Ray Breyer
Modeling the NKP's Peoria Division, circa 1943
Steam performance was comparable - on an engine to engine basis. The actual efficiency of external cdombustion steam was about 15-20%. It could drop to 5-6% in cold weather(thermal loss from the boiler - reduced steam to the cylinders). This was measured on ex C&O 614 by the ACE 3000 group a number of years ago. An internal combustion diesel is about 30% efficient no matter what the weather is.
The next point is cost of maintainance - this is where the diesels really won out. This number was so out of the ball park that even the low price of new steam(about 1/3 that of a diesel at the time) could not justify the purchase of any more steam. So the bottom line is unless you have very cheap labor, you are going to buy a diesel. That said, I have 5 steamers on my pike(love to see all that 'motion' as they move) and the 'sound' is just great!
Jim
Modeling BNSF and Milwaukee Road in SW Wisconsin
Steam engines and diesel engines both have their place...
Generating electricity for electric locomotives!
-George
"And the sons of Pullman porters and the sons of engineers ride their father's magic carpet made of steel..."
No one can doubt the beauty of steam, but from an engineer's perspective, it's a much more dirty, and dangerous environment than the hefty wide-cab diesels of today. You literally had to face the flames every day.
Fortunately, a good deal of the aesthetics of steam lives on today as models, and we run a steam locomotive anytime we want, we could even have it haul Superliners or a stack train if we so choose.
Steam was a 19th century high labor technology. As labor costs went up steam became less feasible. The countries that retained steam after we did, were those with cheap labor like China. Most of those have since scrapped their steam.
Actually, the conversion here was delayed by WWII. The resources for locomotives were put into tanks and planes. Otherwise the conversion would have started 5-10 years earlier.
Enjoy
Paul
IRONROOSTER wrote: Steam was a 19th century high labor technology. As labor costs went up steam became less feasible. The countries that retained steam after we did, were those with cheap labor like China. Most of those have since scrapped their steam.Actually, the conversion here was delayed by WWII. The resources for locomotives were put into tanks and planes. Otherwise the conversion would have started 5-10 years earlier. EnjoyPaul
Yes, it really is a wonder that they were not canned (I use the word advisedly) sooner. CPR used its last steam in '58/'59, if I have that right, and we were flying supersonic jets. Heck, we had detonated one or two atomic bombs by then! What were we doing running these iron dragons?
BTW, I have one token diesel on my layout. The other 8, soon to be 9, are all fire breathers.
Not really delayed. I think WW2 called out the best of steam to handle the heaviest traffic the Nation has ever seen.
Safety Valve wrote: IRONROOSTER wrote: Steam was a 19th century high labor technology. As labor costs went up steam became less feasible. The countries that retained steam after we did, were those with cheap labor like China. Most of those have since scrapped their steam.Actually, the conversion here was delayed by WWII. The resources for locomotives were put into tanks and planes. Otherwise the conversion would have started 5-10 years earlier. EnjoyPaul Not really delayed. I think WW2 called out the best of steam to handle the heaviest traffic the Nation has ever seen.
Diesels had been around before WWII and most railroads were anxious to transition to them but when the US entered the war, factories were converted to producing war materials so new locomotive production all but stopped. Steam did carry the load during the war but that was because it still made up the largest portion of railroad rosters. As soon as the war ended, the transition to diesels was resumed in earnest.
You may be interested in hearing from a UK perspective.
Here in the UK steam lingered on until 1968. The railways wanted to dispose of steam earlier, as mentioned before it was very labour intensiveand inefficient . Not long after the war a whole new generation of steam locos were designed and built to take steam in to the 1980's but most were scrapped with only a couple of years on the clock. In the early 50's the modernisation plan was born it was a plan to rebuild our rail network ater the destruction of WW2 but the government sort of run out of money (we had to buy in oil as we weren't an oil producing nation at the time) having to rebuild a whole nation and the starting of the welfare state etc, so the railways were low priority as they were state owned. We were one of the last European countries to kill off steam I think the last was Germany in 1977. In addition steam burns fuel when idle it's not a technology you can switch on and off like diesel or electric traction.
Shaun
I always thought the question should be what if steam engines had been realized much sooner. Most people don't know that the ancient Greeks had a basic steam engine but used it as a toy for amusement and never realized it's mechanical potential. It was a hollow metal ball suspended over a flame with two pipes sticking out on either end. You put water in the ball, the flame heated the water, and steam would come out the two pipes causing the ball to spin round and round. They never figured out to attach it to gears, etc, for mechanical work.
What would the world be like today if the steam engine had been invented thousands of years before it was? It could've been possible.
So, what's next? Will we see fuel-cell technology in railroad engines? They are seriously saying that there will be a few "demonstration" vehicles on the roads within two or three years. For cars, a big part of the changeover to new technology will be the "gas station" problem - right now, you just can't hop down to the neighborhood Sunoco and fill up with high-pressure hydrogen gas. The railroads, on the other hand, have a relatively small and compact fuel distribution system. I would think that a demonstration project using this far cleaner technology would be in the interest of the railroads and the nation.
Or, we could burn the hydrogen, heat water up to boiling, and run a big black fire-breathing dragon again. Wouldn't that be more fun?
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
jecorbett wrote:If Al Gore gets his way, the diesel engine might someday give way to a hydrogen powered loco or some other alternative.
If anybody ever invents a locomotive that will run on bovine excrement and exaggerated claims, Al Gore will fuel it. (I used to live in Tennessee.)
Realistically, the reciprocating steam locomotive was a very expensive machine to maintain, both the locomotive itself and the wear and tear on infrastructure. It was a monster man-hour consumer; much more so than diesels. Another factor was the lack of standardization, which made mass production of spares impractical.
Still another factor was a characteristic shared by diesel-electric and straight electric locomotives, totally unknown to steam - the ability to deliver full horsepower to the rails at any speed from zero to track (or gearbox) maximum. Steam horsepower output was a humped curve that peaked somewhere above the halfway point of the speed range, while electric traction has a flat horsepower curve with full power available to start, as well as move, a train.
Theoretically, a steam-electric should have the same advantages as a diesel-electric. Actually, the high pressure boilers used with steam turbines couldn't take the pounding normal to rail operations. No steam-electric was particularly successful; most were out-and-out failures.
Having said all that, I still run steam on my layout. All that motionwork is beautiful - as long as you don't have to maintain it (and an accompanying boiler) to ICC (now FRA)-mandated standards in 1:1 scale.
Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964 - burning coal, diesel fuel and kilowatts)
MisterBeasley wrote: So, what's next? Will we see fuel-cell technology in railroad engines? They are seriously saying that there will be a few "demonstration" vehicles on the roads within two or three years. For cars, a big part of the changeover to new technology will be the "gas station" problem - right now, you just can't hop down to the neighborhood Sunoco and fill up with high-pressure hydrogen gas. The railroads, on the other hand, have a relatively small and compact fuel distribution system. I would think that a demonstration project using this far cleaner technology would be in the interest of the railroads and the nation.Or, we could burn the hydrogen, heat water up to boiling, and run a big black fire-breathing dragon again. Wouldn't that be more fun?
From a greenhouse gas standpoint, fuel cell technology is an incomplete answer. The amount of enerrgy it takes to extract the hydrogen from water is enormous, and will likely come from traditional fossil fuel power plants. So, instead of the CO2 coming from the exhaust of the diesel, it comes from the coal-fired power plants. The situation vastly improves if you can capture and sequester the CO2 at the power plant, something not practical in a vehicle.
I think the real answer for an Al Gore-happy locomotive is some sort of hybrid (like a Prius) whose prime mover runs on renewable biofuels.
Sorry, I'm a meteorologist, so climate change is one of my hot buttons. Ironic, too, because on my model railroad, I still run steam and mine coal, representing an era before mainstream science understood the problem of anthropogenic climate forcing.
Modeling the Rio Grande Southern First District circa 1938-1946 in HOn3.
Some types & classes were scrapped too soon. From a museum/preservation view, Steamtown s/b filled with locos from US railroads. Go down the list. For all the NYC hudsons, etc, to have NONE left is crazy. For too many asteamer is just a picture in a book or video if the origonal film has been preserved. Some RR's donated locos to the towns they served. Others coudn't get them to the scrapper soon enough. Most of the fleet at Steamtown is of Canadian design. THey should represent US railroads! I have nothing against our Canadian friends, but let Canada preserve ther own CN/CP locos.
Also needed is some sort of library like the smithsonian that could assist in preserving the film that is left of the era. Can you imagine doing a Civil War book without Matthew Brady photos? Get some pro's involved with the preservation & conservation of the material. Future generations may want to use it!
tomikawaTT wrote: Still another factor was a characteristic shared by diesel-electric and straight electric locomotives, totally unknown to steam - the ability to deliver full horsepower to the rails at any speed from zero to track (or gearbox) maximum. Steam horsepower output was a humped curve that peaked somewhere above the halfway point of the speed range, while electric traction has a flat horsepower curve with full power available to start, as well as move, a train.Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964 - burning coal, diesel fuel and kilowatts)
That is not true. Electric motors have a nasty thing called back EMF. That is whenever they are turning they act as generators to some extent. So the faster an electric or diesel electric travels the more horsepower that must be used to simply overcome the "backfeed" from the traction motors. Thus a diesel electric or straight electric provides the highest horsepower at zero speed and steadily loses usable horsepower as speed increases.
However, many modern locomotives limit the power to the rails at low speeds and increase the permissible horsepower as speed increases. This limits the wheelslip at low speeds and also compensates somewhat for the back EMF.
I know that here in the UK during the 60's & 70's they used a diesel hydraulic combination would this have over come the back EMF problem? Is there a difference between diesel electric AC & diesel electric DC?
Dave Vollmer wrote: MisterBeasley wrote: So, what's next? Will we see fuel-cell technology in railroad engines? They are seriously saying that there will be a few "demonstration" vehicles on the roads within two or three years. For cars, a big part of the changeover to new technology will be the "gas station" problem - right now, you just can't hop down to the neighborhood Sunoco and fill up with high-pressure hydrogen gas. The railroads, on the other hand, have a relatively small and compact fuel distribution system. I would think that a demonstration project using this far cleaner technology would be in the interest of the railroads and the nation.Or, we could burn the hydrogen, heat water up to boiling, and run a big black fire-breathing dragon again. Wouldn't that be more fun?From a greenhouse gas standpoint, fuel cell technology is an incomplete answer. The amount of enerrgy it takes to extract the hydrogen from water is enormous, and will likely come from traditional fossil fuel power plants. So, instead of the CO2 coming from the exhaust of the diesel, it comes from the coal-fired power plants. The situation vastly improves if you can capture and sequester the CO2 at the power plant, something not practical in a vehicle.
Hydrogen fuel is not quite as incomplete as you might think, and for different reasons.
As far as creating Hydrogen cheaply and cleanly? That's not the real problem according to some engineer friends of mine who know about this issue. Nuclear power can be employed here, and perhaps solar/wind power once the next generation of technologies get off the drawing board and into production.
The real obstacle is creating a safe and efficient delivery system. Hydrogen is not at all like petroleum. It's far more dangerous to transport and handle. But I'm told that it's being worked on in earnest and a solution is not too far away. Once this occurs, you will see Hydrogen come out in a big way.
As many may recall I come from a family of railroaders.My Grandfather on my dad's side had this to say..Any fool that likes a steam locomotive never had to fire one.Make no mistake even with a mechanical stroker you still had to work you fire.I had a great uncle that was killed in a boiler explosion..The bell of the locomotive landed 1/2 mile away.Some -excuse the graphic details-body parts of the head end crew was never found.Steam was and remains dangerous.
As was also noted steam was a high maintenance locomotive and a dangerous machine to operate.If a locomotive would lose a side rod she would rare up and rollover which usually resulted in the death of the head end crew.
Larry
Conductor.
Summerset Ry.
"Stay Alert, Don't get hurt Safety First!"
Esthetically and emotionally, yes.
Efficiency and productivity, no.
On our layouts when we run a double header or a long train with pusher(s) running steam isn't an issue. Try running train crews for each loco(in steam) in the real world and the labor costs are prohibitive. The engine shops for steam were a catalog of skills requiring a large workforce to get the job done right. The skill sets required for diesel shops are not as broad and staffing can be much smaller than those required by steam. The dismissal of large groups of employees in railroad engine maintenance was a harbinger of what was to come for other employee groups in the nation's economy.
Jon
jondrd wrote: Esthetically and emotionally, yes. Efficiency and productivity, no. On our layouts when we run a double header or a long train with pusher(s) running steam isn't an issue. Try running train crews for each loco(in steam) in the real world and the labor costs are prohibitive. The engine shops for steam were a catalog of skills requiring a large workforce to get the job done right. The skill sets required for diesel shops are not as broad and staffing can be much smaller than those required by steam. The dismissal of large groups of employees in railroad engine maintenance was a harbinger of what was to come for other employee groups in the nation's economy.Jon
I recall some photos of large steam being sent straight to the scrap yard with chalked word "JUNK" on the cylinders. The attitudes is that they are wasteful, dirty and consumed too much manpower to run freight. The nice clean economical desiels saved the railroad so much in many ways.
I disagree with your view that Desiel Shops are somehow smaller and less labor intensive than steam.
The Desiel Shops down in North Little Rock on the Union Pacific is bigger than my town with a supporting yard that just goes for miles.
Now. Steam. When they break, easy fix. Just very big tools and strong workers who know exactly what they are doing.
Desiels when they break you need alot of drones carefully studing tomes, manuals and other material to even understand the root cause of the problem. Then the Drones tell the Worker Bees who are trained on that specific area of maintaince. Then everything is stamped and approved by a gaggle of suits who only want that engine under power pulling a money making train RIGHT NOW and not rotting in some costly and non-revenue producing shop.
Serves the Suits right if they are unwilling to purchase robust and strong desiels fit for the load and able to stay out of the shop in the first place.
Sometimes I see a set of very dirty desiels lugging a train on the main with doors hanging open in winter and obvious dirt, soot or other image-impairing problems overlooked in the quest to get power onto that revenue generating train and sent out.
The way things are going, they would rather have unmanned machines take over the work of running the train and save the costly payroll of actually maintaining warm air breathing bodies in the cab.
There is a certain glory in having a well shopped steam running it's appointed schedule and is well cared for by both the crew that runs it and the shop that needs to maintain it. Woe onto the workers should that engine not be able to do it's duty.
Some classes were scrapped to soon, many others too late. Please - if you have that issue - have a look to Ed King's article "Big Boy - or Big Mistake" in TRAINS 09/2004. THAT is the key to understand the demise of the steam engine! He wrote the thing (and more of course) what I was thinking for years. There were so many great "Super Power" steam engines in service - but few of them operating at speeds where all that "Super Power" actually could have been delivered - because these were NOT the engines the Railroads could really use efficiently. Look to any of the 4-6-6-4s: great engines, yes. But does anyone can recall a class of these that has been operated most of its life at speeds they were designed for? Worst case probably is UP: they even used them as pushers at speeds below 10mph! A flatland race engine designed to RUN with a good load! Anyone still wondering of too high maintenance and inefficiency? Most Railroads had roundhouses full of "Super Power" steam, but very few had steam engines which could start a train a multiple unit diesel can.
Two notable exceptions were NYC and N&W. Especially N&W because their engines were homebuilt. N&W had substantially lower train hour costs than any other - even fully dieselized - Railroads at the end of the steam age! And they have had all other than an easy job - as a mountain road!
NYC compared a two unit diesel with a Niagara 4-8-4, and the diesel won - but very slightly! And here the bottom line is that even a three unit diesel of that time didn't equal the Niagara's horse power (NYC didn't need much tractive effort because of its no-grade-profile)!
But again and again one can read or hear the steam locomotive was a high maintenance engine, extremely high man hour required, dirty, inefficient, diesels more powerful, etc. I am tired of that.
Would UP have liked to dieselize that fast if they would have had purchased 100 modern 2-8-8-2s instead of 130 4-6-6-4s and 4-8-8-4s for the same job? Unlikely. Big Boy was designed to lug its tonnage up Sherman Hill and drift down the other side at 50mph. N&W's Y6 class 2-8-8-2 had the speed potential of 50 mph, and MUCH more tractive effort, and therefore could lug more tonnage than Big Boy - which it did much more efficient. And that engine was about 100tons less in size! UP's maintenace costs would have looked very different with such an engine.
Same with C&O's 2-6-6-6. What a huge engine! And what far away from N&W's Y-6 tonnage potential! They had plenty of horsepower (but still too less for their weight), and could run fast - but C&O seemed to show no interest to use any of these. They send them into the mountains where tractive power matters - which these engines lacked painfully.
And concerning maintenance costs one has to keep in mind that these IN GENERAL were rising at steam's end - not for steam alone. And most Railroads were surprised by how quickly the maintenance costs were rising for their diesels - not rarely double of what they expected. The efficient life of a diesel is shorter than for a well designed, properly used steam engine.
I don't intend to compare today's diesels with yesteryear's steamers, but if most Railroads motive departments would have used somewhat more wisdom concerning their purchases of steam power then steam could have reached its full potential and - at least - would have survived a couple of years longer.
But history went another way, and to dieselize also - one shouldn't forget this - was hyped to be necessary because to "be modern" - unfortunately all over the world.
Some classes were scrapped to soon, many others too late. Please - if you have that issue - have a look to Ed King's article "Big Boy - or Big Mistake" in TRAINS 09/2004. THAT is the key to understand the demise of the steam engine! He wrote the thing (and more of course) what I was thinking for years. .......
And, if you get a chance, read Bill Withuhn's article in the June, 1974, issue of Trains.
http://index.mrmag.com/tm.exe?opt=I&MAG=TRN&MO=6&YR=1974&output=3&sort=A
Withuhn's argument was that by combining individual advances in steam technology into an integrated design that steam could have held off diesel for a number of years.
Note: When ATSF 4-8-4 #3752 was rebuilt with rotary cam poppet valves in the late 1940's, the performance increase was so astounding that diesel proponents were seriously embarrassed and the Santa Fe decided to recapitalize the loco on the books as a new engine. Santa Fe seriously considered taking the boilers off its ex-N&W Y-3's and building new 4-8-4's with them. Incidentally, there was an article in the August, 1975, Trains about Santa Fe's 2-10-4's. I don't have the issue anymore, but, IIRC, Stagner said that a 5011 class could outperform a 4 unit set of F-7's on certain routes (don't remember, unfortunately).
Note: When my namesake, the real Andre Chapelon, created a 3 cylinder compound 4-8-4 in the late 40's, the powers that be in the SNCF hierachy were chagrined to find that Chapelon's engine, the 242A1, outperformed the best electric locomotives of the time and at lower cost.
Both the NKP tested diesels against the best of their steam locomotives and ordered steam. The primary reason the N&W dieselized is not because the diesel was better, but because no one was making the various pieces parts that go with railroad steam technology anymore.
And then there was David Wardale's rebuild of a South African Railways Class 25NC 4-8-4 using LD Porta's design of the gas producer firebox. SAR runs on a 42" gauge. The one-off prototype (Class 26) was capable of producing in excess of 4000 HP. Not bad for a narrow gauge locomotive. http://www.trainweb.org/tusp/wardale.html
Andre
NO is the answer. Steam was out of date in 1939 but somebody named Hitler came along.
Derrick Moore wrote:Did we scrap steam too soon?
andrechapelon wrote: Note: When ATSF 4-8-4 #3752 was rebuilt with rotary cam poppet valves in the late 1940's, the performance increase was so astounding that diesel proponents were seriously embarrassed and the Santa Fe decided to recapitalize the loco on the books as a new engine. Santa Fe seriously considered taking the boilers off its ex-N&W Y-3's and building new 4-8-4's with them. Incidentally, there was an article in the August, 1975, Trains about Santa Fe's 2-10-4's. I don't have the issue anymore, but, IIRC, Stagner said that a 5011 class could outperform a 4 unit set of F-7's on certain routes (don't remember, unfortunately).
"On certain routes"? Heck, I'll bet simply throwing a third F7B in there would've solved the problem with no other changes required. As it was in about five years normal evolution would put the diesels so far ahead that a decision to rebuild steam engines would've been seriously embarrassing.
Performance wasn't the problem. As stated above, it was the maintenance hrs/running hrs ratio plus the cost of maintenance support staff and facilities. New steam valves aren't going to help that.
KL