A locomotive or engine is a rail transport vehicle that provides the motive power for a train. If a locomotive is capable of carrying a payload, it is usually rather referred to as a multiple unit, motor coach, railcar or power car; the use of these self-propelled vehicles is increasingly common for passenger trains, but rare for freight trains.
Rail transport is a means of transport using wheeled vehicles running in tracks, which usually consist of two parallel steel rails. Rail transport is one of the two primary means of land transport, next to road transport. It is used for about 8% of passenger and freight transport globally, thanks to its energy efficiency and potentially high speed.
The Great Western Railway (GWR) was a British railway company that linked London with the southwest, west and West Midlands of England and most of Wales. It was founded in 1833, received its enabling act of Parliament on 31 August 1835 and ran its first trains in 1838 with the initial route completed between London and Bristol in 1841. It was engineered by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, who chose a broad gauge of 7 ft —later slightly widened to 7 ft 1⁄4 in —but, from 1854, a series of amalgamations saw it also operate 4 ft 8+1⁄2 in standard-gauge trains; the last broad-gauge services were operated in 1892.
A steam locomotive is a locomotive that provides the force to move itself and other vehicles by means of the expansion of steam. It is fuelled by burning combustible material to heat water in the locomotive's boiler to the point where it becomes gaseous and its volume increases 1,700 times. Functionally, it is a steam engine on wheels.
The history of rail transport began before the beginning of the common era. It can be divided into several discrete periods defined by the principal means of track material and motive power used.
A geared steam locomotive is a type of steam locomotive which uses gearing, usually reduction gearing, in the drivetrain, as opposed to the common directly driven design.
A tank locomotive or tank engine is a steam locomotive that carries its water in one or more on-board water tanks, instead of a more traditional tender. Most tank engines also have bunkers to hold fuel; in a tender-tank locomotive a tender holds some or all of the fuel, and may hold some water also.
The American Locomotive Company was an American manufacturer that operated from 1901 to 1969, initially specializing in the production of locomotives but later diversifying and fabricating at various times diesel generators, automobiles, steel, tanks, munitions, oil-production equipment, as well as heat exchangers for nuclear power plants.
The London, Brighton and South Coast Railway was a railway company in the United Kingdom from 1846 to 1922. Its territory formed a rough triangle, with London at its apex, practically the whole coastline of Sussex as its base, and a large part of Surrey. It was bounded on its western side by the London and South Western Railway (L&SWR), which provided an alternative route to Portsmouth. On its eastern side the LB&SCR was bounded by the South Eastern Railway (SER)—later one component of the South Eastern and Chatham Railway (SE&CR)—which provided an alternative route to Bexhill, St Leonards-on-Sea, and Hastings. The LB&SCR had the most direct routes from London to the south coast seaside resorts of Brighton, Eastbourne, Worthing, Littlehampton and Bognor Regis, and to the ports of Newhaven and Shoreham-by-Sea. It served the inland towns and cities of Chichester, Horsham, East Grinstead and Lewes, and jointly served Croydon, Tunbridge Wells, Dorking and Guildford. At the London end was a complicated suburban and outer-suburban network of lines emanating from London Bridge and Victoria, and shared interests in two cross-London lines.
Rail transport terms are a form of technical terminology applied to railways. Although many terms are uniform across different nations and companies, they are by no means universal, with differences often originating from parallel development of rail transport systems in different parts of the world, and in the national origins of the engineers and managers who built the inaugural rail infrastructure. An example is the term railroad, used in North America, and railway, generally used in English-speaking countries outside North America and by the International Union of Railways. In English-speaking countries outside the United Kingdom, a mixture of US and UK terms may exist.
Dieselisation is the process of equipping vehicles with a diesel engine or diesel engines.
Otto August Kuhler was an American designer, one of the best known industrial designers of the American railroads. According to Trains magazine he streamstyled more locomotives and railroad cars than Cret, Dreyfuss and Loewy combined. His extensive concepts for the modernization of the American railroads have repercussions onto the railways worldwide until today. In addition he was a prolific artist of industrial aesthetics and of the American West in general.
Wylam Dilly is the second oldest surviving railway locomotive in the world; it was built circa 1815 by William Hedley and Timothy Hackworth for Christopher Blackett, the owner of Wylam colliery, west of Newcastle upon Tyne. Wylam Dilly was initially designed for and used on the Wylam Waggonway to transport coal. The four driving wheels are connected by a train of spur wheels driven by a central crankshaft.
The WAGR P and Pr classes were two classes of 4-6-2 steam locomotives designed for express passenger service on the Western Australian Government Railways mainline network. The initial designs were prepared by E.S. Race and together the two classes had a total build number of thirty-five locomotives, the P and Pr classes entering service in 1924 and 1938 respectively. Both classes were used on express passenger services, greatly improving the economy and speed of long-distance passenger travel in Western Australia, the results of which were most visible on the Western Australian stage of the Trans-Australian Railway and Westland Express.
China Railway SY is a 2-8-2 Mikado locomotive operated by the China Railway. It was built mostly by Tangshan Railway Vehicle between 1960 and 1999.
Gnome Watching Railway Train is an 1848 oil-on-wood painting by the German painter Carl Spitzweg.
The Train in the Snow, or Le train dans la neige, is a landscape painting by the French Impressionist artist Claude Monet. The work depicts a train surrounded by snow at the Argenteuil station in France. Art historians see the work as a significant example of Monet's efforts to integrate nature and industry in his work. Many historians believe that Monet, out of all of the notable nineteenth century artists, made the most paintings of trains in his lifetime.
