Train Trivia (ANSWERED)

Trains Magazine General Discussion
1

THE ORIGININAL TYPE OF DIESEL ENGINGE BURNED WHAT TYPE OF FUEL?

  1. Gasoline
  2. Oil
  3. A new formula, called diesel
  4. Powered coal
2

Wasn’t it peanut oil?

3

…It was vegetable oil

4

I’ll say #5) distilate fuel? I thought though, that Rudolph Diesel was originally trying to develop an engine powered by finely powdered coal?

5

Murphy Siding is the winner, it was powdered coal. Diesel fuel is in the same range on a refinery fractionating tower as home heating oil.

6

…The “problem” with determining an actual “winner” in our train trivia questions…We {posters}, are using different “sources” to find answers and like many other subjects…Which are the “correct” answers…

7

Modelcar,

Good point, but most things are pretty well nailed down, even if I saw on the Discover Live Steam trivia section that the Flying Scotsman was the first train to break one hundred miles per hour. Somebody claimed to have a working lightbulb before Edison, too.

8

I have also heard stories of powered flight before the Wright Brothers.

9

…I suppose all we {posters}, can do is find an answer and post it…

10

Here is what Rotoranch said and he is right:

As for the first Diesel engine fuel, Rudolphs first experimental engine used gunpowder. It didn’t work. The coal fired engine blew up, nearly killing Diesel. His first succesful engine ran almost a minute under it’s own power, using peanut oil.

Below are some excerpts from an article at the National Railroad Historical Society website. Read the complete story here: http://www.nrhs.com/web_exclusives/rudolph_diesel/

Rotor

Quote: Imagine an engine, first developed in 1895, that was so good that examples from this era still work perfectly today. An engine first designed to run on gunpowder then developed to use vegetable oil injected under pressure directly into the combustion chamber. An engine that needed no spark or electricity to run and that is still the only choice for heavy transport to this day. This engine is of course the Diesel engine.

Rudolf Diesel did not build the machine that bears his name. Rather he developed a theory of internal combustion, plus a few crude prototypes. However, none of the prototypes he worked on in his lifetime, worked especially well.

Rudolph Diesel initially considered powdered coal and, later on, liquid fuels such as vegetable oil and petroleum as possible fuels. Powdered coal proved difficult to inject into the engine cylinder and eventually caused an explosion that destroyed the prototype engine. He built his first engine based on that theory the same year and, though it worked only sporadically, he patented it. Within a few years, his design became the standard of the world for that type of engine and his name was attached to it.

At Augsburg, on August 10, 1893, Diesel’s prime model, a single 10-foot iron cylinder with a flywheel at its base, ran on its own power for the first time. During 1885 Diesel set up his first shop-laboratory in Paris and began his 13-year ordeal of creating his distinctive engine. Diesel spent two more years at i