Stamps of the day: Locomotive stamps from Royal mail
Royal Mail in Britain have invented the "intelligent stamp". Together with an Iphone and an App it´s the ticket to exclusive material on Royal Mail Channel. Read more here. And if you don´t have an Iphone the stamps are pretty to look at anyway!
4 comments:
PP: Can you tell us something about the locomotives on the stamps?
Well, British railroads are not me specialty! They look much different from American ones...some reasons can be explained and others I could not tell you. Generally they are smaller in size, as British railroads were built earlier and to smaller "loading gauges"(lower bridges, narrower clearances, etc...) Almost all British(and most euro locomotives)were much "cleaner" in appearance. Piping was covered up and hidden. Almost all(with notable exceptions) American engines had everything all out in the open. This made maint much easier. In fact many of the famous American streamilined engines were everything was covered up, got "uncovered" during the years of service to make it easier to work on them. WWII really took a toll on the shrouds. ANyway to answer your question , these are 2 classic British engines, and thats about all I can tell you!
Interesting facts, I´ve travelled on trains in Britain and they do have a lot of low bridges and narrow passages. If a train broke down, nothing could get past, and the trains were cancelled. When I studied in Brighton, we had to go by commuter train to the University and we usually joked about bad train track conditions. Such as wet leaves on the tracks...happens every autumn! Nowadays, I think we have just the same trouble here in Sweden. In my humble opinion trains should not be to to "digitalised and automated". I met the man who dug out the diesel engine train from 1920´s during last winters blizzard. Well onto the train, they just pushed the start button and went off rescuing travellers in modern trains stuck in the snow. And that diesel engine was frozen and left for months. LS blogged about this rescue.
EH, you see those two things in the front of the train locomotive, the 'bumpers'? US trains rarely have those, because they have another way of hooking up the cars to the locomotives. So that is a telltale sign between US and European trains (I am told... but I am no expert...)
Post a Comment