Now i know what wind deflectors do ;D
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c74GZh9bv2g
The only thing is that smoke deflectors don't work at low speed. When a steam locomotive is working hard the smoke goes up.
Those gons looked like USRAs!
Gene
The gons are a Chinese design modified from Euro practice. The reason for so much vapor is that the shots were mare with the ambient temp under freezing. Lots of steam to see. Most lifters do not work at under 40 mph.
The locomotives are based on US designs along with couplers and brakes.
They are smoke deflectors, not wind deflectors, and, as the man said, don't work well at under 40 mph. I wonder how the engineer was able to see where he was going?
On Chinese locomotives, the engineer sits on the lefthand side, the up wind side in this case and he thus had a clear view.
North American engineers sit on the righthand side.
One must not leap to conclusions that other countries do what North Americans do. :)
Besides, if he had visibility issues, he would have closed the cylinder cocks for a while.
Visibility? For what? As long as he can read the signals, he has all the visibility he needs. If he has to, he can throttle down and throttle up again right away, using the pause in the exhaust to read the signal when he is close enough. Undoubtedly the engineer knows where every signal is. Bad visibility was the reason for using torpedoes back in the days of steam. You might not see a lantern at night and probably would not see a flag during the day in those conditions but you sure as shooting would hear a torpedo.