Talk:Atmospheric railway

Comment
" Brunel chose to test the system on a relatively flat section. Brunel simply assumed that the system would work,"

doesn't really look right, apart from being unfair to Brunel I think. I think there were tests on gradients actually. I have a book, somewhere. Midgley 16:03, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Description of application on SDR is incorrect. Air is sucked out of the pipe containing a piston, not out of the tunnel (this latter method was considered by earlier advocates of an atmospheric system, but never applied successfully) --Ewanduffy 20:08, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

Engineer Robert Malet wrote a report of the system between Dun Laoghaire and Dalkey for the French Government. He was generally supportive.--Ewanduffy 20:10, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

AWB-assisted edit.
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As an example of an approach
Today with electic trains (though not along that line!) we leave the boiler and the problems of supplying fuel to it in one place, and transfer the power from it to the moving vehicle. Brunel didn't really have electricity available, but the concept seems to me similar. The other concept of directly pulling the train rather than driving the wheels and hoping for traction waited until Braithwaite and the linear induction motor, except for rather short stretches of cable and cog rails etc. Midgley 20:48, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

How did they deal with the pressure in the train?
Did they keep an atmosphere in the train? Seems quite dangerous to me. De mortuis... 05:50, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Pipe underneath, not pipe containing train. The cleverness - and failure of available materials - was the seal that allowed drive from the piston to get to the train.Midgley 09:02, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
 * There's a nice picture of the setup here (first para and image). Interesting subject: later there actually were experimental transit systems where the car went inside a rather small pipe. Not recommended for claustrophobes. Just the picture of the Thomas Webster Rammell system makes my palms sweat. Tearlach 11:30, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

LCR
Did the London and Croydon railway not implement such a system out of London bridge ??? I seam to recall reading about it once but i don't remember many of the detail (it might have caused finical problems and led to its takeover by the London and Brighton). Pickle 18:37, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Brunel's "atmospheric caper"
This section, which is nearly half the article, is directly copied from Isambard_Kingdom_Brunel. I'm not sure whether this is standard practice, but it is a little off-putting to the reader to be presented with the exact same copy in several places. Would it not be better to have a link from one to the other (probably Brunel to here) that says 'for more information see X'. --HappyDog 14:27, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Hill-climbing
The article currently lists the following as a reason for the systems failure:
 * The hillclimbing abilities of the system were not adequately tested.

If it's the case that the hillclimbing abilities were, in fact, poor it would be better to say so rather than the above.--Malcohol 17:58, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

More infos regarding the atmospheric railway
There is a lot of important informations regarding the Parisien Atmospheric railway on this french page: http://histoire-vesinet.org/c-d-f_atmosph_supp.htm this informations should be used to extend and correct the current ones on wikipedia. --86.212.26.15 (talk) 13:13, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

Scale model
I removed the second part of the following sentence:
 * The pilot model operates at speeds up to 25 m.p.h. (40.25 km/h) which equates to a scale speed of 150 m.p.h. (241.50 km/h).

This is a common misconception. The fact that the size is scaled by a factor of six does not mean velocity is also scaled by a factor of six. This is only the case if the time scale is independent of size scale. Assuming the inverse of the eigenfrequency of the vehicle (giving the vibrations in the vehicle, often limiting the speed of the vehicle) is a reasonable estimate of the time scale and noting that larger vehicles have lower eigenfrequencies, one can conclude that the full-sized train has a longer time scale. The scaling of the velocity is the scaling of the size divided by the scaling of time, leading to a scaled velocity lower than the quoted 150 miles/h or 240 km/h. PiusImpavidus (talk) 20:01, 15 March 2013 (UTC)


 * You might also mention that converting speeds in round figures (25 mph) to an accuracy of 250 m/h is what gets people interested in railways a bad name ... Afterbrunel (talk) 15:35, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

New systems versus failed 19th models
There is a polarity in this article between the failed 19th systems and the late 20th/early 21st newly constructed ones. While it remains to be seen whether Aeromovel is anything more than a Brazilian "curiosity" I have edited sections of the article to start to distinguish between the historic and the contemporary systems. The Jakarta system has already lasted longer than any of the 19th century systems and is still running. Tjej (talk) 08:51, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

What happened at crossovers?
The article doesn't tell us how the original systems handled crossovers, points at entry to yards etc. With the piston down in the tube, there was presumably an arrangement to withdraw it ... ? This would have involved an open trough between the rails at the exit from the pipe.

This must have been done regularly at Forest Hill (for example); can anyone answer this? The article really needs to explain this practicality. Afterbrunel (talk) 15:32, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

The London and Croydon had one atmospheric track alongside the two locomotive tracks, and I think the short Dalkey line was one track. The Samudas patented a method in 1844 to handle crossings but I don't know whether it was ever implemented. A picture at Dawlish shows only one track. The Dalkey train went downhill by gravity with the piston lifted out, so there was some way to do that, and it would allow moving the piston car around at the ends of track by human (?), animal, or perhaps (gasp) locomotive power. JoeBrennan (talk) 20:30, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

Aeromovel unclear
The Aeromovel section is desperately confusing, which is a pity as it looks a fascinating topic. The image alongside the section on Aeromovel turns out to be of a completely different system; we are told that something will happen on October 13, and something else will happen in November, and something else is happening "currently". When, which year, and has it happened yet? The Indonesian system has been running for 24 years. Really? Since 1989? Can't we find a contemporary photograph of it then? Afterbrunel (talk) 21:07, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

35 miles or 35 mph
Section Atmospheric railway (under "South Devon Railway") says:
 * The highest speed recorded was an average of 64 mph over 4 miles hauling 28 tons, and 35 miles when hauling 100 tons.

What that supposed to be "35 mph"? -- ToE 19:49, 27 October 2014 (UTC)
 * I think that is the only sensible reading, and have changed it appropriately. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 02:20, 21 November 2014 (UTC).

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Island platform at Dartmouth Arms, and switches
"At Dartmouth Arms the station platform was an island..." I find it hard to believe that the atmospheric pipe crossed over standard track by some elaborate method that is not described in any source I am familiar with— a method that is also unnecessary. I realize that in his book The Atmospheric Railways Clayton describes the same method being used at Croydon as well, again with no source, and again I am skeptical about both the method and the need for it.

At Forest Hill (Dartmouth Arms) not only does the locomotive have to be exchanged for the atmospheric control car, but as Clayton very well points out, the piston (but not the arm) has to be detached, turned around, and remounted on the arm. The piston has a front and back end, but the arm was "handed" because of the way the flap on the pipe opens to one side. The piston work has to be done where the car is past the end of the pipe, and it would be most practical to do it where the workers have some space without a through track next to them. Turner's book The London Brighton and South Coast Railway volume 2 has a diagram of Forest Hill (page 44) that may clear this up. It shows the state just after atmospheric operation ended, in which, lo and behold, there is an island platform, but it is between the down locomotive track and the third track. So the atmospheric did come in to an island platform, but without crossing another track! I think this is the source of confusion. I am less brilliant at the moment about how the engine change was carried out with minimal blockage of the main tracks.

At Croydon, which was a terminal at this date, the usual escape method would be used to move the control car around the train on another track, by human power most likely, and of course with reversal of the piston thrown in. The more you think about atmospheric railways the crazier they seem. JoeBrennan (talk) 18:21, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

Comparison/analogy to compressed air cars, efficiency in terms of energy/load/time?
Compressed air cars are almost considered like a hoax, similar to water-fueled cars. Is there some significant semi-fundamental difference for "trains," where the piped air though the railway would be somehow make the whole thing significantly different and somehow advantageous over electric power cables powering a conventional electric engine of some sort? At least one disadvantage of the model is that there's only one vehicle for the entire track at a time, right? Analogously to cable-hauled trams. Whereas electric trams and the like can have more than one apart. Apparently they're extremely limited in going up-hill as well. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 45.234.133.155 (talk) 05:56, 19 March 2022 (UTC)

Is there some way to compare different ways of powering railways in therms of efficiency?
This is not a "forum" discussion, it would be interesting to have on the article, how the different power technologies compare in terms of efficiency. Is there scientific literature on this? All the article states currently, with no source, is that "the static machinery could be more fuel efficient." It's interesting to have on an encyclopedic article the characteristics of systems being presented in an objective manner rather than as advertisement, avoiding their flaws and speaking of potentials in vague terms of hope or merely the possibilities imagined by proponents, with no explanation. Instances of hoaxes or near-hoaxes in he promotion of the technology should also be mentioned, although there may be blurry definitions depending on whether the proponent believes that the technology really works or not. 45.234.133.155 (talk) 15:35, 19 April 2022 (UTC)