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Post by kevinharrell on Jan 28, 2019 19:56:20 GMT -5
Which is more macho? Steam Locomotive  Diesel Locomotive  |
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Post by flyangler on Jan 28, 2019 20:03:49 GMT -5
I like big diesel engines but I have to go with steam, just seems more macho. 🚂
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Post by wheelbender6 on Jan 28, 2019 20:52:38 GMT -5
The guys that built the railroad by hand were the most macho. Carrying steel rails. Hammering the spikes. Felling trees to make cross ties. Shoveling cuts through the hills. Building trestles. I would not have lasted a day doing that stuff.  |
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Post by oldchopperguy on Jan 28, 2019 20:57:14 GMT -5
Diesel/Electrics... Efficient, super-powerful, low-maintenance and perfectly suited to the job at hand. But macho? Not more than Mom's mini-van... Great locomotives, yes... Macho? Not so much... Steam engines... Pathetically inefficient, horrific never-ending maintenance, expensive, cost a king's ransom to refurbish... But... Macho? Oh YEAH! Thundering, ear-splitting exhaust, rail-bending torque four times per wheel revolution... Tons of steel drive rods churning, sky-blackening clouds of coal smoke... and that incredible steam whistle... Just the sound makes a red-blooded hobo want to ride the rods to places unknown...
My Grand Dad was a steam engineer. Worked his way from 8-year-old yard rat to Gandy dancer, to switchman, to caboose/brake-man to fireman... Finally to engineer. The only thing more macho than Leo Petersen (yes, I was named after him) were the locomotives whose throttles and Johnson-bars he manhandled... Yeah... I vote STEAM LOCO! 
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Post by oldchopperguy on Jan 28, 2019 21:02:27 GMT -5
The guys that built the railroad by hand were the most macho. Carrying steel rails. Hammering the spikes. Felling trees to make cross ties. Shoveling cuts through the hills. Building trestles. I would not have lasted a day doing that stuff. And, consider how many were Black, Chinese and Irish... All discriminated against in ways not seen since the Civil War... Not guys you'd want to try out after a pail of beer and a jug of hooch in the tent saloon at end-of-track in the middle of nowhere, where the macho guys carried the law on their hips, and the hard-case wayward women could whip most modern Redneck bar-brawlers! |
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Post by SylvreKat on Jan 28, 2019 22:22:23 GMT -5
Gotta go steam. It's the exposed wheels and the smoke that does it for me. 'Cause I've never actually for-real seen one in action. Just on tv and movies.
Although when I was in middle school and the rock & fossils club was going along the train cut-throughs on a field trip, that diesel engine that passed us maybe--MAYBE--ten feet away going at a really fast-fast-fast clip was scarier than anything I can recall encountering before or since.
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Post by wheelbender6 on Jan 29, 2019 20:58:37 GMT -5
Steam is mas macho. Like a motorcycle, the moving parts are all visible. No electronic boxes to make all the decisions.
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