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Why not? I have no problem with the idea either way. I'm not an engineer (either a horn tootin' nor a slide rule). My only thought was that since both N&W's Jawn Henry and C&O's M1 that did do the steam-electric conversion are listed as collosal failures, so I was just speculating that piston driven drivers combined with electric might offer some unique "power curve" possibilities. In our Application, during the california elect crises, The State of California was offering big incentives to large users who would "get offline" and make their own power. My boss came in one day and said "Go findout something about fuel cells, we might wanna do this" So I did. And there is a lot of heat there my friend, a whole lot. So I concluded that unless we could use the heat efficiently, on top of the electricity, we were sunk. And said so in my report, making special referance to the possibility of steam generated electricity. My boss took that perspective to the meeting he had with engineers, and came back and gave me a pat on the back, for knowing about as much as the engineers seemed to, we were all in agreement. Except, Since we have a sprawling campus, with 18 distinct points of entry for power from the utility, there was going to have to be 18 separate "Fuel cell farms" on the property, OR we would have to install our own grid to a local central farm, big $$$. And it seems, the economy of scale of 18 individual small steam-electric generators falls off pretty quickly. I officially got credit for a "dumb idea" on that one...=)
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