Edit post

Edit your reply below.

Post Body
Enter your post below.
[quote user="tattooguy67"] Actually Bucyrus there is or was no intent on my part to second guess the railroads decision to switch from steam to diesel power, the title of the thread is "could steam make a comeback?", not "did the railroads make a huge mistake in swtching in the first place", the reason i posted it was the rising price of oil and diesel fuel, now i will grant you that the way it is used is a subset ? inherant in the original post title, but no i am not nor was i intending this to become a post about the right or wrong of the switch over. As far as the depressing comment goes it was in answer to the pollution aspect of coal mining techniques of long ago being sited as a reason we could not do this now with new techniques, and as far as sarcasm and aspersions i was trying to point out that there really is no need for either, i was starting to see more harsh words and snarky sarcasm then is needed to have this or any other discussion.Chuck[/quote]Thanks for your explanation Chuck.  I see what you meant.  When I saw the title of the thread, the first thing that came to my mind was coal-burning steam returning because of the high price of oil.  However, if the point is substituting coal for oil, then the consideration of other forms of coal fired motive power naturally arises.  Then as a backdrop, since dieselization, there have been people who at least suspect that the continuation of the use and development of steam would have been economically better than switching to diesels notwithstanding the runaway oil prices of today.  Since the point of railroad dieselization, there has been a lot of advancement in the steam combustion art in power production and even in locomotives specifically.  So aside from the cost advantage of coal over oil, there are those who believe in the application of modern steam motive power, and feel that railroads would have developed it to their advantage had they not abandoned steam in favor of diesels.     So, with that backdrop, in my opinion, the question of whether steam could make a comeback implies to some, the question of whether or not the railroads made a mistake by scrapping steam in the first place.  This thread has touched on all these issues, and I think that it is natural enough that it has.
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