Diesel Engines Do Not Throttle Up

This is sure to precipitate a mighty deluge from Boston. (I predict use of the words “clueless” and “history-major.”)

Diesel engines do not “throttle up.”
No matter what you see or hear, diesel engines do not throttle up.
I have been viewing a Powder River Basin video (the vast coal-mining region in northeast Wyoming, served [at that time] by the Burlington-Northern and Chicago & North Western railroads), and on a number of occasions trains leave sidings, and the narrator says they “throttle up.”
Negatory. A diesel-engine: car, bus, truck, or railroad locomotive, does not have a throttle restriction in the air intake.
Steam engines do, as do gasoline engines. Steam engines had a “throttle” that varied the steam output of the boiler to the drive-pistons. Early on it was in the steam-dome. Later it was incorporated into the superheater header — a “front-end throttle.” Front-end throttles worked better — primarily a SuperPower innovation (a few K4s had them).
Gasoline engines have “throttles” too, usually incorporated into the carburetors, or in “throttle-bodies” (for fuel-injection), so that if the throttle ain’t “wide-open,” the intake-charge (which is gasoline vapor) is restricted (“throttled”).
Diesel engines are always “wide-open” — there ain’t no intake-restriction of any kind. Often the intake air charge is “supercharged” (or “turbocharged;” wherein exhaust gases propel the supercharger — a regular [non-turbo] “supercharger” is driven within the motor by a shaft, belt or gears), so that intake-air might increase as supercharger output wicks up.
But there is no throttle. The revving up of a diesel engine is by lobbing in more fuel. Stomp the “exhilerator” on a bus, and you were lobbing more fuel into the fuel-rack. The fuel gets sprayed into the cylinder, where it self-ignites due to the extreme heat of high compression. Throw in more fuel, and the motor revs up.
Most railroad-locomotives vary fuel-use with a control-stand. Idle (least fuel-use) is “Run One;” full power (most fuel-use) is “Run Eight.” Climbing the mighty Curve the locos are in “Run Eight.” I always say “throttle-to-the-roof,” but it’s actually “Run Eight.” “Throttle-to-the-roof” is steam-locomotives. Wide-open on a steamer was to set the throttle-lever up to the roof of the cab.

Along these lines, I hear people at the mighty Curve say they can “hear the whistle” of trains climbing at Brickyard crossing.
Negatory. Only steam-engines have whistles. What you hear are the air-horns of the approaching diesel-locomotive.
When people misspeak this way I usually let it fly. I only corrected one lady once.

Similarly, we have the hoary argument about whether it’s “concrete” or “cement;” “asphalt” versus “bituminous concrete.”
Fiddle-de-deeee. So somebody uses the wrong terminology: “throttling” diesels, “whistling” diesel-locomotives, “cement” or “asphalt.” Or concrete being “poured,” for crying out loud.
Splitting hairs over correct engineering terminology is only elitism. I don’t do it.
So a diesel “throttles up;” so what? I know what they mint.