Todays trivia question takes us again across the Atlantic to Europe. On the short list of great locomative emgineers this engineer _________ took a 4-8-2 designed by a "Government appointed central design committee " with defects in poor riding , derailments , poor performing poppet valve…and made changes to the chassis wheel arrangement , changed from poppet valves to double piston valves etc…What country is this in _______ , what was the revised wheel arrangement _______ ?Hint : "Tri-color "
Bonus question : The British designation for the 4-8-4 is ______
Let me tell you a little trick. If you want to keep peopel from Googling for the answer, you need to retype the sentences and make up the questions yourself. Believe it or not, all i had to do was cut a piece of one of your lines and past it in google and I found a link that talked about exactly what the question was. Perhaps not the site you puleld it from, because it was not worded exactly the same. The first Google hit, where I pulled the answer, was the Wikipedia page on 4-8-2 locomotives.
Using Google is sort of like installign Windows, or maybe more accurately one of the Windows add-on servers like SQL Server or Exchange. A monkey can be trained to click next and get it installed, but to get it configured and workign properly? That takes some additional skill. What I am inferring is that it takes a bit of knowledge of just how that search engien you are using works in order to make the most effective use of it. Same with the search feature here - the other week there were liek 5 threads started ont he same topic, and one of the people complained that they DID use the search and didn’t find a reference to the subject (a train show I think) so they started a new one. I hit the search and was able to find that thread plus all the others that the search supposedly didn;t find. I dunno what that person was using for keywords.
Also, to be totally fair, I HAVE heard of Andre Chapelon before, probably came across a mention of one of his accomplishments in my railroad reading. Prior to looking this up I would have been hard pressed to name any, but the name is familiar.
Finally, as for the bonus, the only 4-8-4’s I’ve seen related to Great Britain are export models build for China and Australia.
Interesting. I am still surprised that you were able to use key words. My info is taken from books. And of course I reword statements of fact into questions. Randy I have been very impressed with posters and their knowledge of overseaes rail road facts , like your self having read about Andrea Chapelon. There is an amazing group of people invoved here [:)] On the bonus question we are looking for the description used by the British to describe the wheel arrangement not a specific loco.
Since they didn’t have any (except as noted, ones built for export) I didn’t know they had a different nickname for them. A UK builder might have had a nickname for some 4-8-4’s they built for export (like calling ones going to China “Shanghai’s” or something) but I’m not aware of a generally accepted nickname for them there. If there is one, I’m interested to find out what it is though!!
Okay folks the answers are - Of course as many guessed Andre Chaplain , The country is France , the revised wheel arrangemnet is 4-8-4. The bonus question answer is 2D2.
I kinda suspected the bonus “answer” would be wrong. [}:)]
In the UK they use A-B-C-D designations for powered axles / trucks (with numbers for unpowered axles) like on diesels or electrics just like we do…so say a GG1 electric would be described as 2-D-D-2, an E-8 would be A-1-A - A-1-A.
But they don’t use it for steam, they use the Whyte system that we adopted. A 4-8-4 is a 4-8-4. [:)]
Well it would be right if it’s talking about a diesel or electric engine where there are two unpowered axles (some systems count the axles not the wheels) in front and two in the rear, with four contiguous powered axles in the middle. A=1 axle powered, B=2 axles powered, C=3, D=4.
So B-B would be two two-axle trucks, all powered, like a GP; C-C would be two three-axle trucks, like an SD. And a DD would be one of these:
Here’s an except from the Wiki entry on UIC. It seems MOST of Britain used the Whyte system, but the Southern (British Southern, not the US one) did things their own way (much like the Pennsy), and had their own system which on the face of it is quite confusing. To whit: “The standard practice in the United Kingdom was to use the Whyte notation. The Southern Railway in Great Britain used a different system, modified from the UIC method. Oliver Bulleid, Chief Mechanical Engineer of the Southern Railway before nationalisation in 1948, numbered his 4-6-2 Battle of Britain class Pacifics 21C XXX, refering to leading wheels, trailing wheels and finally powered wheels. For comparision, the straight UIC classification for such a locomotive would be 2’C1’ and 4-6-2 using Whyte.”
Knowing the Whyte system, and knowing that diesels and electrics in the US use letter to indicate powered axles, you could figure out UIC easily enough. But to list lead truck, trailing truck, and then powered axles - that’s just nuts.
ANd then of course there was the French system that our pal Andre would have used - 242. That’s pretty obvious too, just the number of axles instead of number of wheels.
