Nostalgia & History > "The KM Hydraulics" Second Edition book... is almost here!

Good news, if you've been waiting as long for this book as I have!

Final approval copies arrived today from the printer, and shipment of books to SPH&TS headquarters should follow shortly!

Info on purchase is available from SPH&TS (The Company Store) or your favorite SPH&TS bookseller. A modeler wrote this, so it's definitely got a modeler's slant, with modeler-friendly detailed photo studies. But it's also a mechanical and human history of the audacious SP diesel-hydraulic experiment of 1958-1968, and the improbable life of the sole surviving SP 9010 in Niles Canyon, California after that.

I don't have more info on when SPH&TS or booksellers will be shipping. But the long wait... is allllllllmost over! Phew!

~ BZ

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I heard the Second Edition book also comes with one of those fantastic PIKO USA HO KM Models?

Hadn't realized you'd volunteered this contribution!  ;-)

I have the first one!  Do you know what is added?

texchief1

texchief1 Wrote:
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> I have the first one!  Do you know what is
> added?
>
> texchief1

Maybe, "Made in Germany"!??  No, not that, but hopefully an update with more photos and data.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/25/24 18:43 by rrman6.

80 more pages -- 384 vs. 304. New photos, expanded original chapters, new information since 2014. Much greater coverage of the Camera Platform (SP 8799) and the Engine Service Training Simulator. More images of proposals from 1962 that were never built, larger photos, much more in-service photography (including new photos by Benson, Steinheimer, Patterson, Heard, Taylor, Morris, Hansen, and the WRM Museum Archives. A greatly expanded section on the restoration of SP 9010 (with new discoveries), plus a chapter on scale model ML4000s.

Also, it weighs a lot more, and this time the hardcover fabric color is KM Service Manual maroon! ;-)

~ BZ  

Way to go Robert John. Looks good, greatly expanded coverage, waiting to get mine.

Gerry

What those and the Alco hydraulics use for the equiviland of a load meter ?

I imagine that they used the results of the dynomometer test car pulls for basic data. We built a starting
tractive effort tester for SP many years ago, that might have been used.

Out 

> What those and the Alco hydraulics use for the
> equiviland of a load meter ?

I'd have to check with Howard Wise and crew, or our friends who run the "Western" class engines in the UK. But I'd say it's the temp gauges, secondarily.

Reason being, the ammeter is the visual limiter of how you can exert traction on a diesel-electric of this vintage, but that's because you could fry the traction motors if you exceeded short time or maximum draw -- the precise reason that DRGW and SP considered diesel-hydraulics. A D-H could run at standstill with the throttle pegged, and what you were concerned about was the temps from transmission heat exchange and the prime movers. Of course you could overload or overheat after a while, but part of the appeal was the pull, and there were no load gauges to mind. 

That's not to say they didn't or couldn't get burned up, although axle gear failure was more common as an overload malady.  But it's a good question!

~ BZ

SPB Wrote:
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> Way to go Robert John. Looks good, greatly
> expanded coverage, waiting to get mine.
>
> Gerry

Thanks so much, Gerry. What a privilege to creat a great print companion to all the incredible work being done on SP 9010! See you there again, soonest!

~ BZ