Gas turbine locomotive turbine locomotive to be used on British Railways. The locomotive was to be built by the North British Locomotive Company and the turbine would be supplied by C. A. Parsons and Company. According to Sampson, the plan was to use indirect heating. The pulverized coal would be burned in a combustion chamber and the hot gases passed to a heat exchanger. Here, the heat would be transferred to a separate body of compressed air which would power the turbine. Essentially, it would have been a hot air engine using a turbine instead of a piston. Robertson shows a diagram which
Gas turbine by a gas turbine. The "Auris" operated commercially as a tanker for three-and-a-half years with a diesel-electric propulsion unit as originally commissioned, but in 1951 one of its four diesel engines – which were known as "Faith", "Hope", "Charity" and "Prudence" - was replaced by the world’s first marine gas turbine engine, a open-cycle gas turbo-alternator built by British Thompson-Houston Company in Rugby. Following successful sea trials off the Northumbrian coast, the "Auris" set sail from Hebburn-on-Tyne in October 1951 bound for Port Arthur in the US and then Curacao in the southern Caribbean returning to Avonmouth after 44 days