EXTRAPOLATION? This week's installation of DoDo's Monday Train Blogging focuses on failures that seemed logical at the time.

For example: if the steam engine could be made into a locomotive, why not put a coal-fired power plant on the rails?

Result: the Chesapeake and Ohio and Norfolk and Western turbo-electric locomotives (and a later Union Pacific attempt to use pulverized coal as the turbine fuel -- NOT as boiler fuel the way stationary power companies do.)


The post also contemplates what happens if one attempts to go beyond double-expansion compounding to triple-expansion (not pretty; the dodge works better at sea where engines are worked at a constant speed for a long time) or generalizing the idea of five coupled axes to six or seven.

But if those are failures as a consequence of unanticipated difficulties with what appears to be a straightforward extrapolation, there are other kinds of failures to contemplate. Consider this French attempt to put a coal-fired power plant on rails.


Inline steam engine turning an alternator wired to motors on the bogies. All that's missing is Hermann Lemp's control system and a Winton 201A ...