The 'E' Type Forum

From today's Daily Telegraph. Kind of makes you proud to be British!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/journ ... ravel.html

That was a beautiful and impressive piece of machinery. This past week there was a documentary on the American tv station, the Science Channel, that traced the development of the high speed rail systems used in Japan and Europe. They started with the story of canal barges that were used to transport coal roughly 30 miles from the mine in GB to the seaport, a trip that took about one month. It was realized that a faster means of transporting both goods and passengers was needed so as I recall, it was a man named Stevenson that developed the first practical steam locomotive to see regular scheduled service, the Rocket. The story progressed through various stages of development and included the Mallard which was developed to overcome the air resistance that was holding back higher speeds. In addition to the fairings along the sides of the engine, they placed rubber curtains between the cars to prevent disrupting of the airflow along the train as it reached higher speeds. Fascinating stuff.

Heuer wrote:From today's Daily Telegraph. Kind of makes you proud to be British!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/journ ... ravel.html

Wasn't the Concorde French?

(Hides under table)

It was a joint uk/french effort under a joint treaty between aerospatiale and British airways
Cheers
A neutral Belgian : )

No, it wasn't French. the airframe was largely of Bristol's design although much of it was constructed in Toulouse. The engines and almost more importantly the extraordinarily complicated system of ramps which made the supersonic air digestible by the Bristol Siddeley designed and built engines were exclusively British . incidentally, there was a long history of collaboration between Sud-est and the British firms. The Comet nosecone was shared with the Caravelle , and the VC-10's tailplane was built by Sud -Est in two early examples of sub-contracting, now followed almost universally in the aerospace industry , with e.g. large parts of the Boeing 777 being built in places as diverse as Australia, Japan, Uk , USA

Erikantwerp wrote:It was a joint uk/french effort under a joint treaty between aerospatiale and British airways
Cheers
A neutral Belgian : )

British Aerospace .....

Had the pleasure flying transatlantic on Concorde. Got to Hathrow in almost record time from Washington and despite thinking the fare would have been ridiculous if I'd been paying, I got to the UK no more stressed than flying in from somewhere like Tel Aviv or Helsinki. If I had been a CEO of a big firm I would probably have sanctioned the cost for important meetings.

No chance of riding the Mallard now for me, so no 'hat trick' of all three icons of speed, but flat out on a Norton Commando is an acceptable substitute I reckon.

The LNER streamliners were in competition with the LMS streamliners for the fastest time from London to Scotland. This is the LMS 'Duchess' class:



Even more E-Type in shape!

Beautiful !!
Erik

Pim wrote:Wasn't the Concorde French?
(Hides under table)

Sorry, coudn't resist.

I still Love these ones : VT 11.5 Trans Europa Express:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... 01-BDE.jpg

Even Kraftwerk dedicated a Song to them.

Carsten

Quel horreur!!