On Thu, 21 Apr 2011 10:47:21 +0100, Mark Robinson wrote:

On 21/04/2011 09:33, Graeme Wall wrote:

Pedantically they have motors, not engines. The latter being those
nasty infernal combustion thingies. Motors run on nice clean
electrickery.

Um. No. "Petrol motor" or "steam motor" are both perfectly acceptable
terms within the railway context (both terms having been used by
railways..) - "diesel motor" was rarer, but not unknown.

Some steam motors:

http://www.aqpl43.dsl.pipex.com/MUSE.../steamotor.htm

These, of course, are "steam motor" for the actual working gubbins.
"Motor" was also used by railways to describe entire trains - steam
railcars were more normally known as "motor cars" during their heyday,
and "motor trains" could be steam (or electric, or petrol, or diesel)
powered..

Doubly pedantically, a motor *is* an engine (an engine isn't always a
motor, though, cf siege engine, difference engine, database engine...)

And, to complicate things further, a Victorian (or earlier) engineer
would have referred to each cylinder of a steam or gas engine as an
"engine". If you read contemporary accounts of the design of early
locomotives you'll find considerable attention paid to the way the two
engines in the locomotive were linked. A modest example might be:
"this scetch will shew you my Ideas in the way I would combin the tow
engines to gether" (G. Stephenson, introducing his design for what
eventually became "Locomotion")

--
From the Model M of Andy Breen, speaking only for himself