Innovation In The Railway Industry
I recently spent an excellent evening in the company of Adrian Shooter CBE and other railway specialists at our Railway Lecture and Dinner. The evening commenced with a presentation by Adrian during which he outlined some examples of innovations and whether they been a success or a failure. Some of the items I noted were as follows: - Atmospheric Railway – Exeter to Plymouth line, history recorded this as a failure due to rats eating the leather seal on the traction pipe valve (the seal had tallow/beeswax on it to soften the leather) - Stephenson’s Rocket locomotive which was a success - George Westinghouse’s standard air braking and signalling systems were successful - General motors locomotive used engineering that had originally been developed for the automotive industry …