Bulleid's Leader: could it have even been successful?

[jamie92208]

2 hours ago, Pandora said:

The late Alex Moulton, one of Britain's leading Design Engineers the Moulton Bicycle, car suspension (hydrolastic/hydragas) plus many other areas,  had a particular interest in the Bugatti steam "TGV", he made a number of appeals for information concerning the lost project,   did you ever communicate with him on the subject? 

Hi

 

The only person I communicated with about the Bugatti was my cousin who is the curator of the Bugatti Trust museum in Gloucestershire.  He had access to several photos and the original patent application. He'd had some of it translated by a linguist but a lot of the technical details got lost in translation. He gave it to me to sort out and I turned it into an article for the Bugatti Owners club of GB, newsletter. I've got the text of it on a computer somewhere I think.  Apparently the V8 engine had been test run successfully  on compressed air at 140 psi (IIRC) when war broke out.

 

Jamie

Edited September 30, 2019 by jamie92208

[Nearholmer]

I for one would be interested to read about the Bugatti, if only to try to understand "why?". 

 

Its hard to imagine that anyone thought that they could get better fuel efficiency, or better power/weight (or volume), out of such a set-up than out of internal combustion, so why, at a date when internal combustion with multiple different transmissions had been proven in the railcar application, did they bother?

 

(Which is a question that could equally well be asked about Leader, substituting "locomotive for "railcar", thinking about It.)

[jamie92208]

2 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

I for one would be interested to read about the Bugatti, if only to try to understand "why?". 

 

Its hard to imagine that anyone thought that they could get better fuel efficiency, or better power/weight (or volume), out of such a set-up than out of internal combustion, so why, at a date when internal combustion with multiple different transmissions had been proven in the railcar application, did they bother?

 

(Which is a question that could equally well be asked about Leader, substituting "locomotive for "railcar", thinking about It.)

I will try and find the article and then either up,oad it as a diwnloadable file or post it in chunks on this thread. There will of course only be text as I don't have either the photos or permission to publish them.

 

Jamie

[Pandora]

1 hour ago, jamie92208 said:

I will try and find the article and then either up,oad it as a diwnloadable file or post it in chunks on this thread. There will of course only be text as I don't have either the photos or permission to publish them.

 

Jamie

Alex Moulton had a photograph of the 8-cylinder bogie on a test rig, and a  basic general arrangement drawing of the Bugatti set