Will, thanks for the reminder of the existence of your blog! I was busy with other things and didn't look at the first few posts when they went up. It's a beautiful site!
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W.r.t. the Westinghouse (BLW-Westinghouse) gas-turbine locomotive: gas turbines for "surface" (= stationary, marine) applications tend to have a lot in common with aircraft jet engines: I think it is standard practice for a turbine producer to build both aircraft and surface turbines using some of the same major components. Is there any indication that the engines for this locomotive were related to a contemporaneous aircraft jet? "Classic Trains" (I know, not a particularly scholarly source!) ran an article a while back on (American) turbine locomotives. There was a bit of tabular data, and what LOOKED LIKE interesting comparison between the Westinghouse locomotive and (first-generation) GE GTEL.
The comparative contrasts may, of course, be purely spurious (figures based on different conventions, etc), but it looked as if the WH locomotive's engines might have been closer technically to aircraft engines than GE's. The WH B-B-B-B and the GE B-B+B-B were quite close in "locomotive" horsepower, but the WH seemed to have much higher "raw" horsepower, suggesting that GE had done a better job of mating the turbine to the transmission. But this is speculation, based on an un-footnoted table in a non-scholarly publication....
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Anyway: fascinating blog! Added to my short list of bookmarks.
