The book I read to research this post was British Railway’s Diesel Traction which is a very good book that I bought from a local secondhand bookstore. This book was a handbook given by British Rail to it’s employees who worked on Diesel. This book dates from the 60’s when diesel trains were still a relatively new development. It hadn’t been a serious challenger to steam trains until about 1946. One advantage over steam was that trains didn’t consume fuel for long periods whilst idling. There reliability record was also similar. Many of the more recent diesel locomotives tends to have an electric motor and a diesel motor and the latter helps provide charge to the former which drives the train. The cylinders can be in a inline configuration, a v configuration or a deltic. With a deltic configuration the cylinders are at an equiltateral triangle to each other. Diesel engines use fuel injectors to provide fuel in fine spray which are then ignited by compression of the cylinders. This is generally more efficient than the spark ignition of petrol egines. Everything on a diesel train is generally at a larger scale than even lorries. Deltics for example had to provide 3,300 hp. Some trains were built with a combined passenger compartment and locomotive often called DMU’s and these can be linked together. They are particularly suited to routes that don’t get that many passengers. This book is around 270 pages so is fairly long. I definitely enjoyed reading this book and do recommend it.
