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 is on display at the London Science Museum. A French turbine powered car, the Socema-Gregoire, was displayed at the October 1952 Paris Auto Show. It was designed by the French engineer Jean-Albert Grégoire. The first turbine-powered car built in the US was the GM Firebird I which began evaluations in 1953. While photos of the Firebird I may suggest that the jet turbine's thrust propelled the car like an aircraft, the turbine actually drove the rear wheels. The Firebird 1 was never meant as a commercial passenger car and was solely built for testing & evaluation as well as public