• gnu@lemmy.zip
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    19 hours ago

    Perhaps this is why I particularly didn’t find the locomotive physics that strange

    The reason why you didn’t think it strange is because you don’t know how one works, because there’s multiple things which don’t make sense otherwise.

    The drive wheels are not the ones at the back but the ones with the connecting rods and piston rods (the pistons provide the drive force). The rods are placed in a way which would prevent the wheels turning if connected in those positions and would typically be placed on the largest wheels of the locomotive (i.e. that big wheel should be the drive wheel if it’s going to be there).

    The smoke should be coming from the very front of the locomotive as the output from the firebox needs to run through the boiler (most of the front of the machine) in order to generate the steam needed to actually drive the locomotive. Having it come from the back makes no sense unless the whole boiler arrangement is also reversed and it isn’t.

    • Dæmon S.@calckey.world
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      18 hours ago

      @gnu@lemmy.zip @memes@lemmy.world

      To repeat a comment I just made, adapted to the things you mentioned in your reply:

      As I said during other replies on this nested thread, i visualized this drawing as some sort of old VW Beetle: trunk at the front of the car, relatively small engine at the rear, rear traction. That’s why, at least to me, the locomotive principles clicked in my mind.

      Having it come from the back makes no sense

      Which I particularly understood as a small engine from a rear-traction locomotive… I mean, a combustion engine doesn’t need to be big, just see how old VW Beetles work with engines quite small compared to other cars.

      But, okay, let’s say the drawing is “all wrong” or physically dubious. Why it “must be AI”? Do you people happen to have seen those Rube-Goldberg art pieces? Did Rube Goldberg use AI for his artworks?

      Last but not the least, oh my Goddess! I can’t help but quote the meme: “boy, that escalated quickly”. It’s a meme, fellows, it’s meant to be a meme! Still we’re all fighting over details of a meme! I simply asked someone why they labelled this comics “AI slop”, then it developed into me trying to explain how my neurodivergent mind is visualizing the locomotive as some kind of VW Beetle shaped as a steam locomotive…

      I should disassemble some old VW Beetle someday and make myself a locomotive quite similar to the one in the comics, just for you people to see what exactly I was visualizing when I was stubbornly explaining my perception of an Internet meme. 😅

      • CannonFodder@lemmy.world
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        9 hours ago

        Of course one could make a train engine in many forms. But the classical shape of the sort depicted in the drawing here is an old steam engine. It’s not a carriage with and engine in it. The big cylinder is the steam tank. And there was a fire under it that exhausted though the big chimney structure at the top front. The pressure from the steam pushed big pistons that connected to a set of large wheels mechanically connected with a big drive bar. You can create a new design with a modern combustion engine, or an electric motor - and these of course already exist - in fact it’s hard to find working old steam engine designs these days. But an electric or diesel engine car wouldn’t have the same classic shape of an old steam engine. They just look like a big box. So having this design but then putting the smoke coming out the back simple makes no sense.

        Of course a human can make such errors too, but in order to get the shape right, one would need to understand the function, or they’d copy another picture and get the details right, including the smoke stack.

        AI LLMs have a word base interface and they’re more susceptible to getting some things perfect and others nonsensical - like all those pictures that look right but when when you look at the details, like the number of finger, there are classic AI errors. That’s why this train is being tagged as AI. It’s not 100% for sure, but it looks that way if you understand the structure of that kind of train.