I was in Timisoara Romania during this past week and one of the meetings I was talking at was for former railway workers.  It reminded me of the time I visited the National Railway Museum in the city of York in England.  I had been speaking at a David Begg Associates (DBA) course and we visited the museum one evening and I stood alongside locomotives like this Chinese one in the picture above - it is huge!  For an engineer I was so excited looking over all the incredible steam engines in this place that evening.  I told these men at the meeting about this train and they were clearly very excited about it!  

 

These men who must have experienced really hard times under communism, were all mechanics and engineers - it was really special for me to be able to share some of my life with them and the story of the steam locomotives in York Museum, and the fact that I could relate to steam boilers and latent heat energy, etc. just took them back to the happier memories!  I spoke about the powerful locomotive with pistons pumping and wheels turning, racing down the railway tracks and the sound of the steam whistle – WHOOP, WHOOP!!!  They all laughed and WHOOP, WHOOPED back at me!  What a great time we had.

 

Steam is of great importance of course to, ‘moist heat sterilization’. Next week I’ll be presenting at the, ‘Good Autoclaving Practices (GAP)’ course in Manchester, where I will be talking in much detail about this topic including, ‘Steam Quality’.  If you haven’t already booked your place why not think about doing it now?  It runs from the 2nd to 4th November.