060

National Railway Museum, York, England

53° 57′ 38.76″ N, 1° 5′ 47.58″ W

Chariots of Fire

You don’t have to be a trainspotter to appreciate the power, romance, and beauty of rail travel, and the National Railway Museum in York is the place to understand the development of the railway from the earliest days of the Industrial Revolution to the present.

No British railway museum would be complete without the early steam locomotive Stephenson’s Rocket, and the National Railway Museum has two. Both are replicas (the original is in the Science Museum in London; see Chapter 77). One of the replicas is in working order, and the other is cut into sections so that visitors can understand the design and operation of the first successful steam locomotive. The Rocket traveled at about 20 kph in 1829.

The fastest steam train ever, the Mallard, is on display and has been completely restored. On July 3, 1938, it set the world record for steam locomotives, traveling at over 202 kph. The locomotive is one of the most important exhibits at the National Railway Museum and is in complete working order.

There’s also an enormous KF7 steam train, which was built for the Chinese railway and ran between Canton and Hankou, and Nanking and Shanghai. Because of the steep inclines and weak bridges along the routes, the train had to be both powerful and light, and it also had to be capable of burning the poor-quality coal available in China at the time.

Perhaps the most famous steam train of all, the Flying Scotsman, is also preserved at the National Railway Museum. It ran from 1923 to 1963 along the East Coast line from King’s Cross station in London to Edinburgh. It was the first train to pass 100 mph (160 kph), and could make the trip from London to Scotland on a single tender full of coal, with no need to stop along the way.

But the Museum doesn’t just have steam engines. It also has a current Eurostar train of the type that runs through the Channel Tunnel, a 1976 Japanese 0 Series Shinkansen bullet train capable of 220 kph (the only one outside Japan), a 1972 prototype of the British Rail High Speed Train (top speed 230 kph), and diesel and electric trains of all types that were used by British Rail. There’s also a large collection of carriages and wagons that include Queen Victoria’s special railway carriage.

In addition to all these trains, there are models, track, signal equipment, signage, and even crockery. In fact, there’s everything you’d need to create your own railway system, including maintenance facilities and an extensive library of artifacts, technical manuals, and historic photographs.

Conspicuously absent from the museum is the French TGV, the current world record holder for train speed at 574.8 kph, as the museum focuses on the development of railway from a British perspective.

The museum offers daily talks and demonstrations; a full list of events is available from the website. Twice a day there’s a special talk about the Shinkansen, and there are demonstrations of the enormous train turntable used to move trains from track to track. And if all that isn’t enough, admission is free!

Practical Information

Full information about the National Railway Museum, its collection, and its location is available at http://www.nrm.org.uk/.

Double-Acting Steam and the Kylchap Blastpipe

A typical steam engine works by burning coal to heat water, and then using the steam to drive a piston or pistons to turn the wheels. To get the maximum amount of power, many steam engines are double-acting—that is, the steam drives the piston in both directions (Figure 60-1).

Figure 60-1. Double-acting steam engine cylinder

With the piston at one end of the cylinder, high-pressure steam from the locomotive’s boiler is directed into the cylinder via a valve. The piston is forced down the cylinder, creating movement of the piston rod that eventually drives the wheels. Once the piston reaches the other end of the cylinder, the valve closes, reopening at the other end. High-pressure steam enters the cylinder again and pushes the piston in the other direction.

As the piston is being pushed by the steam, it is pushing out the cooled steam from the other side of the cylinder. This cooled steam exits via a pipe. In steam engines, the entire process can be achieved with a single valve that covers and uncovers the appropriate hole into which steam is injected, while at the same time connecting the other side of the cylinder to the exhaust.

The steam leaving the cylinder is not wasted. In steam engines, the exiting steam is mixed with the smoke coming from the fire that powers the boiler. By injecting the steam into the smoke, it’s possible to increase the draught up the locomotive’s chimney and draw more air in through the boiler, increasing its heat. The waste steam is thus used to make even more steam.

Maximizing the draught was a major part of steam engine design. The Mallard had two chimneys and a double Kylchap blastpipe. The blastpipe is the part of the locomotive that mixes the used steam and smoke before it enters the chimney.

In the Kylchap design, the used steam enters a splitter that consists of four vertical funnels. On top of the funnels is a stack of two or more tubes that open at the top and bottom. The steam shoots out of the funnels into the first tube, drawing in smoke, and then continues up into the next tube, drawing in more and more smoke, before exiting through the chimney.