Why is this so in US steam? Has it to do with play in valve gear that jolts piston valves to and fro in a changing manner depending on speed and other factors?
SARA 05003
I can see why you say ???
I thought you were talking about how the SM engine was progressively weakened. My fault.
The thought I had at the time was not that the car was ruined, but that it required attention in places ordinary cars didn’t even have, that common sense wouldn’t predict how to service, that could completely, utterly, catastrophically disable it if mishandled.
And the French have a history with eight-cylinder motors, when quibbling taxes aren’t involved: I say ‘Hisso’ and ‘SPAD’ in the same sentence and that will be clear. The whole M part of SM involves a glorious engine legacy, too.
Overmod,
And the French have a history with eight-cylinder motors,<<
Yeeesh, in the 1930s ! I just mention the Bugatti Royale where the patron thought he makes something for the really rich “well-to-do” of the world. And when the dictators and capital vultures of the time didn’t so much rush to it and he had already manufactured a number of the Big Engines then he approached SNCF and designed a railcar around it. You can see one “Bugatti” in the Musée de Chmin de Fer de la Grande Nation in Mulhouse. And if that’s not enough, they have a Museum right for the Bugatti cars there, too. It came into being when brothers Schlumpf the most extreme Bugatti enthusiasts had bankrupted their textile industry company and the workers voted for not selling the collection but making a museum of it. I had seen it long years ago, I see on the internet that they have expanded the shown cars and today host about every French-built car.
As for the railway museum, a steam enthusiast friend of Juni’s tried in the 1990s to offer them a 44 class which had been built by Graffenstaden, Alsace-Lorraine, and for some time it seemed he might be successful, but then they held him in suspense forevermore until the opportunity was gone. I think it would have been a great sign of European unification if they had restored that locomotive and put it into the collection in the great hall. The French steam crews liked the class no doubt. I was told a story of one French driver replying on the question about the relation of powers between a (nominally) 3200 ihp 141.R “Américaine” and a (nominally) 2200 ihp German 44 class:
On the long inclines in Alsace-Lorraine he said, it was always an uncertain case with the “R”: would she slip violently in the next second or would she keep on pulling hard? With the 44 at the same
I have no idea.
Possibly because being American they have an inbred desire to try and beat the “system” and go their own way? [;)]
Flintlock,
Possibly because being American they have an inbred desire to try and beat the “system” and go their own way? <<
Gee-hee-hee-hee!
Yes, they want to be individual, I guess.
[:)]
Sara