This book examines how modern steam locomotive works, including all its major sub-systems and appliances. Illustrations show how each part of the locomotive fits into the overall functioning, some background on each aspect of each function, and examples of various locomotives from a wide variety of railroads all over the U.S. The book is written for the layman to understand, providing a really easy to comprehend, yet technically competent and complete volume that will be valuable for anyone interested in the steam era.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Book Description
This book examines how modern steam locomotive works, including all its major sub-systems and appliances. Illustrations show how each part of the locomotive fits into the overall functioning, some background on each aspect of each function, and examples of various locomotives from a wide variety of railroads all over the U.S. The book is written for the layman to understand, providing a really easy to comprehend, yet technically competent and complete volume that will be valuable for anyone interested in the steam era.
About the Author
Karen Parker is that rare kind of writer who has an outstanding professional background in the field necessary for accurate understanding of her subject (in this case physics and mechanical engineering). Her explanations are clear, concise and devoid of esoteric terms and written for those who enjoy understanding mechanical things, but who are not deeply conversant with steam technology and would like to know more.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Book That Does What It Says.....,
By Steve Brist "Steve" (Madison, Wisconsin, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: How a Steam Locomotive Works (Hardcover)
I have worked as a steam locomotive fireman at a rail museum and I hold a Traction Engineer license in the State of Minnesota and I buy a lot of old steam technical books. I was pleasantly surprised that this book is more than just another simple overview of how steam locomotives work. For a relatively slim volume of less than 100 pages, this book goes into detail and uses classic illustrations of individual components. Many of the illustrations are from the "C&O Manual for Locomotive Firemen". There are sidebars called "Technical Details" on subjects such as poppet valves, counterbalancing, tractive effort and piston thrust, train resistance and even the Bernoulli effect. The introduction is written by Bill Withuhn of the Smithsonian. This book is much more than "the boiler makes the steam, and steam pushes the piston". At the same time, I think it is written in a way that a newcomer will understand it. I wish this book was available 20 years ago when I first got interested in this hobby.
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
How a Steam Locomotive Works by Karen Parker.,
By Mike L. (Lost Angeles, CA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: How a Steam Locomotive Works (Hardcover)
This book is quite informative about steam locomotives and have enjoyed paging through it. I recommend this book to anyone interested in a good overview of how these magnificent machines work ! Lots of great info collected in the same place. I like all the technical details/graphs/diagrams presented.
A couple of issues : 1) The text/narrative tends to be very jumpy at times. Bouncing around from piece of information to another without much segue between the pieces. Some of it seems to be copied/pasted from other sources. 2) Almost all the pictures are overprocessed. I'm sure most of the pictures were borrowed from other older books/material and probably scanned in and processed. The pictures should be nice sharp black & white images with lots of detail. Instead on too many of the pictures the contrast is blown out, highlights shot, leaving the pictures washed out, details gone, dull-looking, flat and looking out of focus. Whomever did the image postprocessing should revisit the book and correct the images. That's why I can't give the book 5 stars.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
How a steam locomotive works - understanding history.,
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This review is from: How a Steam Locomotive Works (Hardcover)
So many people today don't understand how anything works, and need a little more than 'forced' teaching. This is an easy to read, and well written book that gives the fundamentals of the steam powered locomotives of the past. It won't turn anyone into an engineer, but gives the reader an understanding of what made these engines work.
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