Saturday, April 14, 2018

Saturday Film Club: Brunton's walking locomotive



Reading Ben Jones excellent X-Trains bookazine, I was fascinated by Willam Brunton's entry in the Rainhill trails - the Steam Horse.

Locomotive design being a long way from standardised, he decided to solve the problem of providing traction by powering the machine with a pair of walking legs at the back.This seemed crazy now, but at the time, everyone was working with a blank sheet of paper, probably without the benefit of actually seeing another working locomotive. Brunton just took his cue from nature. 

We'll never see anything quite like this again, I thought. 

But no. A couple of days later, this video appeared to me on YouTube. I don't know a whole lot about it, other than the mechanical action is fascinating. 



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