В 1956 году Британия всё ещё строила паровые грузовики, способные развивать скорость 60 миль в час

In 1956, while Jaguar was winning Le Mans and Britain was designing jet airliners, a factory in Shrewsbury shipped its last batch of steam lorries. They went to Argentina. Not preserved examples. New vehicles, built to order, leaving a working factory, powered by coal and water — in the same year as Suez and Elvis Presley's first album. And these weren't slow, primitive machines. The final version cruised comfortably at 45 mph with up to 60 available. The boiler isn't under a bonnet or behind the cab. It stands upright inside the cab beside the driver, running at 230 psi. The engine hangs underneath the chassis in the middle of the vehicle. And the drive to the rear axle, on the earlier machines, is an open chain along the outside — contemporary descriptions compare it to an oversized bicycle chain. You'll discover why every one of those odd decisions was about cargo space, why a water-tube boiler raises steam fast enough to work in traffic, and why the exhaust steam is used to heat the feed water before it enters the boiler. Plus the 1950 road test where they deliberately stopped it on a 1-in-14 gradient under load, and it pulled away smoothly — no clutch, no gearchange. Then why it died anyway, which had almost nothing to do with the engineering. Subscribe for more engineering worth telling properly. #SentinelWaggon #SteamLorry #TransportHistory sentinel waggon,sentinel steam waggon,steam lorry,shrewsbury,alley and maclellan,super sentinel,sentinel dg,sentinel s type,vertical boiler,water tube boiler,undertype engine,steam wagon,commercial motor,truck documentary,forgotten engineering,british trucks,transport history,superheated steam,feedwater heater,chain drive,haulage history,rolls royce,foden,steam power,vintage lorries