Does anyone know why Thomas is a "tank" engine or what exactly defines a tank engine? I had never heard the word tank in this context before. It doesn't seem to refer to the wagons he pulls, as he pulls all sorts.

It's a self-contained engine with an integral water tank and coal hole, so not needing a tender pulled behind: this makes for a compact general purpose shunting engine. ah, the glory of steam trains....

http://www.howstuffworks.com/question275.htm

Steam locomotives were very impressive in the sounds they made, much of which was the "chuff" of escaping steam. But this meant they were losing water. The big locos as Mav says had a coal and water tank tender attached to the loco. But some lines had an alternative that gave me a very disagreeable surprise. I was going from Boston to Philadelphia. I disobeyed the signs forbidding passengers to remain in the space outside the passenger compartment where passengers got on board at the station. The train was going well over sixty miles an hour when suddently I got a very cold shower bath. I learned the hard way that the Pennsy had its own system to replenish water. There was a very long pan of water between the rails, into which the engineer lowered a scoop. But at that speed a lot of water became airborne and I got soaked.
Even more dampening to my spirits was the merriment of passengers and conductor at my appearance when I re-entered the passenger compartment.

[taking-the-left-fork-of-the-rail e]

Dr Bill, your use of the term "shower bath" caught my eye. Around here, one might say he took a "shower," meaning he was sprayed with water, or he took a "bath," meaning he was submerged, but would not put the two terms together. I've notice the "shower bath" combination in some older books, and now I am wondering if the term is old-fashioned, or regional, or in general use.

When I was a boy, my father was very friendly with a bloke up the road who drove the AB-class steam locomotives which were used for almost everything except main line long-haul journeys. By American, and by most British standards, the ABs were small, although they were in the normal configuration, i.e. they pulled tenders and were not tank engines. The railway track gauge in New Zealand is only 3ft 6in, narrow gauge, so you get the idea.

I was asked (at about age 8 or 9) if I'd like to go on a trip on the footplate of an AB. I ask you, you offer a boy the opportunity to ride in the engine and even dream that he'll say no?

The journey was from a town south of Dunedin called Milton up a branch line through some reasonably rugged country to a town called Roxburgh. The purpose of the trip was to bring the substantive portion of the annual stone fruit harvest down to the coast, Roxburgh being in what is known as Central Otago, river flats ringed by mountains.

The AB locos had semi-open cabs; that is they were not weatherproof - or smokeproof. There were twelve tunnels on the line, none of them very long but they were long enough that the smoke from the funnel would quickly accumulate in the cab. To alleviate this, the fireman and I lay down on the cab floor under wet sacks. The driver put a wet rag around his mouth and nose and wore a pair of beaten-up goggles over his eyes. Talk about Casey Jones! Not the most pleasant of experiences, but, hey, it was novel as all get out to me!

Here is a URL with several pictures of the water towers that were so necessary for the transcontinental trains of eighty years ago: Note the large tilted pipe that could be lowered to fill the tender's tank.

http://www.mcrwy.com/tour/watertower1.html

For a picture of toy Thomas the Tank Engine: You have to scroll down a short way.

http://www.farmgoodsforkids.com/ind_enl/ertl/thomas1.htm

Ah, but you're all forgetting the original: Ivor the Engine (pronounced Ifor) - he had a particularly fine Welsh accent and puffed out little cotton wool puffs of steam while going 'shush-ti-ku, shush-ti-ku' as he went down the track. Bliss! Up there with The Clangers in the all time top ten of children's programmes.

Also, did I hear right that when Thomas the Tank Engine came to the US they changed the narrator? We had Ringo Starr (ex-Beatle), did you?

Actually, we have Alec Baldwin for some stories and Ringo Starr for others.

In the Thomas the Tank Engine movie (done for the US market as it is called, "Thomas and the Magic Railroad") they have Alec Baldwin starring as Mr. Conductor.

One change from the books is the Fat Director (who becomes the Fat Controller after nationalisation of the railway) is just called Sir Topham Hat in all of the TV stories.

Being old enough to remember, I've got to say that for all the efficiency of modern diesel/electric engines, there's NOTHING that sounds as wonderful as a steam locomotive! Hearing the shrill wail of their whistle late at night, one imagines valkyries on the loose.

Dear Geoff: you reminded me of having loco whistling for crossing being funneled into my bedroom late at night, causing me to have nightmare about being run over by the train, and shaking so hard my brass bed rattled loud enough to wake me up.

A scientific question here...

Bill remeinded me of when I was young. We lived a couple of miles from a railway crossing. I remember that the train whistle sounded clearer in the fall and winter than in the summer. Why would that be?

the train whistle sounded clearer in the fall and winter than in the summer. Why would that be?

bel, do recall if it was specificaly clearer when snow was on the ground? I believe snow on the ground tends to muffle background noise, with the billions of tiny spaces between the flakes tending to damp out echos, as in an anechoic chamber.

Dear belMarduk: Many things can influence such sounds. Wind, temperature, humidity, and foliage. The railroad in my home town was in a shallow valley, and there was a wide area with no obstructions between tracks and my home.
I had leaned against a auto door with faulty latch while auto was crossing tracks, and fell out into path of oncoming locomotive, which fortunately was going slow enough my father was able to stop the car and run back and get me, but locomotive was very close, and I was as you can imagine badly frightened, at about age two and a half.

Oh my god Bill. No wonder you had nightmares. We would have at less.

One other thing about train sounds. When on a train passing another train from opposite direction, the whistle of the other train changes pitch: "Wheeeeeyoooooo". That's how I learned about the Doppler principle.

Dr. Bill, I think we must be related. Flying out of car doors runs in my family. Curiously, it seems that 2 1/2 must be the indicated age for such flight. I went flying when I was that age, wooden chair and all, and my daughter took flight from my mother's car at about the same age. Lucky for me, my sister had a good hold on my chair, so I didn't really fly, and my daughter managed to grab onto the open window frame and just dangled until my mother could stop the car! Tanks for the memories!

Ah, yes, the doppler effect. It makes train whistles even more mysterious when the pitch changes. Now, Bill, tell us about the astronomical equivalent of the Doppler effect, red shift!

As for why sound travels further in winter, colder air is denser, and sound travels faster and further the denser it is. That's why I can't learn anything: instructions travel in one ear and out the other at incredible speed, due to skull density!

Also, sounds travels better through water than air, (cf whales talking to each other half-way round the world) I believe. So, if the air is damp/humid it conducts sound better than if it is dry. So I am told.

"A proposition is like a train whistle. You like to hear it even if you know you aren't going anywhere."

actually, you can't do much better than einstein's description.

imagine you are on bike (or tram car in vienna!) you're traveling in a straight line.
the bike keeps going faster--so fast, it beings to appoach the speed of light! You are carried along with the bike..

how do you know that the speed is close to the speed of light? well, you begin to notice thing coming towards you are getting redder.. red being a highest frequence of light humans can see, and if you looked behind you, things would be bluer! (you are moving so fast, you can only see the leading edge of white light!)

just like the forward motion of the train, that "pushes" the sound ahead of it, (making it seem a higher pitch) and that adds its own speed to the speed of sound (making the whistle behind it sound lower) your movement pushes you into the red!

doppler effects show up all over, your hard drive has software to counter the dopple effect that it experiences!

are carried along with the bike..


This is contrary to my experience - - and I have the scars to prove it!

Bill:

Those long troughs were called jerkwaters, because the train literally jerked the water out of them. A town was called a jerwater town if it was so unimportant that the train going through would get its water on the fly rather than stopping under a water tower.

My kids were both into trains a good bit (I have had every Thomas the Tank Engine accessorry known to man) and we have taken several lovely train trips on restored steam engines here in Colorado.

On the Combres Toltec line, which crosses the Colo NM state line 7 times, there are several stops for water. The most interesting is the one that has the tank underground in a hillside above the stop. There's a large pole sticking out of the ground that has a float on the bottom so the train people can tell how much water is left in the underground tank.

The reason the tank is underground is to prevent it from freezing in the winter, since it gets down to around 20 below quite frequently.

Ted

Dear TEd: I think "jerkwater" antedates the trough between tracks.

5JERK1 + WATER: prob. in reference to pulling the valve on the water tank to fill the engine boiler6 a train on an early branch railroad