[PRCo] The optimum shape....

[Fred Schneider]

I think Ken Josephson would like this and perhaps once you relate this to rail car design, the rest of you will also be interested.

Here is a story about the shape of the ideal automobile.   The Count feels that the optimum shape for reduced wind resistance would be ugly.   Perhaps but it is the same shape that was found to be ideal in the wind tunnel tests in 1930 or 1931 that resulted in the compromise design for the Philadelphia and Western Railway Bullet cars.   Compromise?   Yes, because they had to be double-ended.

The Count's statement that no car gained speed by streamlining is absolutely true.   The engine makes it go, not the shape of the body.   But eddy currents over 30 or 40 miles per hour behind the car have a very strong effect on fuel consumption and that is why the shape must look like it does in the picture.   

Industrial design has always been a compromise of fitting people into a space, making it go both directions, and having something that people will accept or having a rail car that you can couple into a train.   This design would be nice but it doesn't M. U. very well.  

http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=aXEbAAAAIBAJ&sjid=kksEAAAAIBAJ&pg=3552%2C6209936