Or would you rather be an engineer?

I should really start turning the light out when I leave for a while.

For the last month or so I've been pretty much covered with work and I've been bouncing back and forth between Chicago and Batesville MS. All of this work has made me wonder though, how many other people would be willing to do this kind of job? Does anyone else like long lines in airports, late nights working in strange factories, panicked phone calls about broken machines in far away places?

OK, I don't either. Still, you might find that you have the right mindset to make it as an engineer on the road. Just test yourself in these scenarios and see how you do.

Click Here [+/-]

You have just finished packing your suitcase. You are scheduled to fly out early in the morning on the red-eye flight. Just as your head hits the pillow the power blinks out for about two seconds. You know that you'll need an alarm to get up in time to make your flight.
Do you:
A. Reset the alarm clock and hope the power doesn't go off again
B. Call a trusted friend (or wake-up call service) to insure that you'll be woken up on time.
C. Stay up all night making sure the power doesn't go off again
D. Roll over and go to sleep because your cell phone and digital watch will wake you up anyway

The correct answer is D. There should be at least one battery powered digital device around that makes noise or else you obviously don't have an engineer's passion for gadgets.

You wake up on time and drive to the airport in the dark. As you park you reach for the headlight switch but the knob falls off in your hand. You can grasp the end of the stub to which the knob was attached, but you can't grip it well enough to turn it.
Do you:
A: Leave your lights on and hope you can get a jump start when you come back.
B: Call your friend (the only one you know is awake because he already woke you up in question one) and see if he has any advice.
C: Pop the hood and disconnect the battery.
D: Grab the vice grips you keep under the passenger seat and use them to turn off the headlights.

The best answer here is D because you should have tools handy at all times (no self respecting engineer would be caught without vice grips unless airport security confiscated them.) Partial credit will be awarded for anyone who answers C as this should solve the problem. It's just too much work to be the best answer.

You check your bags and have plenty of time to spare because you answered D on the last question. What do you do with your spare time?
A: Get an overpriced coffee and scone at one of the Coffee Kiosks in the airport.
B: Find a seat and enjoy some people watching while you wait for your flight.
C: Get out your laptop and search for free WiFi in the terminal
D: Go through the metal detector multiple times with progressively increasing numbers of coins in your pockets to see how much it takes to set it off.

C is the most likely answer here, as being offline for too long can lead to email withdrawal. A has one redeeming feature in that it involves coffee, but that doesn't offset the fact that it is overpriced and way too trendy. Answer D is worth bonus points because it demonstrates curiosity and creativity in testing an otherwise annoying device. If you wrote in "Spend some time trying to figure out why the banners in the tram station saying 'We're glad you're here!' are facing the people who are leaving town," then you have potential but you might be headed for something a little more philosophical in nature


You arrive at your destination and spend a very long day working on all manner or technical problems. When you finally finish it is almost 2 AM. You are hungry but cannot find any 24 hour diners on the way back to your hotel. You do, however, have a pack of ramen noodles from a convenience store. Your hotel room has no microwave, bowls, spoons, or forks. What do you do?
A: Go to bed hungry.
B: Alternate bites of dry ramen with swigs of water. Try to ignore your bleeding gums.
C: crush the noodles into a water cup and try soaking the noodles in luke warm tap water. Eat them quickly enough and you won't care that it tastes lousy.
D: Use the coffee maker in your room to heat water, soak the noodles in the carafe, and use the plastic coffee stirrers for chopsticks.

If you have to ask which one it is, you should stop reading right now. I have actually made ramen in a coffee maker, and when you're hungry at 2AM, it tastes really good!

You finish your work the next day, fill out an exit report and gather your bags for the trip to the airport. Just as you are ready to walk out the door a supervisor shows up with a piece of equipment he wants you to take home with you. You inspect the equipment and it shouldn't be a security risk as long as it's in checked luggage, but you only packed a small suitcase for this trip, so there's no way this thing is going to fit in your luggage. Your accountants have told you to avoid the extra bag charges, and you don't have the option of carrying this thing onto the airplane.
Do you:
A: Tell the supervisor just to ship it himself.
B: Try to sneak out of the plant before the supervisor notices.
C: Pay the extra luggage fee and fight it out with accounting later.
D: Find a box that's big enough to hold the equipment and your luggage so that you only have to check one item at the airport.

Once again the answer is D. I've had to do this at the last minute before leaving. Once I even got to the airport and scrounged an extra box and tape from the rental car office!

You catch your flight, collect your luggage and head to the parking lot. Arriving back at your car you remember the problem with the headlight switch. You take a moment to consult the repair manual (which you have conveniently tucked into the compartment next to the jack and tire tool.) According to the manual you will need to take apart half of the dashboard to reach the back of the switch and fasten it back in place.
Do you:
A: Take the car to a garage so a mechanic can disassemble your dashboard and repair the switch.
B: Continue to use the vice grips indefinitely.
c: Take apart the dashboard yourself and repair the switch
D: Ignore the manual and find your own way to reach the switch that only takes 10 minutes rather than 10 hours.

It's a bit of a stretch to assume that anyone reads the manual first, but as far as I'm concerned it doesn't matter because the correct answer is D: Ignore the manual. And as for answers B and C, well one is too simple and the other is too much work.

So how did you do? Let me know if you came up with the right answers on every question because I need some extra help!

Click here to close.

Quote of the unspecified temporal interval

Coffee is a beverage that puts one to sleep when not drank.

Alphonse Allais

Public Service Announcment

True Blue Sam forwarded this site to me because I'm in Mankato MN right now.

Apparently I'm in a 'hidden tourist mecca' with some neighborhoods that never drop below 70 degrees F.


I don't know where those neighborhoods are or I would be staying there.

The view from where I'm working is somewhat more bleak.



Oh and it was a brisk 5F when this picture was taken. Where are those 70 degree neighborhoods?!

Monday again

Some days there's not enough coffee in the world.

Nothing up my sleeve valve

I think I might be approaching steam engine overload after the last few posts, so it's time to focus on some internal combustion technology instead.

If you've ever heard of a Willys Knight then you probably know it has a somewhat unusual engine.



While most automobile engines use a poppet valve system, the knight was known for having a sleeve valve system instead. Now if you're reading this page, there's a better than average chance that you know the difference between a sleeve valve and a poppet valve, but just in case let's do a little review.

Your typical auto engine runs on a 4 stroke system, where every two rotations of the crankshaft can be divided into 4 main phases: intake, compression, power, and exhaust. During the intake and the exhaust strokes it is necessary to open valves for fuel and air intake and venting the exhaust gases. A poppet valve is usually positioned in an arrangement something like this.

Taken from Audels New Automobile Guide

A spring holds the valve shut while a cam actuates the valve during the brief period that it needs to be opened. Different valves are actuated by different cams so timing the valves is fairly straightforward.

A sleeve valve system looks more like this.


Rather than having two or more valves in the top of a cylinder there are two sleeves inside the cylinder and around the piston. The sleeves are controlled by connecting rods, linked to a small crankshaft which takes the place of the poppet valve's camshaft.

Interestingly enough, the sleeve valve system seems to have more in common with a steam engine than an internal combustion engine. Early steam engines had slide valves that controlled steam inlets and exhaust, but these sleeve valves are much more advanced than most steam chest slide valves in both timing and design. A common problem with slide valves was 'cutting' of the sliding surfaces due to force from the steam pressure in the cylinder, but a sleeve valve that wraps around the cylinder has pressure on all sides and so there is virtually no unbalanced force to cause cutting of the valve surfaces.

Each sleeve has two ports in it on opposite sides. One port is for exhaust, one is for the intake.


On the intake stroke, the left hand ports align creating an opening for fuel and air to be drawn into the cylinder. As the piston passes bottom dead center, the ports in the sleeve pass the intake passage sealing the opening. The piston continues upward compressing the fuel air mixture in the now sealed cylinder.


Near the top of the stroke, the fuel air mixture is ignited by the spark plug. The sleeves travel downward but stay just far enough out of alignment to avoid opening the exhaust or the inlet port.

Taken from Dyke's Automobile and Gasoline Engine Encyclopedia

As the piston approaches the bottom of the stroke the ports on the exhaust side of the cylinder begin to align so that the spent gases can be pushed out on the upstroke. Meanwhile the intake ports remain misaligned so that the exhaust is not forced back into the carburetor.

This design did have some significant advantages over the poppet valves of the teens and twenties. The sleeve system was quiet, mostly because it used connecting rods rather than push rods and tappets which create a loud clattering sound.

Eliminating the pushrods and valves also held some potential advantages. In the days of weak alloys and sometimes marginal heat treatments poppet valve timing was unlikely to stay consistent over long periods of time, and problems with carbon buildup, poor valve seating and valve bounce all impacted performance and required frequent maintenance.

The knight sleeve valve system did not suffer from these types of problems. The connecting rods and secondary crankshaft used for the sleeves reduced problems with timing, and eliminated the danger of mistimed valves being struck by the piston. There was no need to regrind and seat valves, and carbon buildup on the valves was not a problem. In fact, it's believed that carbon buildup tended to help the performance of the knight engine because it made the seal between the sleeves tighter, leading to better compression.

The reduction in maintenance compared to other common engines was probably why the Knight was billed as having the 'engine you will never wear out." That was a bit optimistic of course. The same carbon buildup that helped to seal the sleeves better also caused plenty of wear on the sleeves, eventually making them loose enough to make the knight a real oil burner.

Eventually improvements in engineering and materials eliminated the primary disadvantages of poppet valves. Once maintenance concerns were less of a problem, cost and performance made poppet valves the clear winners in most applications. Still, the sleeve valve design is fascinating, and I'd love to be able to take one of them apart some day.

New Year Fireworks

I'm bringing in the new year with some fireworks, but not the kind that you might be thinking.


When I was in Mt Pleasant this year I expected to see a night time steam traction show (where steam tractors are run at night so you can watch the sparks fly from the smokestack.) To make the show more interesting they throw sawdust into the firebox so that you get plenty of embers in the exhaust.

I knew I wouldn't be dissapointed when I spotted the sawdust next to this Reeves engine, so after dark that night True Blue Sam and I grabbed my tripod and camera and headed back to the fairgrounds.

Four engines were puffing away gently, not causing much of a fuss. It was too dusty for me to use my flash without being blinded by the glare of the cloud settling over me, but a few time exposure shots caught the flashes from other cameras lighting up the Wood Brothers engine nicely.

The engines puffed quietly on while their fireboxes were loaded up with wood and sawdust, throwing up only thin plumes of sparks.


Then one of the steamers built up enough steam that the safety valved popped, sending a plume of steam forward over the top of the stack. As if on cue, all of the engines opened their throttles and the show began in earnest.




The towers of embers built and swirled and seemed to take on a life of their own. It was a sight that truly could not be forgotten!

Happy New Year!!

How do you add a little spark to your party?

Butane seems to do the trick.



Now that my holiday party has been concluded, I'm off to Southern IL to spend some time with the family.

Merry Christmas!

The beauty of an ugly machine

A comment by KurtP under the Tornado post reminded me of something I'd like to share.



I mentioned that the Tornado looked to me almost like a brand new model locomotive. It's not just because of the clean, fresh appearance, but also because of its general design, and to a great extent, the design of steam locomotives which was common in England. Great care was obviously taken in designing this Peppercorn class engine, and while its semi streamlined design is intentionally quite smooth and uninterrupted, the fact that it is practically devoid of visible piping and accouterments hanging on and around the boiler gives it deliberately tidy look which shouldn't be surprising for an English design.

For comparison, I would like to show you this locomotive. The Chicago and Illinois Eastern 1010.



This locomotive has the same basic wheel configuration. It was also intended for passenger service and it is similar in size, yet the two machines are worlds apart.

While one has its fixtures tucked under shrouds and concealed behind running gear, the other proudly flaunts its fittings, pipes and air tanks out in the open. One has a streamlined cab with polished brass window frames, the other has a square cab with a canvas sunshade hanging lazily over the engineer's window. The Tornado has graceful running boards which follow the line of the boiler and firebox, seeping back to a streamlined. The 1010 looks square and clunky by comparison.

Still, the fact that everything is visible is much more appealing to me. You can see all of the major external components of the locomotive, upgrades and modifications are usually quite obvious and sometimess tell a story about the locomotives history. One interesting item in this case is that the driving wheels do not all match. The middle driver is a boxpok wheel, short for box spoke. These wheels are made with wide, hollow spokes (hence the box label) which made the wheels lighter and easier to balance. I'm not certain whether or not this locomotive was built with this wheel, but it was not unusual for railways to upgrade their locomotives with these wheels when they were upgraded in the 30s and 40s. Rather than go to the expense of replacing all of the wheels, shops would replace only the drivers that had the most need for counterbalancing. It looked odd, and I'm sure no English engineer would want anything to do with such an 'unsightly' practice but it was a cost effective and common practice in the states.

Of course to be fair, the Tornado is a much more modern design. The Peppercorn class came about some 30 plus years after this locomotive was built in 1911. Had the 1010 been built later on it might have had a very different appearance. One of it's sister locomotives, number 1008, was built at the same time as the 1010, but was 'shrouded' in 1940 to pull the Dixie Flagler, a passenger train that ran from Chicago to Miami.



This picture of the 1008 is available from Yesteryear depot. The appearance is much like other locomotives streamlined in the 1930s and 40s. Shrouds were simply placed over the locomotives to give them a more streamlined look. It did give slightly cleaner lines, but didn't really give them the polished look of the Tornado, and locomotives like this were the exception in America, not the norm.

The Tornado may be a beautiful engine, but I'd still rather see something like the C&EI 1010.

Quote of the unspecified temporal interval

A lawyer with his briefcase can steal more than a hundred men with guns.

- Mario Puzo

Of course, this quote would have NOTHING to do with this.

Christmas Spirits?