Locomotive turbine conversion?

"Richard Riley" wrote in message
...
On Sat, 9 Jul 2005 21:01:44 +0100, "Keith W"
wrote:
:
:Given enough time and money you can build anything and gas turbine cars
:have been built. The real question is why ?

I agree so far...

:
:Such a vehicle is likely to be unreliable and extremely inefficient in
:using fuel and probably could not be certified for road use.
:A better approach may be a hybrid using a small gas turbine running
:at constant speed to charge a battery for an electrically driven
:vehicle.

But then I have to ask why back? In the size you're talking about, a
piston engine has much better fuel specifics than a turbine, about .4
against .6 or .7 - worse at low power setting. A small turbine just
can't get the compression ratio that a piston can. And since it can't
cool itself between combustion cycles, the metalurgy required means
it's very expensive.


The poster was asking about gas turbine implementations.
I answered him, I am not proposing that Ford start mass
producing them.

Keith