Edit post

Edit your reply below.

Post Body
Enter your post below.
[quote user="youngengineer"] I'm not an expert I didn't stay at a Holiday express last night, but I have one question if steam is so cheap to run and maintain and can pull better run better and is just so exceedingly superior to diesel's, than why does the U.P. railroad who has 2 exceptional steam locomotives not run them on regular frieght trains?  Ok, so I'm sure you will all have snappy comebacks but really does anyone believe the railroads are and continue to be that totally stupid about running their bussiness. If the numbers that have been bantered around give a true picture of how efficent steam was and is today, than you should be able to start your own bussiness and build modern steam locomotives. I am totally shocked that steam is so cheap yet no one, not one person has the foresight to bring about a radical shift in American railroads. While as i said before I am no expert why has it taken 70 years for someone to realize steam is soooo superior. [/quote]The U.P. engines are cherished antiques.  It would be pointless to chew them up trying to prove something pulling freight trains.  Besides, the prospect of returning steam does not envision 1940s technology, a point that has been well made here.  A return of steam would include modern technology, in all likelihood, never seen before.  It might be steam that generates current for conventional traction motors for instance.  It could operate M.U. or as distributed power.  Firing would be automatic.  It may not even be steam power.  Since the objective is to burn coal, it may burn coal in a supercharged combustion chamber and use the expanding gas to power a turbine or multiple-stage reciprocating engine.And the title of this thread poses a question about the future, not about today.  With the exception of a little flurry of steam interest with the ACE project, the motive power of choice from the time of dieselization up until today, has been diesels.  What happens in the future is entirely dependent on the price of diesel compared to the price coal.  If the gap continues to widen, some kind of substitution is inevitable.  It seems like the three alternatives are electrification, coal-to-liquid fuel burned in diesels, and direct coal combustion.  The later requires a tremendous development effort of something entirely new and probably very complex.  The two former alternatives require comparatively little development, but require extensive capital investment in plants as well as locomotives. So the fact that this return to coal has not happened yet is not proof that it cannot happen in the future as oil prices head into unprecedented territory.  And if coal fired locomotives return for economic reasons, it does not mean that railroads have been making a mistake by favoring diesels since the 1950s
Tags (Optional)
Tags are keywords that get attached to your post. They are used to categorize your submission and make it easier to search for. To add tags to your post type a tag into the box below and click the "Add Tag" button.
Add Tag