Portal:Trains/Did you know/February 2009

February 2009

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Timothy Hackworth
  • ...that Timothy Hackworth was probably the first of the very few engineers throughout history to fully take into account the role of the steam exhaust blast in automatically realising the "perfect equilibrium between steam production and usage" in a locomotive fitted with a fire-tube boiler, and to consider the blastpipe as a distinct device, paying close attention to its proportions, nozzle size, positioning and precise alignment?
 
Fiji Sugar Corporation No 21 crossing Nadi Back Road into the cane fields with empty wagons in August 2008
  • ...that although there used to be two horse-drawn street tramway systems, some other passenger systems, an underground mine system and some tramways on construction projects, rail transport in Fiji is now primarily limited to moving cut sugar cane to crushing mills?
 
Preserved Erie Lackawanna SD45 number 3607 at the Museum of Transport in St. Louis in 2006
 
Mecklenburg XVIII class locomotive number 2 in the late 1890s
 
The Utrechtboog as seen from Duivendrecht railway station
 
Nankai Electric Railway type 50000 for Rapi:t
 
An SD90MAC owned by Union Pacific Railroad in 2007
  • ...that like the AC6000CW built by rival GE, the EMD SD90MAC suffered reliability problems with its 6,250 hp (4.66 MW) engine, which resulted in EMD selling more than 400 of them with 4,300 hp (3.2 MW) engines that could be upgraded later?
 
An EMU operated by PV in 2005
 
India's railway network in 1909
 
D60 1 preserved at the Yamaguchi Museum in 2008
 
Santa Fe 3751 pulling an employee recognition special through Streator, Illinois, in 1992
 
Modern low-floor Berlin trams in 2005
 
Map of the former Lebanon Railway
  • ...that rail transport in Lebanon began with the first 1,050 mm (3 ft 5+1132 in) gauge line opening in 1895 and continued for most of the twentieth century, but has ceased as a result of the country's political difficulties, with the last regular rail operations in Lebanon consisting of trains carrying cement from Chekka to Beirut in 1997?
 
Route map of the Adelaide-Darwin railway
 
Integra-Signum magnets on a Be 6/8 III "Crocodile" locomotive
 
The locomotive Eureka in operations on the Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railway
 
A TBA train in 2008
  • ...that when all its commuter and long-distance services are included, Trenes de Buenos Aires in Argentina runs approximately 1,000 trains per day and conveys about 147.7 million passengers annually, or 500,000 daily?
 
Dorasan station at the frontier between North and South Korea, 2003
 
TTA's model AR 93 vicinal tram in 2002
 
A light rail train at Pantano station in 2002
 
Class 41 Rekolokomotive
 
GWR Ariadne or "Standard Goods" Class broad gauge 0-6-0 at Trowbridge
 
Busan Subway line 2 train and station
  • ...that all directional signs on the Busan Subway in Busan, South Korea, are written in both Korean and English, and the voice announcement in the trains indicating the upcoming station, possible line transfer and exiting side are all spoken in Korean, followed by English?
 
Railway Bridge, Kaunas, in 2006
 
Vasar Valley Mocăniţa, a narrow gauge railway in Romania
  • ...that a mocăniță (Romanian pronunciation: [mokəˈnit͡sə]), a term derived from the Romanian word mocan, meaning shepherd or one who lives in the mountains, is a narrow gauge railway in Romania, most notably in Transylvania and nearby regions?