anyone know if this was an intentional part of wheel/rail design from the start.... | Hacker News

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anentropic on April 22, 2015 | parent | context | favorite | on: How do trains stay on track? (2009) [pdf]

anyone know if this was an intentional part of wheel/rail design from the start... or they originally intended it to work how we naïvely imagine and by accident it worked this way and was subsequently refined ?

bontaq on April 22, 2015 [–]

I don't know much about it, but in looking at some of the first locomotives I saw this: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e2/Richard_...

and this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Trevithick#/media/File...

That was probably a terrible screeching thing to witness going around bends, just being held in line by the inner lip of the rail.

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