Even if I live now in Québec I’m Belgian coming from one of the smallest country in the world.
Belgiun is well know trough the whole world for the quality of his engineering.
We have enginered a lot of big metalic construction in the whole world like bridge, structural structures and we were the first European country with a train line in continental Europe (except England), this was already in 1835 between Brussels and Malines, two towns separated by 30 km.
Belgian engineering was extremly prolific and powerful between 1835 and 1985’s
For our train, Belgian ingineers have had a impact much bigger you can ever imagine on the evolution of steam power
You all know their names
, Walschaerts and Belpaire.
Both of them have made a real revolution in the concept of steam power, their names are well know in US and have influenced deeply steam locomotives design in USA.
Here are Wikipedia link for Walschaerts and Belpaire
Marc, good for you to be a proud Belgian, but with all due respect, most of the first railway equipment, including all engines, were supplied by Messrs. George Stephenson from England - just like everywhere else in Europe in the baby years of railroads. The first German railroad opened just 6 months later in early December 1835. I think more notable is the fact, that as early as 1835, the first Belgian made steam engine hit the rails! La Belge, following Stephenson´s Patentee 2-2-2 design, was built by John Cockerill of Seraing, an English-born entrepreneur of many a talent.
It is a pity that there are only few decent models available to model the early years!
There is plenty else to be proud of in Belgian railway engineering, although some of it can be remarkably strange to non-engineers. (It is difficult to get stranger than Golsdorf, but there were Belgians who managed it… [;)])
(And I’m proud of Tinplate Toddler for not having mentioned the ‘Heusinger von Waldegg’ thing in a pride thread! [:)])
Take the Belgian version of Hiawatha high-speed power, for example, with its inside cylinders (for reduced augment at very high speed) combined with outside valve drive (for easier maintenance). Or those remarkable Pacifics with Decapod-size boilers, which looked for all the world as if more than 10’ of the boiler was missing, but that ran with proper weight distribution just fine … and economically.
Some very fine things with high-speed self-propelled cars, too, as I recall.
It shouldn’t be forgotten that Cockerill/Seraing persisted with the Baldwin 60xA engine design long past BLH giving up locomotive construction, and in fact making some very significant improvements on the engine. And then there are things like the AA16s – “… what music they make!”
Indeed! The Belgian railway engineers came up with a number of sometimes rather quirky, but intersting lookin engines.
Just a few impressions:
This one would certainly look right at home pulling the Hiawatha!
Other quirky contraptons:
Following WWI, Belgium received a number of German steam engines of the Prussian classes P8, G8.1 and T16 as reparations. They saw service well into the post WWII era.
Overmod - although independantly developed from each other, the Heusinger gear is not different from Walschaert´s. For whatever reason (local pride?), the Walschaert gear was called Heusing in Germany, Austria, and, IIRC, Switrzerland.
Oh, I have no hesitation calling the gear ‘Heusinger’ … in a German pride thread. There have been some interesting discussions on ‘precedence’ … including some on these forums with Juniatha…
Of course, neither one is particularly easy to spell in English, particularly ‘Walschaerts’ which, no matter what some nerds at Kalmbach Publications in the '60s might have tried to claim, should never, ever be spelled ‘Walschaert’ to “simplify” it. (Misspelling or mispronouncing “Boxpok” is bad enough!)
While we’re thinking about Belgians, I looked for YouTube clips of the NOHAB units (there used to be several pretty good ones!) but could not find any Belgian ones. I did, however, find this, which should put a smile on your face no matter how dismal things may be…
Isn’t Brussels at the head of the EU, whos leaders aren’t even democratically elected? My wife is from UK, which finally decided it was time to be out from under that non-democratic leadership.
That´s certainly not an issue to be discussed here.
Overmod - to my knowledge, all of the Belgian NOHABs were modernized in the late 1970s, in the process of which they lost the typical “face”. One has been “revived” by painting a former Luxemburg State Railway NOHAB in SNCB/NMS colors.
We do need to keep a sense of proportion here, though: Belgians are responsible for inventing reality TV, and the idea of poker as a televised sporting event. These are serious and awful things to have to account for at the Day of Judgment.
(And then there is Jean-Claude Van Damme … but I like Jean-Claude Van Damme.)
Good idea. The last dining car I was in was on a trip from Zurich to Venice with a beautiful lady I had met in New Zealand. The scenery was magnificent both in and out of the car and having the diner rolling around Belgium sounds perfect.[dinner]
Well Marc, you now have some homework to do about what has been invented in Quebec and Canada, your new homeland as to speak. As a Quebecer, two things come to my mind: the ski-doo and the poutine. I find it very representative of how much we enjoy life here in the eastern part of Canada. Of course there are other things too…
