A steam comeback?

[arbfbe]

I don't think the smoke would have been a real problem. As I remember Alliance was sort of on a knoll mostly higher than all the surrounding area. It was so flat the US Army had a glider training operation there during WWII. Besides, there was no chance the smoke would hang around long account the wind blew a little every day since Kansas sucks......or so the locals liked to say........

The fuel, spotting, moving, fueling in the terminal would have become a major operation. Add to that all the stations down the line that would need similar facilities and the investment would become staggering. Think of the capital cost in all the new trainsets and locomotives to haul the coal from the PRB throughout the delivery area and all the extra trains online an already crowded system and it was just not feasible without massive investment and operational costs. It is no wonder there was not enough backing within the industry to get even a prototype built for testing. That would have been nice to see, though.

Alan

[K. P. Harrier]

If steam did return, would not steamers LOOK like diesels?

[Anonymous]

One of the huge advantages of diesel engines is that with minor modifications they can be fueled on just about anything that burns. Running today we have biodiesel where some are using vegetable oils or previously used animal fats (ie fast food frying oil). Also in a few places there are large diesel engines burning powdered coal. BN had a few SD40-2s running on LPG for a few years. If that isn't enough we can always use processes such as used in South Africa by the SASOL company to turn coal into an oil substitute.

So even if all the petroleum oil disappears, the diesel will be on the rails.

[arbfbe]

rdganthracite,

You could say the same thing about steam. A steam engine can run on coal, crude oil, vegetable oil, lpg, hydrogen, diesel fuel, gasoline or kerosene. Additionally, they beat out the diesels since they can also run on wood , straw or sugar cane stalks.


Harrier,

Well, the ACE 2000 uses a modern designed boiler closer to what is used in steam ships. It has a rectangular shape rather than the long tubular shape of traditional steam engines. The locomotive and tender or the ACE looked more like a pair of AMTK F40s bact to back than an SD70ACe.

Alan

[Modelcar]

...Enter in ACE3000 into Google and you will find a pretty good drawing of what it was to look like...

[espeefoamer]

QUOTE: Originally posted by arbfbe

rdganthracite,

You could say the same thing about steam. A steam engine can run on coal, crude oil, vegetable oil, lpg, hydrogen, diesel fuel, gasoline or kerosene. Additionally, they beat out the diesels since they can also run on wood , straw or sugar cane stalks.


Harrier,

Well, the ACE 2000 uses a modern designed boiler closer to what is used in steam ships. It has a rectangular shape rather than the long tubular shape of traditional steam engines. The locomotive and tender or the ACE looked more like a pair of AMTK F40s bact to back than an SD70ACe.

Alan

Steam engines can also run on buffalo chips. In the old west. male passengers had to gather them when fuel ran low.

[Paul Milenkovic]

Condensors sound like such a good idea until you figure out what is involved. Steam locomotives are pretty low in thermal efficiency with the boiler pressures they are able to work with, although condensing operation may bring that efficiency up. Anyway, suppose you operate at 10 percent efficiency (good for a steam loco). For every HP at the drawbar, 9 HP of heat have to go out the condensor, and this heat transfer has to take place at low termperatures and low temperature differentials. Also, with condensing operation, you lose the blast-pipe effect to power the firebox draft.

In addition, to get the efficiency advantage of condensing, you have to expand down to near vacuum -- you might want to compound a piston with a turbin back end to do this.

Personally, I think the Champelon/Porta approach of low steam passage restriction is a much better way than condensing to get efficiency. And if you boost efficiency, not only do you burn less coal and use less water, the firebox, boiler, and other accessories become much smaller.

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by arbfbe

rdganthracite,

You could say the same thing about steam. A steam engine can run on coal, crude oil, vegetable oil, lpg, hydrogen, diesel fuel, gasoline or kerosene. Additionally, they beat out the diesels since they can also run on wood , straw or sugar cane stalks.

Alan

That statement is not correct. Some diesel engines and many gasoline engines were run on wood, straw, lignite and the like by the Germans during WWII when we kept destroying their oilfields and synth crude plants. All you need is a simple gasifier, like most cities in the United States had to supply lighting and heating gas before natural gas became widely distributed. Of course the gassifiers that were installed on the trucks were much smaller than the cities used. A small compressor for the gas and changes to the injectors for diesels or carborators for otto cycle engines to provide the larger volume of fuel needed and you are good to go.

Any fuel that can be liquified, gasified or pulverized can be used successfully in a diesel. And the diesel would still retain its thermal advantages and maintenace advantages.

On the idea of using condensers to recycle the water. That is very old technology. The South African Railway used whole classes of condensing steamers to travel through a desert region. They were such a huge maintenance problem that just as soon as diesels became available to the railway the condensing tenders were discarded and the more modern steamers reassigned.

[oltmannd]

I remember when I first started out at Conrail with a fresh Mech Engr degree being rather shocked at how efficient diesel locomotives were. They were at least as efficient as a typical coal fired steam power plant. That fact alone took quite a bit of "steam" out of electrification, in my eyes.

I also was lucky enought to attend one of Ross Roland's ACE3000 presentations. While the design was impressive and it might have faired well against an F7 in the early days of dieselization, it was competing against Dash 2s. The final judgement was that it wasn't really anything more than a very complicated, 300 ton, coal burning GP40 with untried (on the RR) technology. The fuel cost savings were too slight and capital costs and risk so large such that no RR manager wanted to take a bite.