Relating to the thread about speeders. Mention was made about some early speeders being powered by Hit & Miss engines. I’ve seen plenty of these on Youtube. What is the idea behind them?
I don’t know if they are still around but where I live there was a group that was interested in steam engines and hit and miss engines. When you know what one sounds like you will never mistake it for anything else. They are cool and thanks to John’s link I now know why they make that distinctive sound.
Hit and Miss engines are still around. Some establishments and vendors use them in the making of ice cream!
I have one that I helped my Dad bring back to life! A 1917 Fairbanks-Morse 3 HP “Z” engine.
I believe there is one on one of the hand cars at the EBT. Not certain if it was owned by the EBT or brought to the area for the FALL Event by one of the FEBT members. Anyway, it was a great ride.
Just read the posting on Speeders and this is the one we rode on.
They have been around for a very long time. These old EBT speeders were powered by hit-and-miss engines…
The hit and miss was still being made into the early 80-90’s time frame from what I seen .
There’s a group that displays them at the local fair here. I never quite understood why they always sounded like they were “missing” until reading that wiki article just now.
Joe Rusz said:
Here ya go–courtesy of Wikipedia
This link is already posted above by John Caughey
Joe Zullo said:
Joe Rusz said:
Here ya go–courtesy of Wikipedia
This link is already posted above by John Caughey
You just can’t help yourself, can you, Joe? I wondered just how long it would take before you pulled the trigger this time. How did you become the thread police?
I earned the title from YOU. Did you forget that fact?
BTW, When did it become your mission in life to call me out all the time when I mention something? Who do you think you are?
I don’t see it as policing.
A good forum has information and discussion.
“Me too” posts and duplicate posts (like the one Joe pointed out) “dilute” the quality of the forum and threads. (also shows that someone either did not read the thread or just really wanted to post something no matter what)
We can do without all the above.
Greg
We have a High Desert steam engine group that has a permanent display. We had great timing going to the fair one year and heard about a half dozen hit and miss engines operating at the same time. It was great!
When I was employed by the C&NW RR I had a motor car(You folks call it a speeder) made by Fairmont Motors out of Minnesota. They had what we called one lunger and two lunger as one had only one piston and the other two. They had aluminum pistons and if they became hot enough they expanded and the engine would freeze up and quite. You then had to wait to cool down before restarting. These cars were use for track inspection and the bigger ones for section gangs. Some of the bigger cars even had a Model A engine in them now that car would move. When reversing the engine one has to hit it just right as you would kill the engine and wait for the very last second when the flywheels almost stopped and you would quickly flip the ignition switch back on and the engine would now be running back wards. Later RJD