As much as we can call Steam as old, its a technology that must stay alive for the good, bad or ugly, or whatever.
<> There are loco makers now making new steamers for tourist lines, small engines that a small crew can easily handle for maintenance and repair/maintenance isnt such a big job.
For the railroads its certainly the money bottom line, for the share holders and so on.
<>If there wasnt a such a thing like EMD/GE etc sporting around diesel engines we may have seen Steam carry on. Honestly because Steam went to the scrapland, its further development went to a dead stop. <>Perhaps when we have learned some lessons about crude oil use we might look back at the steamer and do something.
Personally I wouldn't mind seeing one (or three) trains being pulled by steam, and I mean real trains, not the tourist-attraction trains that use small locos; but I have to acknowledge that diesel has (at least for now) a lower operating cost than steam.
In the future, I'm willing to bet steam will be put to good use, albeit in the form of electricity plants for electric locos and maglev trains....
-Dan
Builder of Bowser steam! Railimages Site
Dave Vollmer wrote: 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.
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.
Much of the hydrogen gas that is used to make fuel cells is actually not extracted from water but from materails such as methane gas. This requires less energy to split apart than that of water.This is what is done at the fuel cell research lab here at school. It is still not as cheap or as easy as many other fuel sources but it is a step in the right direction
Colorado Front Range Railroad: http://www.coloradofrontrangerr.com/
Virginian wrote:We scrapped steam in the interests of higher profits for "shareholders". I have grown to hate shareholders, even though I are one. We are now selling the American way of life down the tubes as fast as humanly possible, in the further interests of shareholders. After we finish outsourcing all the jobs except Wal Mart and McDonalds, who is going to be left that can afford the cars or the houses, but the shareholders? And there ain't enuf of them to carry the load. Sad mess we have made.
Indeed.
Larry
Conductor.
Summerset Ry.
"Stay Alert, Don't get hurt Safety First!"
BRAKIE wrote: Virginian wrote:We scrapped steam in the interests of higher profits for "shareholders". I have grown to hate shareholders, even though I are one. We are now selling the American way of life down the tubes as fast as humanly possible, in the further interests of shareholders. After we finish outsourcing all the jobs except Wal Mart and McDonalds, who is going to be left that can afford the cars or the houses, but the shareholders? And there ain't enuf of them to carry the load. Sad mess we have made. Indeed.
We were shareholders once as well, we sold out at a profit and retired a great deal of debt that was robbing our dream. That was probably the best thing we ever did.
Unfortunately, as Enron showed, even the ordinary shareholder gets taken to the cleaners. Remember all those buy recommendations right before the company tanked?
Also, check out the compensation packages of CEOs, especially some of those severance deals, to see where the earnings are going.
Can I get butter on my popcorn?
Enjoy
Paul
I think it basically came down to MONEY. With steam you needed water along all routes. You also needed a HUGE turntable to get those engines going back in the direction they came from. It also eliminated the need for cabooses, personel, maintenance on said equipment, and a host of other things that the diesel didn't require.
Whether you like it or not, steam had seen its better days.
jrbernier wrote: 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
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
The maintenance issue is the single biggest reason for steam to be replaced. Every small town about 100 miles down the line had a roundhouse filled with workers 24 hours a day.
Steam engines required a high degree of maintenance and coaling stations along the way were manned around the clock. Sure some roads built their own steam and had their own coal mines, but the labor issue could not be overcome.
Even the early diesels passed up every water plug, and they could idle in a yard for days without a person checking on them several times a shift.
My favorite place to visit was the roundhouse and backshops to watch the work going on. The back shops were really expensive since the steam engine flue and boiler work has short life limits. The machinery had to reworked every 100,000 miles on most coal burning locomotives. The Big boys would have been reworked completely 10 times before they reached their on million miles at retirement. The early diesel erased all of those boiler washes, coaling towers, water plugs and labor costs and the dangers of boiler explosions if the work was not done right.
It is no surprise the Santa Fe purchased their first diesels sets for the Southwest to avoid the water problems in New Mexico, Arizona and California. They were forced to haul water cars to many desert locations in the Southwest just to have water for the locomotives.
That's the conventional view. However, the N&W, which didn't own a diesel until 1955 was one of the most profitable railroads of the time, even when compared to completely dieselized railroads. OTOH, N&W did its homework, created modern maintenance facilities for steam and could keep its locomotives out on the road earning revenue with an availability rate that was comparable to diesel availability. If other railroads had been as progressive the dieselization picture would have been a lot different. N&W took a systematic approach, ameliorating steam's weaknesses and enhancing steam's strengths. The rest of the industry pretty much nickel and dimed it looking for a magic bullet rather than approaching the issue systematically.
BTW, fuel stops weren't the issue, water stops were. Generally speaking, a steam locomotive in road service made 3 water stops to every fuel stop. N&W offset this by adding water tenders which gave their locomotives range enough to where they wouldn't have to make water stops except at places where they'd normally have to stop anyway.
Andre
DD1 wrote:I can agree with most of the responses to your question, but, in my opinion, if we had put the hundreds of millions of dollars that were spent putting someone on the moon, steam might have had a better chance at survival. Steam locomotive technology is hardly "rocket science". I think we just gave up too soon.
If the military used this kind of (non)logic, we'd be armed with the best catapults and crossbows modern science could devise.
Folks, though I love the look, sound and even smell of steam, the technology is DEAD! I don't doubt that individuals will continue to build reciprocating steam one-offs or lookalikes for tourist roads and amusement parks, but the probability of steam returning to the high iron in heavy freight service is similar to the probability of Osamu Bin Laden being elected President of the United States.
As for the Moon - Nixon seriously wounded the space program and caused a mini-depression when he cancelled the last few missions of the original series. Now there's talk of getting a start on Luna City in 2020 - maybe. The Moon, and the planets, and, eventually, the stars are our future. The human species is hard-wired for exploration and expansion. Those who insist on trying to reinvent the past will be left behind as the species moves ever forward, outward and upward. Progress takes no prisoners.
Chuck [modeling the past (Central Japan in September, 1964) and writing about the future (The Confederation Universe, 2182- ?)]
I have to agree with tomikawaTT apart from steam isn't quite dead as we use it everyday when we turn on an electrical item. From what I can see over here in the UK the space program was good for the US (and various companies here in the UK) If space race hadn't taken place we would all be speaking Russian by now.
Shaun
andrechapelon wrote: Steam engines required a high degree of maintenance and coaling stations along the way were manned around the clock. Sure some roads built their own steam and had their own coal mines, but the labor issue could not be overcome. That's the conventional view. However, the N&W, which didn't own a diesel until 1955 was one of the most profitable railroads of the time, even when compared to completely dieselized railroads. OTOH, N&W did its homework, created modern maintenance facilities for steam and could keep its locomotives out on the road earning revenue with an availability rate that was comparable to diesel availability. If other railroads had been as progressive the dieselization picture would have been a lot different. N&W took a systematic approach, ameliorating steam's weaknesses and enhancing steam's strengths. The rest of the industry pretty much nickel and dimed it looking for a magic bullet rather than approaching the issue systematically. BTW, fuel stops weren't the issue, water stops were. Generally speaking, a steam locomotive in road service made 3 water stops to every fuel stop. N&W offset this by adding water tenders which gave their locomotives range enough to where they wouldn't have to make water stops except at places where they'd normally have to stop anyway. Andre
I was one of the lucky railroaders that got to see the N&W in 1956. The N&W was wonderful to watch and my vacation trip with my family to Roanoke in 1956 allowed me to see the experimental John Henry in operation as a helper. The extra tender concept was wise and several railroads including the Illinois Centra used them also. You must know that the N&W designed and built their steam engines and the actual cost must have been must less than new diesels, but they purchased diesels in the end.
The problem is still with maintenance. We got to visit Shaffers Crossing roundhouse and each of the engines inside were being checked and repaired with the same labor as was mentioned. A diesel would be outside being refueled and resanded for the next run.
It is ironic that a great part of the Pennsylvania Railroad, which owned about 40% of the N&W at one time would be run today by the great N&W, which stayed with steam as long as possible.
It's interesting (well to me anyway) to see how various historical and economic forces have sped up or slowed down technological advances. For example, steam would have disappeared from the US much earlier than it did if the railroads had been able to buy all the diesels they wanted during World War Two, but couldn't because of rationing of steel etc. But then, if not for World War Two, the US economy would have remained stuck in the Great Depression and the railroads wouldn't have had the need / money for new diesels anyway !! (But then again, the cost savings in maintenance etc. might have made them buy them anyway).
BTW similarly if not for WW2, TV might have become common much sooner. I believe the first TV stations opened around 1939 in the U.S., I know in Germany during the war, wounded soldiers were entertained by TV broadcasts to TV's in their hospitals (although some of them may have been closed-circuit rather than broadcasts??).
p.s. Space is the future, we can't just sit on our little island while there's an entire universe around us to explore and exploit.
whywaites wrote:Naa hydrogen is too expensive how about black diamonds?
One of the biggest problems with hydrogen is storage- MUCH higher volume per BTU than diesel or coal , heading back towards the larger tender and/or fuel stops again. I wonder if there is going to need to be a multitude of systems sometime in the next 50 years:
Good topic, though.
Brian Pickering
[/i]You must know that the N&W designed and built their steam engines and the actual cost must have been must less than new diesels, but they purchased diesels in the end. [/i]
Of course they did. All the myriad suppliers of steam locomotive related items had either gone out of business or just plain stopped manufacturing the items because a relatively small outfit like the N&W couldn't singlehandedly buy enough material to make it worthwhile to continue manufacturing. Had not everyone else joined the diesel stampede, N&W might have continued to build steam locos at Roanoke (perhaps even the planned but never built Y-7).
Everyone seems to think that steam technology had reached a dead end by WWII. It hadn't. Of all the US railroads, N&W took the most systematic approach to its motive power and everything related to it. It didn't just build modern steam locomotives and then maintain them in antiquated back shops. It also assigned its steam locomotives to the tasks they were suited for. There isn't a lot of difference between the maximum horsepower output of a J and a Y-6b (5500 - 5600 hp). However, the J maxed out in the 45-50 mph run, suitable for passenger (and even fast freight) trains on the road's profile, while the Y efficiently handled the coal trains that were the N&W's life blood. Even as good as N&W was, they never looked into the efficiencies to be gained with poppet valves or such improvements to steam exhausting as the Kylchap exhaust or Giesel exhaust ejector. One wonders what they could have done with such advances as L.D. Porta's gas producer combustion system ( http://www.trainweb.org/tusp/firebox.html ) if steam had lasted a few years longer.
It's interesting that the final heavy freight locomotive manufactured for use in the U.S. was not one of Lima's overhyped "Super Power" locomotives, but a locomotive that was the end result of years of incremental improvements to a USRA design of WWI vintage. Not only that, but it could outperform the diesel competition and cost less overall to boot.
andrechapelon wrote: [/i]You must know that the N&W designed and built their steam engines and the actual cost must have been must less than new diesels, but they purchased diesels in the end. [/i]Of course they did. All the myriad suppliers of steam locomotive related items had either gone out of business or just plain stopped manufacturing the items because a relatively small outfit like the N&W couldn't singlehandedly buy enough material to make it worthwhile to continue manufacturing. Had not everyone else joined the diesel stampede, N&W might have continued to build steam locos at Roanoke (perhaps even the planned but never built Y-7). Everyone seems to think that steam technology had reached a dead end by WWII. It hadn't. Of all the US railroads, N&W took the most systematic approach to its motive power and everything related to it. It didn't just build modern steam locomotives and then maintain them in antiquated back shops. It also assigned its steam locomotives to the tasks they were suited for. There isn't a lot of difference between the maximum horsepower output of a J and a Y-6b (5500 - 5600 hp). However, the J maxed out in the 45-50 mph run, suitable for passenger (and even fast freight) trains on the road's profile, while the Y efficiently handled the coal trains that were the N&W's life blood. Even as good as N&W was, they never looked into the efficiencies to be gained with poppet valves or such improvements to steam exhausting as the Kylchap exhaust or Giesel exhaust ejector. One wonders what they could have done with such advances as L.D. Porta's gas producer combustion system ( http://www.trainweb.org/tusp/firebox.html ) if steam had lasted a few years longer.It's interesting that the final heavy freight locomotive manufactured for use in the U.S. was not one of Lima's overhyped "Super Power" locomotives, but a locomotive that was the end result of years of incremental improvements to a USRA design of WWI vintage. Not only that, but it could outperform the diesel competition and cost less overall to boot.Andre
I have read articles that the parts suppliers were few and far between in the late fifties and even the NKP might have used their Berkshires a few years longer if parts were not a problem. However, the roundhouses and on line fuel facilities were mostly eliminated with the diesel. I have been in the backshops at Roanoke and rebuilding a steam engine is not an easy or cheap task.
The maintenance issue was the biggest drawback to any steam locomotive. The horsepower of the steam locomotive was certainly greater than any two or three unit diesels at that time and the over the road speed was very good with modern steam power.
Most of us would love to see steam again full time, but few of us would work on it full time.
I think the answer is, the more you loved the steam locomotives, the longer you wanted to see it stay around. I don,t think there are too many rail fans around who could say that they spent 10 to 20 years of their lives when 95% of the trains running were powered by steam. The 1950s was a sad time indeed, but change is inevitable. Some day the Diesel will be replaced by something better,and there will be many sad railfans then also. Lucius Beebe said it best when he wrote, and I quote-- Over a period of something more than a century and to hundreds of thousands, probably millions of people, the steam locomotive has been the most wonderful of all machines. It has dominated the American imagination as it has dominated the nation's economic destinies; as the ships of the world's oceans have laid hold upon the sensibilities of Englishmen since long before the time of Taliessin,the last Great Druid. As potent as the rifled firearm, as wealth-productive as the cotton-gin or the McCormick harvester and more beautiful than any other integrated mechanical devising of man's genius and necessity, the steam locomotive will forever haunt the human memory with its wonder.