Juniatha Short sentence - big question : W - h - a - t ( you can see me start slowly here ) - provided steam development had continued beyond 1945 , say into 1952 .. 54 - might / would / should then have been the next step-up in fast passenger steam power ? - coupled wheels / wheel sets - engine unit / units - wheel arrangements - boiler configuration -speed / power configuration . Lean back and start you imaginations , everyone ! ( We leave alone historical facts of EMD diesel invasion for this ) Regards Juniatha
Short sentence - big question :
W - h - a - t
( you can see me start slowly here )
- provided steam development had continued beyond 1945 , say into 1952 .. 54 -
might / would / should then have been the next step-up in fast passenger steam power ?
- coupled wheels / wheel sets
- engine unit / units
- wheel arrangements
- boiler configuration
-speed / power configuration .
Lean back and start you imaginations , everyone !
( We leave alone historical facts of EMD diesel invasion for this )
Regards
Juniatha
The best piece I've ever read about this topic was an TRAINS magazine article from the 1970's written by Bill Withun(who was later involved the with the ACE3000 Project) called "Did We Scap Steam Too Soon?".
He speculated that improved Duplex drive locomotives based on the PRR designs would have been the next evolutionary step in Steam development. The article included drawings of advanced versions of an 8 drivered duplex passenger locomotive as well as a ten coupled freight engine.
He also mentioned Lima's late 40's proposals for advanced super power designs, particularly the 4-8-6 they tried to market. And he discussed the possibility of improved steam turbine electric designs..
"I Often Dream of Trains"-From the Album of the Same Name by Robyn Hitchcock
This is purely speculative, and certainly not from being well-read on steam...(cough...):
I would have wanted to see vastly improved thermal efficiency, more weight born by driven wheels/sets, and my feeling is that turbine drives was the ultimate end-point for steam....even if they had gotten it to work. Composite light-weight rods (not available in the mid-50's as you limit us, Juniatha) would have taken care of dynamic augment and other unwanted wear and tear effects.
I suppose a boiler could have driven a turbine that drove a generator that powered driven axles with traction motors. How about a H-8-70ACE?
Using the power of my university library privileges, I was able to read Burnell, Neil. "An Appreciation of the T1 - The Enginemen's Perspective" on interlibrary loan. Mr. Burnell interviewed crew members who drove and fired the Pennsy T1's to address the mythology that has developed around them, about them being slippery, rough riding, poor steaming, or whatever other slander has been directed their way by the self-appointed experts.
The impression I got was the T1's were capable engines. Yes they were slippery inasmuch as you can floor the gas pedal on a Ford Pinto and not much happens -- try the same thing on a high performing sports car and you risk spinning out of control.
The crew reports indicate that they 'rode like a Pullman car" contradicting what has been written about rough riding. Maybe there is some exageration what with unsubstantiated and undocumented reports of 100 MPH+ running (well over 100 MPH), but apparently railroad management looked the other way when crews "made up time" but didn't want to brag about how fast they were blowing through grade crossings. But there are indications that the poppet valve T1's were kind of alike a multi-valve overhead cam car in comparison with the more conventional push-rod "Detroit Iron" that runs out of steam (wonder where that analogy came from) at higher RPMs.
As to the poppet valves and the maintenance crews, I have to order an article in Mr. Burnell's series to get his take on that.
My take on all of that is that the T1's were good engines, perhaps the best performing steam engines in terms of 100+ MPH with 1000+ trailing tons (the engine and tender alone accounted for an additional 500 tons).
It seems to me that the railroads that were successful in some sense in the waning days of steam, NYC with the Niagara, N&W with the J, A, and Y classes (by the way, the J and the Niagara were fine locomotives, but Mr. Burnell suggested that the poppet valve duplex-drive T1 could turn out power at speeds where its competitors simply topped off on their power curves), that what those railroads focused on were maintenance facilities, maintenance cycles, and maintenance procedures.
To the extent that the PRR didn't get many service turns out of their T1's is that they bought these high performance locomotives and then didn't back them up with the maintenance procedures to keep them productive.
So with steam, and especially with high performance mainline steam, you are not just acquiring a bunch of locomotives with certain attributes, you need to acquire an entire motive power system, which includes a way to maintain them in a cost-effective manner that keeps them out on the road. It may have been the early-design poppet valves hidden behind streamline shrouds (and between the frames for the back engine) on the T1 that were the downfall of those locomotives, but I have the impression that the Pennsy didn't look at the big picture of those locomotives as merely elements of a much larger system of train operations.
I think that thermal efficiency has a role -- I guess latter-day U.S. steam was rated at around 6 percent, the N&W Y-class could get 8 percent, and I read that the T1 could get 8 percent operated short of full power where all of your firebed is sucked up the stack. Chapelon and later Porta were getting 11 or 12 percent. Maybe these aren't big gains, but going from 6 percent to 12 percent cuts your water and coal usage in half, with gains in on-the-road endurance between water and coal stops and a reduction by half in the amount of coal you have to move around in support of railroad operations.
But I think the inside-rod cranked-axle duplex designs of "Did we scrap steam too soon" and all of the calls for turbines and condensers and electric drive along with the all-too-complicated ACE 3000 design are missing a point. The focus is wrong, the focus is on building a better locomotive whereas the focus needs to be on building a train operations system, concentrating on everything from crew training to maintenance and service facilities to how you keep those engines on the road and get economic return from them.
If GM "killed the electric car", what am I doing standing next to an EV-1, a half a block from the WSOR tracks?
Paul, from what I have read of the N&W's practice with the A's, J's, and Y6's, not only were the engines well designed and built using the known technology, but also the maintenance and service facilities were designed to keep the engines on the road, and the crews were well trained in the art of running the engines.
I well remember the article in Trains in the mid-fifties that described the care of the engines, and illustrated how the J's were kept moving so that the best use was made of them.
But, even if you increase the efficiency of your use of fuel and water 50-100 per cent but you have to manufacture your own spare parts, the cost of replacing damaged (think of the J that had the reverse gear on the left side disintegrate south of Abingdon) or wornout parts could negate the savings.
Johnny
Paul,
Check your messages/"conversations". I sent a list of all the PRR T1 articles in the Keystone. If it didn't show up, reply here. I'll try another way.
Paul Milenkovic stated, "The focus is wrong, the focus is on building a better locomotive whereas the focus needs to be on building a train operations system, concentrating on everything from crew training to maintenance and service facilities to how you keep those engines on the road and get economic return from them."
This says it all. Railroading as a profit making venture, is a system of locomotives, cars, tracks, infrastructure, operations, etc. All parts must work together. N&W was probably the best proponent of this idea in late steam. They added a-tanks to eliminate intermediate water stops (can you imagine how expensive it is to stop and restart a 15,000-ton train?), using larger cars (70-ton instead of 50-ton), curve lubricators (yep, even in the early 1950's). When they finally dieselized, a lot of the more modern ideas were already in place.
Getting back to the topic of the thread, can you imagine a poppet valve equipped N&W J? There are indications that N&W and Franklin were thinking about it...
Back to the topic at hand of a better steam locomotive . . .
There were advanced steam locomotives regarded as "failures", but they had features on them that may have been worth keeping.
The C&O turbine-electrics were epic failures if one is to believe the press on them -- their efficiency was less than an equivalent rod-driven steam locomotive, and they couldn't get one to complete a trip without breaking down. I don't know if the one-of Jawn Henry was all that bad, but I am told there were problems with water and coal dust getting into the electrics, of the turbine unit getting knocked out by a hard coupling.
But both of those locomotives were coal-fired cab forward, having the coal bunker up front, but shaped to let the driver and fireman see out towards the front. Garrets also had separate coal bunker from water tender, and run in reverse, they were also cab-forward with the coal bunker up front. I am thinking that the idea of a coal-fired cab forward or a bi-directional coal-fired locomotive is pretty much proven by those experiments.
The Pennsy S2 steam-turbine mechanical drive was not regarded as entirely successful, but what people say about that locomotive varies. Some say it was too heavy on steam at anything less than 100 MPH, but others say it used the variable steam nozzle arrangement that the British tried on a somewhat smaller steam turbine that was regarded as being at least as efficient as an equivalent piston steam locomotive. On the other hand, some write that the S2 was plagued with firebox staybolt failures, and that came from starting from a dead stop requiring a great drawdown of steam that thermally shocked the firebox, but I never heard that as a problem with the British steam turbine.
But the mechanical drive arrangement was considered successful unless people know otherwise, that of use siderods but coupling into one of the wheels with a jackshaft (maybe on the British steam turbine, definitely on a Swedish steam turbine I have seen on a You-Tube video) or a quill drive (electric locomotive tech used on the S2 steam turbin) was a success. Maybe you could have a geared, high speed, thermally efficient "Uniflow" piston engine coupled to the wheels with that kind of mechanical drive. You have siderods but not a mainrod with its difficult-to-balance forces.
The other thing is, what was so wrong with a 4-8-4 Northern type? Did those things really pound up the tracks with "hammer blow" forces, or is that a slander ginned up the the Diesel sales people, where Diesels pounded up the track with their nose-suspended traction motors?
Another shibboleth of steam power is that the stay-bolted fire-tube boiler is the be all and end all of boiler design on a locomotive, and water tube boilers were "all failures." The Jawn Henry may have had its problems, but I never heard that its high pressure (600 PSI) wateer tube boiler was one of them.
What if you combined a coal-bunker-in-front cab forward or bi-directional steam locomotive with the Jawn Henry water tube boiler, with best practices of a high-speed poppet valve geared drive Uniflow piston steam engine with jackshaft/quill drive into siderod drivers after the S2/British/Swedish turbines? In other words, keep the things that worked on the various "experiments"?
Paul, I too had wondered about water tubes over the other. I'm not an engineer, but it seems to me that heating smaller quantities 'as needed', or on demand, is a better way to improve thermal efficiency. But, being less than a dilettante here, I left it out of my musings above.
If exhaust draft up a stack is problematic, then don't use it. Blowers work well, and can always be improved, or perhaps ducted works routing exhaust steam, or even condensing systems, are the way to go. Exhaust steam could be routed via a nozzle facing rearwards in a safe, if noisy, place to add a wee bit of jet-like thrust. Or, just in two directions, sideways on either side of the boiler if it must be vented. Just not so that it results in massive amounts of ambient-temp air rushing up through the grates upon start-up. I do understand that you don't want to hamper the escaping used steam, or cause undue backpressures that end up defeating the power of the turbine.
Perhaps, and I hesitate to even 'go there', a single lower chassis cylinder to help lift the train. Boosters helped in earlier times. If the turbine can be held back and spooled up after 15 mph, maybe that would work.
Would anyone who knows take the time to do a micro-mini layman's explanation of the benefits and caveats between poppet, reed, and rotary valves?
Crandell
Take this for what it's worth, but I've read that the "bugs" in N&W's "Jawn Henry" could probably have been worked out if the experiment continued. As it was, "Jawn Henry" really didn't do the job any better than a Y6b did, and at more than the cost of a Y6b. If other 'roads showed any interest in a steam turbo-electric N&W might have continued the developmental work with the eye on sales to other 'roads, thus lowering the production costs, but none did, so the project died. "Sic transit gloria mundi..."
The biggest problem with the PRR turbine experiment was the drastic drop in boiler pressure when starting. As to a future advancement for passenger steam, the reconfiguration of the boiler would have been a must. The PRR manufactured a working scale model of the S2 to try and solve this problem, but unfortunately and like the Jawn Henry project, a lack of interest put the project to bed....forever.
I think the hammer flow forces are something to contend with. I was out watching MILW 261 come past a few years ago, on welded rail good for 79 mph. You could hear the rail zinging with the rotation of the wheels, and could hear the hammer blow. My dad had his video camera on a nearby fence post, and it started shaking. I think it almost fell off. Diesel electrics with their rotary power application don't do that.
There was an article in Trains mag, January 1979 I think, about the first PRR E7s. It came time to true the wheels on the E-units, and the round house foreman was incredulous about the miles the E's had racked up. The T1s in his house had maybe a quarter of the miles, as they were in the shop most of the time.
Mike WSOR engineer | HO scale since 1988 | Visit our club www.WCGandyDancers.com
For what it's worth, my understanding is that the T1 mileage numbers quoted in that Gardener article from the January 1979 Trains were suspect.
More information can be found on this thread: http://cs.trains.com/ctr/f/3/t/174956.aspx
Looking forward to reading Dave Stephenson's article on the T1 in the upcoming 'Steam Glory 3'.
--Reed
Firelock76 "...Take this for what it's worth, but I've read that the "bugs" in N&W's "Jawn Henry" could probably have been worked out if the experiment continued. As it was, "Jawn Henry" really didn't do the job any better than a Y6b did, and at more than the cost of a Y6b. If other 'roads showed any interest in a steam turbo-electric N&W might have continued the developmental work with the eye on sales to other 'roads, thus lowering the production costs, but none did, so the project died. "Sic transit gloria mundi..." ..."
"...Take this for what it's worth, but I've read that the "bugs" in N&W's "Jawn Henry" could probably have been worked out if the experiment continued. As it was, "Jawn Henry" really didn't do the job any better than a Y6b did, and at more than the cost of a Y6b. If other 'roads showed any interest in a steam turbo-electric N&W might have continued the developmental work with the eye on sales to other 'roads, thus lowering the production costs, but none did, so the project died. "Sic transit gloria mundi..." ..."
K4sPRR The biggest problem with the PRR turbine experiment was the drastic drop in boiler pressure when starting.
The biggest problem with the PRR turbine experiment was the drastic drop in boiler pressure when starting.
And the reason for that was that the steam flow for a given tractive effort was pretty much constant from zero MPH to about 70 MPH. At 70 MPH, the S-2 was more efficient than any other PRR steamer, but way less efficient at ow speeds. Putting it another way, the S-2 could develop close to starting tractive effort at 70 MPH.
One solution would have been a variable gear ratio between the turbine ad drive wheels. Another would have been modifying the reverse turbine gearing to allow the S-2 to run forward on the reverse turbine at low speeds. Applying a booster may have helped as well.
- Erik
Erik , that reverse turbine geared to assist the forward turbine seems "genius" 'cause it would keep the time of de-efficiency of the forward at a minimum. Yes, the reverse turbine also would be working at its most inefficient....
A booster (rods, pistons, cylinders designed for low speeds being carried along at 100 mph) might....might be over-stressed.
GOD you guys are making me dig out my trains{did we scrap steam to soon} issue but do you think a 6-8-6 would really have worked ??
Not a 6-8-6; probably 4-8-4 (as wartime restrictions on metallurgy would not have applied, perhaps even during the Korean War period when 19 1001 was expediently scrapped... my guess would be that in the absence of road dieselization, the history of that locomotive would have been radically different, as would the Besler-motored B&O W-1.
The better argument might be 'when would you go for the big six-wheel trailer, a la Allegheny and Long-Compression (double-Belpaire) locomotives... vs. 4-wheel trailer with same lazy firing requirements and firebox size reduced through better thermo... vs. better engines with 2-wheel trailers (see Richard Leonard's exploration of late NYC Mohawk practice.)
But 6-wheel lead trucks... not required for any sensible design that takes account of length in design...
i would agree that better thermo would negate the need for a big firebox
ok what loco was 19 &1001 & B&O W-1. I NEVER HEARD OF ANY OF THESE
Go look at the thread on Mallard speed records, there are pictures and more discussion.
See Doug Self's site for the low-down on all the motor locomotives.
19 1001 has four 90-degree V-2 motors, two each side, each driving one independent axle. Gottwaldt's book has some information Self doesn't. This was imho a better approach in principle to the problems with high-speed drive than Besler's, but YMMV.
W-1 was the Besler locomotive -- not a 4-8-4 but a 4-2'2'2'2-4. As mentioned, one of the motors was built and tested, and I'm trying to see what information on the project has survived in Besler's papers. Not mentioned so far: the boiler for this locomotive was built and finished, but was never actually used (diesels giving a better perception of what B&O needed by 1941).
The French approach has some interesting details, notably the attempt at conjugating the engines to make their rather amazing high-speed-slip proclivity less... I suspect the conjugated-throttles approach would not have worked completely in practice, but that's because I've modeled the situation in a different context.
Have fun over on Self's site -- he has done tthe work for us all.
RME
Welcome aboard Basta Tim, don't recall seeing you here before.
And I LIKE the way you think!
Welcome!
(Interesting that this appears to be the original thread that spawned the others-and refuses to die.)
NorthWestWelcome! (Interesting that this appears to be the original thread that spawned the others-and refuses to die.)
No problem! This is probably the best place to put this. There is just a complex story associated with this thread.
My comments-
Santa Fe had 2-10-4s with 74" drivers. At the speeds that this would be allowed to run, (<80MPH) a four wheel front truck wouldn't be necessary. Also, where do you think this would have run? Fixed wheelbase on this would be very long, restricting use. I offer this as constructive criticism to help you improve your design.
BastaTimThank you I am mostly a reader of the forums and not a poster.
I trust we can change that -- dramatically!
I'd like to apologize, I was much more blunt last night than I intended.
I encourage you to post your ideas and thoughts, because they are good ones. I've learned a lot from others here asking questions to try to improve my designs (such as an extreme-drag-freight 2-8-10-6 of questionable usefulness), and was trying to help you. I hope I haven't scared you off.
I had a similar idea for a 4-10-4 locomotive, but a 4 cylinder design with the cranks set at 120 degrees for smoother running and better balancing. Perhaps even a compound design? Would probably take some work to make it flexible enough to run at decent speeds and make it around curves, though. Blind drivers and lateral motion devices might make it work, though.
I was more a fan of oil firing, though. It seems to me it would be easier to implement one person operation with oil rather than coal firing.
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