Trains

First and Latest







The Editorial team

719 views

0 likes

You will need to sign in before you can comment or like.        

   Who wouldn't have enjoyed a visit to his or her grandparents' place by train? The train as we know today, has a rich and interesting history. A primitive form of railway was the wagonway, the earliest evidence leads us to the Diolkos highway of ancient Greece, which transported boats across the Isthmus of Corinth around 600 BC! Wheeled wagons ran in limestone grooves, pulled by animals or people. And it was that durable that it lasted over 650 years! Succesors appeared in parts of the Roman Empire, with stone tracks. The first true railway has many traces, on which a single horse could drag 130-150kg of coal.
   The success of railways compared to roadways was much because of the lesser energy requirement. The fixing of iron plates onto wooden rails was short-lived. Slowly, these got replaced with complete iron, and later, steel. With James Watt inventing the steam engine, the story of trains took a big leap. Richard Trevithick later built a full-scale steam powered locomotive which slowly finished the era of animal powered trains. Gradually, steam engines were replaced with diesel, and later, electricity. These were fist used as subways, then as routes to connect major metropolitan cities. Later, in some countries, bullet and high speed trains were also introduced.

Trains of the future - Vactrains
You siphon the juice up through the straw - that's the odd concept of train design many high developed commercial countries are after. By sucking, you take in the air present in the tube, which generates a vacuum; that pulls the juice up. Now just suppose we are putting a whole train instead of the juice! Don't consider this as a silly idea, the trains inside (called vactrains) can reach speeds above 4000km/h reaching Europe to America in one hour, around the world in 4 hours. These are planned to be placed on ocean beds, connecting different continents.

Comments