How Wll Does Your Steam Waggon Accelerate?

Figures for steam waggon acceleration are hard to come by. So we were interested to find, in an article about Mr. Tom Ward’s 1933 Sentinel S4, in The Atkinson, house journal of Atkinson Vehicles Ltd., that this waggon goes to 20 m.p.h. in nine seconds and from 1-in-8 hill easily in direct drive. It gives 30 m.p.c.—miles per cwt.—with three tons of coal and some 300 gallons of water. When Commercial Motor used it for a Christmas road-test, it climbed a 1-in-8 hill easily in direct drive. It gives 30 m.p.c.—miles per cwt.—of best Welsh steam coal, equal to something like 4.2d. per mile.