Free Republic

Ross Rowland's C&O 614 on her second series of "Erie Limited" trips for NJ Transit in the Spring of 1997, Hoboken to Port Jervis round trips.

If you think that the world's greatest inventions came from the fevered minds of solitary geniuses, think again. As you scan this list of the 10 inventions that changed the world, note how many of them perfected workable designs. 10. Plow Compared to some of the gleaming, electronic inventions that fill our lives today, the plow doesn't seem very exciting. It's a simple cutting tool used to carve a furrow into the soil, churning it up to expose nutrients and prepare it for planting. Yet the plow is probably the one invention that made all others possible. No one knows...

German researchers have developed a super-tiny steam engine that’s just a few thousandths of a millimeter wide. Although the engine sputters incessantly and isn’t developed enough to be used in the real world, the discovery could make it easier to produce ultra-efficient micro-engines in the future, according to researchers at the University of Stuttgart and the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems. “The machine really does perform work,” said researcher Clemens Bechinger in a statement. “This was not necessarily to be expected, because the machine is so small that its motion is hindered by microscopic processes which are of no...

Really chuffed: First full-size British steam locomotive for 50 years fires up Last updated at 22:25pm on 01.08.08  First came the sweet toot of the whistle, then a steady hiss. Finally, sporting her battleship-grey undercoat, Britain's first new steam locomotive in almost half a century emerged in all her majesty. It was a sight that took those old enough to remember back to a golden age of rail travel. Even though Tornado only had 120 yards of track to cover as she chugged into action in a Darlington rail yard, the moment was, with good reason, marked with a...