Steam engines have a thermal efficiency of about 10%, coal fired power plants up to 40%, which is achived by a huge amount of heat recovery, water chemistry and tremendous higher pressures und temperatures of the steam. There is no way to implement these features in a moving vehicle with limited cross sectional area. In germany in the 1930s there have been attempts to improve the eficiency of steam locos e.g. by raising the pressure, but all attemps failed for several reasons The swiss engineers got the same result with their ex german Kriegslok type 52. Using oil instead of coal only has the advantage to reduce the fireman's burden, nothing else.
BastaTim This is just my general observation, but isn't interesting that when someone brings up running steam locomotives for general service. The naysayers always come out in force, telling us all in great detail why it will never ever happen. It seems to me that some people are never happy unless everyone else is sad just like them.
This is just my general observation, but isn't interesting that when someone brings up running steam locomotives for general service. The naysayers always come out in force, telling us all in great detail why it will never ever happen. It seems to me that some people are never happy unless everyone else is sad just like them.
Or it could be that there are forum members that actually work in the railroad industry and have experience as to what works and what doesn't.
Railfans that view the modern railroad industry as existing mainly to entertain them crack me up, if they had their way there would be nothing but tourist and museum railroads....
"I Often Dream of Trains"-From the Album of the Same Name by Robyn Hitchcock
Fuel kind and price isn't what killed revenue steam in the US and most other countries - it was all the care and maintenance as well as water treatment that the beasts required. Wonderous to see in operation - hell on wheels (and the bottom line) to keep operating.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
Tim, I loved steam locomotives when thery were in regular use through my home town, and I love them still. I love to see and ride behind the ones that operate today, and I love to reminisce. But your last comments really make me wonder whether you've actually read the comments on this thread and given the subject serious thought. If you really want oil fired steam locos to make a big-time comeback in regular, general service, then I suggest you invest all of your money in the idea and tell us how that works out for you.
Tom
That PZL is a sesquiplane, not a biplane. One and a half wings, not two. There is or was an Antonov at the Hamilton Warbirds museum a few years ago and it is HUGE! When I say most beautiful, I mean aircraft like the Heinkel 51, the Gloster Gladiator, the Boeing F4B, the Hawker Fury and the Staggerwing Beechcraft.
Technology can only take you so far. Once jets came in, development of piston-engined aircraft, for the military anyway, stopped. I saw in a museum in Harford, CT one of the last radial engines devloped, a 4-row, 32 cylinder monster. The technology went no further. But, the last piston powered aircraft were pretty spiffy like the Grumman Bearcat and I love the Lockheed P-38!
I'm starting to think that piston powered automobiles are nearing the limit of thier technology. There's a Tesla sedan in my neighbourhood. There's a child seat in the back and coffee cups in the console like any other car. Will gasoline powered cars go away in my lifetime? Probably not. But, thanks to people like the ones who built the Tornado and are now building a P2 Mikado and others, we will always have steam!
Jeez, that PZL jet biplane was UG-LEEEEE! No wonder it was a flop. Aeronautical engineers have a saying, "If it looks good, it'll fly good."
The amazing thing is, it's usually true. Many of the failed aircraft designs of the past were flying eyesores as well.
carnej1 54light15 Biplanes went as far as they could go by about 1937 as far as military aircraft were concerned. Yet, they are still in use as cropdusters because of the superior lift they have.As far as I'm concerned, the last biplanes were the most beautiful aircraft ever... The Soviets [built] huge numbers of the AN-2 transport, a very large biplane (12,000 lbs. GTW) design ...
54light15 Biplanes went as far as they could go by about 1937 as far as military aircraft were concerned. Yet, they are still in use as cropdusters because of the superior lift they have.As far as I'm concerned, the last biplanes were the most beautiful aircraft ever...
Biplanes went as far as they could go by about 1937 as far as military aircraft were concerned. Yet, they are still in use as cropdusters because of the superior lift they have.As far as I'm concerned, the last biplanes were the most beautiful aircraft ever...
The Soviets [built] huge numbers of the AN-2 transport, a very large biplane (12,000 lbs. GTW) design ...
Wouldn't you consider a turbojet biplane even more modern? Not really sure that it could be called 'the most beautiful ever', though... !
54light15 Biplanes went as far as they could go by about 1937 as far as military aircraft were concerned. Yet, they are still in use as cropdusters because of the superior lift they have.As far as I'm concerned, the last biplanes were the most beautiful aircraft ever, but I digress. In Canada, they still use the Lee-Enfield .303 rifle on the Arctic patrol as they will stand up under the conditions. Some things do come back or never really go away. But steam? Not likely for all the reasons that have been stated. Sure, it would be nice, but think of the infrastructure, the people that must be hired. No, don't see it happening.
Biplanes went as far as they could go by about 1937 as far as military aircraft were concerned. Yet, they are still in use as cropdusters because of the superior lift they have.As far as I'm concerned, the last biplanes were the most beautiful aircraft ever, but I digress.
In Canada, they still use the Lee-Enfield .303 rifle on the Arctic patrol as they will stand up under the conditions. Some things do come back or never really go away. But steam? Not likely for all the reasons that have been stated. Sure, it would be nice, but think of the infrastructure, the people that must be hired. No, don't see it happening.
The Soviets build huge numbers of the AN-2 transport, a very large biplane (12,000 lbs. GTW) design with excellent rough field STOL cpabilities.
Production actually lasted all the way to 2002, with over 18,000 built. Many are still in service today.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonov_An-2
Overmod ndbprr I can not come up with one technology that was replaced with another technology that was ever ressurected and used again. Acetaminophen.
ndbprr I can not come up with one technology that was replaced with another technology that was ever ressurected and used again.
Acetaminophen.
The Back Shop of a Steam Locomotive Fleet was huge. Lehigh Valley steam shop in Sayre PA was bigger then the town itself and employed most of the people there.
ROBERT WILLISON Cheap oil won't change it.
Cheap oil won't change it.
Nor will expensive oil. The cost saving in operating diesels was not in the fuel costs, but the costs of everything else required to keep steam engines operating.
Its wasn't the fuel type that doomed the steam locomotive but so many other issues. First and foremost was they were labor intensive. They need an extensive back shop to keep them on the road. They generally ( not always) ran shorter distances than diesel thus fewer diesel replaced a fleet of steamers. Steam locos could not be mued thus driving up the labor cost. The early ft's simply out performed many of the steamers operating at the time. The efficiency of these units made it easy for railroad management of the day to begin the process of replacing them. I enjoy today's steam excursions, but the argument of thier operating efficiency was decided decades ago. Cheap oil won't change it.
Wizlish tomikawaTT Show me a practical, inexpensive (over its entire operating life) FREIGHT locomotive, and I might be interested See Tom Blasingame.
tomikawaTT Show me a practical, inexpensive (over its entire operating life) FREIGHT locomotive, and I might be interested
See Tom Blasingame.
Love reading the T.W Blasingame stuff that's available online:
http://www.trainweb.org/tusp/news/Steam%20Page%20Release%206-13-2005.pdf
http://docs.stb.dot.gov/?sGet&Dl5YTH1WXw1zAAsKXBdSV0x6Sw1xfAMJXAEGCW4DF3MBe3ILXwgCCmYHGAYDfxVaAlxGcUsOS1FELBVJO1RES0ZcQQ0AfQcMS1dfVEpdTl1VcAEIVAYCCQoBamB0C20xNjgvMy8wME0zOQw%3D
But..AFAIK He has never actually constructed and tested any of hardware or systems he is promoting and I would hazard to guess that this is why the railroad industry does not take him seriously.
The Rand Cam based steam expander he proposes using has never been built, although there are much smaller R.C engines (mostly internal combustion) operating as test beds. I'm sure that a steam expansion version is technically feasible but good luck competing against companies who have actual hardware on the market already if you're not able to raise the capital to build a demonstrator.
I wonder if his solid fuel burning designs would meet Tier IV emissions standards, I suspect not...
As for the LNG/liquid fuel designs, he doesn't seem to make any argument as to what they offer over dual- fuel diesel technology (which he has also promoted, he was trying to interest potential manufacturers in using Dual Fuel O.P Fairbanks Morse diesel Engines in locomotives).
I do give the guy a lot of credit for thinking outside the box....
railtrail Crude oil or low grade oil that does not need much refining now there more of it then coal
Crude oil or low grade oil that does not need much refining now there more of it then coal
tomikawaTTIsn't that rather like reproducing the Ford tri-motor with gas turbine engines, constant-speed props and a glass cockpit?
Actually, with respect to some of the potential designs for 'steam' - using passenger locomotives (for example, a conversion of the ALPS locomotive to use a bottoming cycle, or an updated version of the V1 turbine with Bowes drive and magnetorheological clutches) the analogy is a bit more like a B-70 or 2707 with modern engines, glass cockpit, AI fly-by-wire instead of Honeywell analog controls, etc.
And in my opinion there's also a 'place' for a modernized replica T1 ... in much the same sense as that proposal out of Europe for a 'replica' Titanic which would be completely modernized below the waterline. Is it a replacement for reliable passenger diesels in normal Amtrak service? no. But is it likely to be able to fill enough seats in enough prospective services or uses to make its physical shortcomings less significant? I think yes.
I don't have the 'right' analogy for a locomotive using a catalytic methanol/H2O2 cycle, but it's (in my opinion) considerably in advance of most anything with comparable performance using a diesel engine, ESPECIALLY something using a 20-cylinder C175... ;-}
tomikawaTTShow me a practical, inexpensive (over its entire operating life) FREIGHT locomotive, and I might be interested
kenny dorham I thought ONE of the downfalls of "steam" was the purchase, storage, and treatment of water for steam power.?Maybe, as others have said, training (or retraining) a workforce for a relatively obsolete trade.Can all the turning wheels on a train be used to generate AC.....or would that be a net loss when the extra drag to do so would burn more power that it could create.?Solar panels on the train car tops.....small wind-mills on each car.? What IS the latest scuttlebutt on the future of locomotive power.?
I thought ONE of the downfalls of "steam" was the purchase, storage, and treatment of water for steam power.?Maybe, as others have said, training (or retraining) a workforce for a relatively obsolete trade.Can all the turning wheels on a train be used to generate AC.....or would that be a net loss when the extra drag to do so would burn more power that it could create.?Solar panels on the train car tops.....small wind-mills on each car.? What IS the latest scuttlebutt on the future of locomotive power.?
Right about the water being one of steam's downfalls. In dry regions, water concerns alone would trump everything in a revival of external combustion. Unless some clever inventor comes up with a way to recapture the expelled steam and condense it back to a liquid, this issue alone is a deal-killer, at least for most of the western U.S.
Where the water is both scarce and unfit for a boiler (without treatment) the railroads used to spend huge amounts of money gathering, treating, and delivering suitable supplies to their outposts. Without a game-changer in this matter, it's going to be moot, whether our drought continues or not.
As for windmills , I was recently on a cruise which included a presentation on the technical details of our ship's propulsion, navigation system, etc. One of my fellow passengers just couldn't stop pressing the idea that some windmills on top of our huge (Panamax) ship would be really helpful. Ah, the golden years!
One thing about the Sustainable Rail Coalition that raises my ***???!!! pennant is their plan to build, "A modern passenger locomotive."
Isn't that rather like reproducing the Ford tri-motor with gas turbine engines, constant-speed props and a glass cockpit? Or putting a Tiffany porch light on a badly deteriorated pre-civil-war house?
Show me a practical, inexpensive (over its entire operating life) FREIGHT locomotive, and I might be interested. Amtrak is not going to build an entirely new service infrastructure to support the supersteamer that SRC might build.
Note, too, that loading unrefined Tarakan crude as boiler fuel contributed to the loss of several Japanese ships - fuel fumes ignited, sometimes explosively, to change a damaging hit into a ship-killer. We already know that Bakken crude has similar problems. Thanks, but I'd rather not have a rolling bomb in front of my passenger cars.
Chuck
Hear hear! Well said Mr. Carleton.
Yes, "steam engines that can burn Oil should come back." The short list: UP 3985, SP 4449, SSW 819, SLSF 1522, CBQ 5629 and ATSF 2926. This is hardly unreasonable.
Editor Emeritus, This Week at Amtrak
Yes, there's nasties in waste oil. It' cleaned with a steam-heated centrifuge and all is well.
ndbprrI can not come up with one technology that was replaced with another technology that was ever ressurected and used again.
ndbprrI can not come up with one technology that was replaced with another technology that was ever ressurected and used again. This too is DOA.
To LNER and NDG: Good points, both of you. It never entered my mind there was a possibility of selling waste oil. I HAVE heard of grease theives, however.
And NDG, certainly what you say is true about the possibilities of various "nasties" being in waste oil, but the Morris County Central never had that problem. They had other problems in the end, a long story...
How about this: If you're running a steam tourist 'road turn yourself into a waste oil recycling center. Have the stuff brought to you instead of going to get it?
kenny dorhamCan all the turning wheels on a train be used to generate AC.....or would that be a net loss when the extra drag to do so would burn more power that it could create.?
There is little point in doing this with freight trains, as aside from having to provide 'generators', etc. suitable for use with three-piece trucks, and providing some means of driving them effectively from existing wheelsets, you would need some kind of control and power bus. There have been a couple of threads on here that have advocated electromagnetic track braking, and it is (remotely) possible that some kind of blended AC dynamic brake might be provided to aid in distributed braking and energy recovery. However, I also expect the capital cost of provision and maintenance to be impractically high -- to say nothing of the fun involved in keeping it maintained and working properly.
Many passenger trains, of course, used a variant of this approach, not for propulsion but for lighting, HVAC and so forth. If you google 'Spicer drive' you can see what the arrangement was -- I believe most of the arrangements used DC generators, compatible with battery charging without rectifiers. There is an instructive curve in Kiefer's motive-power test book of 1947 that shows the effect on train acceleration of these generators as they progressively 'kick in.'
[Added little detail: in the April 27, 1901 issue of Scientific American, Fritz Behr (of Lartigue and Behr) mentions how his electric drive motors are going to be used to supply additional braking current to electromagnetic track brakes (thereby providing dynamic braking to the wheels and also friction braking with a pressure of about 200 psi)...]
Solar panels on the train car tops.....small wind-mills on each car.? Smile...
You would need HSR indeed before a RAT would produce enough power to be useful... probably strictly in emergencies. Other methods of providing energy from 'atmospheric motion' are not going to have the energy density to be useful for much. (Note that an air turbine using brake air is often used to keep an EOT running and charged -- that doesn't really 'count'... ;-}) The cost and relative fragility of the solar panels has historically ruled out their use for anything related to locomotive power, and again there are usually better sources of available power than solar for most things (like keeping mobile devices charged, or providing emergency communications power when a locomotive is shut down).
It's hard to beat the energy density of liquid hydrocarbon fuels, or the efficiency of burning them near stoich in a modern IC engine that develops appropriate power at appropriate RPM for best efficiency. GE's recent experience with designing a hybrid locomotive has produced some highly interesting technical material concerning battery design and structure for sinking dynamic-brake levels of voltage and current -- and perhaps sourcing reasonable current flow during acceleration when there may be heavy train run-in. It bears repeating here that as battery energy density continues to rise toward 'hydrocarbon' levels, so too does the battery's predilection to catch fire and release comparable levels of heat to hydrocarbon combustion...
What IS the latest scuttlebutt on the future of locomotive power.?
One thing to watch are efforts to burn 'cheap' natural gas in locomotives that share as much equipment and 'infrastructure' as possible, and which involve the least possible additional training and maintenance costs, and that do not produce colossal critical-mixture explosion or BLEVE hazards... <ducks!>
The previous post sounds a lot like some of the "Gee Whiz" proposals that could be found in the pages of "Popular Science" and "Popular Mechanics". Aside from the mechanical complexities, the first proposal would indeed consume more energy than it created. The others would also be mechanical nightmares.
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