Are there any quality boilers/manufacturers, at any price?

[Doctor Drivel]

The marketing men did.

Not so. They are half the size ans weight.

Because they are Luddites who are a part of near cartel.

Now you know.

[Doctor Drivel]

There are two-stroke diseel trucks. The Commer TS-3 was two-stroke.

[Doctor Drivel]

Go and ask in the pensioners drop-in centre.

[Doctor Drivel]

He said gas.

[Doctor Drivel]

Which one? ATAG or Intergas?

[Doctor Drivel]

[Doctor Drivel]

Highly unlikely.You also have soot and they pollute where people are.

[Doctor Drivel]

You are a plantpot.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

You certainly take notice of them. others have more sense.

Size makes a difference to fuel consumption? Weight does to some extent - but if it was that important, all diesels would be less economical than petrol because like for like they weigh more.

Quite the opposite of you, then.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

You seem to have a problem with are and was. Commer went out of business in 1979.

[Clive George]

The Commer two stroke opposed piston engine is well worth checking out - it's quite amusing.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

My father sold trucks at the time the Commer was current - and it was a very good performer compared to trucks of the day. So much so that they were chosen to transport fish from Aberdeen to London, in a 'door to door' time which was competitive with rail, but cheaper. Sadly, they were pretty unreliable.

[Tim Streater]

What, the OP? I musta missed that. In any case, I said oil.

[Tim Downie]

I seem to recall that they ran two stroke engined buses in Dublin. Certainly when I was there in 2002, many of the buses sounded much higher reving than normal bus engines. In fact, a bit like this one.

[John Williamson]

Please read what I wrote, not what you wish I'd written. *Overall* pollution from a diesel train may be less than *overall* pollution from an electric train. Fuel efficiency from fuel supply to wheel in a diesel train is better then fuel efficiency from fuel supply to wheel on an electric train, especially in this country, where a sizeable proportion of the electricity used is generated by burning coal.

[John Williamson]

Abandoned by the makers half a century ago as too complex, too expensive to produce and too inefficient. Next...

[John Williamson]

Especially the way that the supercharger was driven off the crankshaft by a differential gear arrangement which meant that the harder it worked, the higher the boost pressure got. Three cylinders, six pistons, two crankshafts...

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Commer was part of the Rootes Group which went near bankrupt. Car makes they owned included Humber, Hillman, Singer, Sunbeam and Talbot. Were taken over by Chrysler who also failed. The European side was sold to Peugeot. Another classic example of a UK car company who failed because they didn't invest in enough new models. The one which they did - the Imp - had many design flaws when introduced. Which, of course, were blamed on the workforce. Although there were problems there - the government of the day forced them to build a new factory in a part of the world not used to car building - Linwood, Glasgow.

[charles]

not quite sure I understand the logic of that. is there an inherited gene which makes car building easier? If so, how did Toyota succeed at Derby?

[John Williamson]

Not a gene as such, no, but in the Derby area, there is a history of car and aircraft building, so the workforce were used to working at that scale before Toyota opened the plant. In Glasgow, the engineering background was in shipbulding, and the skills aren't so easily transferable.