The Sou RR CNO&TP electrification was also proposed and to be paid for by the TVA. However TVA wanted to provide electric motors to both L&N and SOU RR for operation between Cincinnati and Atlanta. Guess that was for economies of scale and power needs different on each line north and south.
An aside note SOU for a long while required any new bridges over the route to have ~ 24 foot clearances.
With regenerative braking what it is today we might have found it very interesting if it were in electrified operation now.
BaltACD ..agree and concede to that point..however,....development of steam continued in this scenario and there is nothing to say the firebox could have evolved beyond burning anything carbon based be it coal or oil or wood for that matter...is an electric firebox a doable concept? ..like my whistling tea kettle at home it uses a heated element from the stove...how about wires or third rail providing heat to an enormous element in the firebox...or something else entirely non carbon based...this would produce only pure steam, water vapour only,,,like the whistle, safety valves and cylinder cocks. It's probably pie in the sky and likely I deserve one in the face but greater minds than me should be able to come up with some way to boil water.
Miningman BaltACD ..agree and concede to that point..however,....development of steam continued in this scenario and there is nothing to say the firebox could have evolved beyond burning anything carbon based be it coal or oil or wood for that matter...is an electric firebox a doable concept? ..like my whistling tea kettle at home it uses a heated element from the stove...how about wires or third rail providing heat to an enormous element in the firebox...or something else entirely non carbon based...this would produce only pure steam, water vapour only,,,like the whistle, safety valves and cylinder cocks. It's probably pie in the sky and likely I deserve one in the face but greater minds than me should be able to come up with some way to boil water.
Johnny
There were some Swiss Steam locomotives that were modified during the Second World War to use overhead wire electricity to power the boilers but this was due to fuel shortages rather than any mechanical advantage to such an arrangement.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric-steam_locomotive
"I Often Dream of Trains"-From the Album of the Same Name by Robyn Hitchcock
Each change in the form of energy creates loss in the transformation. Economics would not support such a transformation except for emergency situations. Boiling water, in the quantities needed for rail trainsportation is not a 'on/off' situation like an internal compustion engine - it takes a lot of heat energy to get the water boiling - without performing any productive labor.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
Carnegf1- Thank you and wow! Fascinating. Something tells me we are not done yet with steam for the future. There is an awful lot of power in the expansion properties of producing steam. If we can find some way to boil water without carbon being involved and in sufficient quantities to handle a modern freight train it just may doom the diesel.
BaltACD- thank you for the response..and the reality check....so now we need a lot of heat energy to get water boiling in sufficient quantities for rail transportation without anything carbon involved...how about giant mirrors in space in synchronous orbit reflecting incredible amounts of it down to earth. Instead of flues we have superconductive and super heated elements in the boiler producing zero emissions except water vapour. 200 years from now I suppose. Just don't think we are done with steam in the very long term.
MiningmanIf we can find some way to boil water without carbon being involved and in sufficient quantities to handle a modern freight train it just may doom the diesel.
Such a method exists, and is in daily use in nuclear power plants, both fixed, and on board ships.
It's possible fission could be used to do the job, but it would be a difficult sale for many factions of our society.
That assumes that it could be done economically, too. I suspect a reactor-based locomotive would be far more expensive than a comparable Diesel-electric, and would introduce the need for providing water at suitable intervals.
As for the time it takes to get a steamer running - when I rode a "steam in the snow" expedition out of North Conway, we were told that the crew firing up the locomotive had started the day before. We no longer have facilities with large steam plants capable of keeping a locomotive "warmed up."
Larry Resident Microferroequinologist (at least at my house) Everyone goes home; Safety begins with you My Opinion. Standard Disclaimers Apply. No Expiration Date Come ride the rails with me! There's one thing about humility - the moment you think you've got it, you've lost it...
Tree68- Yes, had thought that but did not want to bring it up ...remember the "Atomic Powered Locomotives" craze in the fifties from publications like Popular Science. Ships, military, are one thing but locomotives with a nuclear core will not happen for a multitude of reasons, primarily the public safety. I think it was Toshiba developed a nuclear fuel reactor the size of a shoe box that could go into every home and provide all the power requirements for peanuts. Their plan was to remove and replace each box after 4 years or something like that...a cost of $700 bucks! That will never happen either. I work closely with the uranium mines in my profession. Nuclear is really the only "green" energy and has a great future except that every mishap sets it back years with the public and there would be plenty of mishaps out on the railroad. You are definitely on the right track though..don't know what it is but it exists...can't see the forest for the trees!
IMO the best way to use steam is thru power plants to electric motors. Fixed necular plants have about a 25% (?) energy recovery to the locos. Coal power plants (?). Standby turbine natural gas generators with recuperation can have energy recovery of ~ 50% +.
While steam may have replaced diesels in the submarine service, steam is gradually being replaced by diesels in surface ships. Some marine diesels have dimensions that make a De La Vergne engine look small.
If steam could have had 10 more years......
This gentleman does quite a job putting together a "what if" scenario.
http://www.railarchive.net/nyccollection/fantasy_steam.htm#selections
Does anyone out there know if those over fire jets installed onto the firebox of those later built P&LE Berkshires work? Much improved combustion would be one way to assist in reducing smoke emissions. How about afterburners before going up the stack or scrubbers reducing emissions as advancements as modern day appliances.
Getting back to original subject of this thread, I have hard time believing that diesel locomotives would not have become commonplace had GM stayed out of the locomotive market. Diesel locomotives would have been a high priority during WW2 and the WPB would have given the nod for some company to produce road power for hauling freight - perhaps Alco RS-1's. I also suspect that GM would not have had the large production contracts for 567's without the experience of wringing out the 201A and early 567's in locomotive service. While Winton did make marine diesels, the market prior to WW2 wasn't as large as the locomotive market.
With GM out of the market, Alco may have had time to get the bugs worked out of the 244 design.
Yes, the inevitability of the efficiencies of the diesel was an economic tsunami that would have swept steam aside eventually, no matter how much further steam would have advanced. Great point on Alco, ericem. They might have survived the transition given another 5-10 years of more robust cash flow through, say, 1955 or so to support more 244 development. I wonder what an Alco Tier 4 offering would have looked like if they were still around.
Kgbw49- Alco did survive, and quite well. They retreated to their subsidiary plant in Montreal. They continued on with the RS series, build the M640 with 251 series Alco engine, 4,000hp 18 cylinder. Together with Pratt and Whitney they developed and build the Turbo Trains. They developed the wide nose safety cab, first appearing on the M420. That form of cab has now become a North American industry standard. They then got purchased by and became Bombardier. They continued to provide innovative locomotive design like VIA's LRC ( Light, Rapid, Comfortable) and train sets. I recall these very vividly, they were powerful compact locomotives that sounded every bit as much of an Alco as an FA2 did. Not quite as smokey but those pistons sure hammered away while stopped at a station. Currently they make locomotives and train sets for only the European market designed and developed by the Europeans and do not retain any of the Alco/MLW heritage. Never say never though and, despite Bombardiers emphasis on the manufacturing of airplanes, they could well enter the field for Tier 4, picking up where they left off, ya never know!
The companion question! Would steam have survived to 1950 had not WW II and all it's material allocation restrictions stunted the development, production and sales of diesel electric locomotives and forced numerous carriers to buy steam engines when they would have preferred diesels?
Balt,
Good question! My guess is that the shift to diesel would have only been slightly faster as some RR's were buying steam after the war. Without the WPB restricting development work on diesel engines, it's quite likely that Alco would have started wringing out the 241/244 earlier along with EMD not having the benefit of USN funded development.
One of the lesser known affects of the US involvement in WW2 was the huge emphasis on mass production - shaving 10% in labor time to rpoduce war material could make for a significant strategic advantage. This suggests that diesel locomotives would have been more expensive with respect to steam than was the case post WW2.
I would also guess that airlines would have evolved slower and the interstate highway system may have been born in the 1960's as opposed to the 1950's.
- Erik
erikemthe interstate highway system may have been born in the 1960's as opposed to the 1950's.
C&NW, CA&E, MILW, CGW and IC fan
schlimm erikem the interstate highway system may have been born in the 1960's as opposed to the 1950's. the act was 1956 but construction was mostly in the 60s and later, to the 80s.
erikem the interstate highway system may have been born in the 1960's as opposed to the 1950's.
the act was 1956 but construction was mostly in the 60s and later, to the 80s.
Part of what he means: If there had been no WWII, I doubt DDE would have been there in 1956 with the 'defense highways' idea.
So I suspect the logical effect would be the continuation of expressway construction as toll roads (following the model in the Northeast rather than Southern California) and the optimization of the regular US highways (like Rt. 30 and Rt. 66) to handle an increase in private vehicle traffic. Perhaps an important consideration here is that, in both cases, large increases in motor truck traffic would be more difficult to achieve cost-effectively. (We can leave aside the discussion of passenger service here, except insofar as states like Missouri with a known penchant for discouraging heavy commercial traffic, for example the Pickwick Nite Coaches and similar expansions of interstate bus service quality, would restrict truck traffic to improve the 'QoS' of driving for the voting public in general...)
On the other hand, even the effect of paid thruways had, I think, a very significant effect on many carriers in the Northeast, even given the economies that resulted from dieselization 'in the event'. And that of course goes considerably beyond just passenger, and even M&E-related, service.
WizlishPart of what he means: If there had been no WWII, I doubt DDE would have been there in 1956 with the 'defense highways' idea.
Might as well say "if the wheel had not been invented" as say the above.
Wizlish read me right in that I think highway construction in the US would have progressed much slower if WW2 had not happened - though there would be a large uncertainty of what the US economy would have been like without WW2. A big part of the uncertainty is where the economy would have been without all the defense R&D - turbine powered airliners might have come a decade later, personal computers a couple of decades later, etc.
With a slowdown in the development of air travel and highway travel, passenger trains would have held on for perhaps a decade longer than they did. A concrete example was the service on the AT&SF Surf Line before and after I-5 was completed between LA and San Diego. The Santa Fe was running 6 or 7 seven trains a day each way in the early 1960's, which dropped to 3 on the eve of Amtrak. There was quite a bit of work done on high speed passenger trains just prior to WW2, which may have continued if WW2 hadn't happened (or had been a much smaller scale - i.e. Japan vs the Allies). The PRR might have been able to work out the bugs in the T-1 before putting it into production.
Speculating on what would have happened without WW2 isn't quite the same as speculating on the wheel not being invented. The wheel was likely "invented" in several different places at several different times - there were no critical paths that would have prevented the eventual invention of the wheel. WW2, on the other hand, may not have happened or could have been very different had a few key events turned out differently, e.g. the events leading up to the 1938 Munich accords.
schlimm Wizlish Part of what he means: If there had been no WWII, I doubt DDE would have been there in 1956 with the 'defense highways' idea. Might as well say "if the wheel had not been invented" as say the above.
Wizlish Part of what he means: If there had been no WWII, I doubt DDE would have been there in 1956 with the 'defense highways' idea.
Why so?
If there had been no WWII, there is little possibility that Eisenhower would have been a Presidential nominee, let alone elected.
The defense-highway idea was something special to Eisenhower, which he had considered important in some form since 1919.
A slightly more arguable claim could be made that, in the absence of WWII and the uniquely expedient way Stalin leveraged it into effective domination of Eastern Europe by the late '40s, there would have been less of a 'Cold War' requiring autobahn-level defense highways as a perceivable 'national' priority. The kind of highways that would be built in America, and the extent to which they would form a coherent 'system of transportation' by, say, the end of the 1960s, might be interesting -- quite possibly leapfrogging directly to the kind of system GM touted in its World's Fair presentations...
My point was let's stick to the original parameters. Start your own conta-factual, if you want a new what if.
An interesting aside is that the states anticipated and exceeded the Interstate System to follow.
I think Pa. was first, but when I was a kid living in Cleveland, the revelation was the Ohio and Indiana tollroads, shaving the time on our family vacations to Iowa from 16 hours to 10. These were 1950s state initiatives, predating Ike's proposal for a national system.
They were also true superhighways, graded like railroad lines. By the time the interstates came along in the 1960s, they were a disappointment to my mechanical engineer father, with all their hills and valleys. (I'll bet their concrete specs were inferior, too.)
BaltACD IFthe original question was meant to mean, could railroads today being operating steam engines TODAY in revenue service as their main means of locomotion. The answer is a resounding NO; they would be out of business today. The clean air movement, begining in the 60's and continuing to today would have put them out of business had not diesels been invented and commercially successful.
IFthe original question was meant to mean, could railroads today being operating steam engines TODAY in revenue service as their main means of locomotion. The answer is a resounding NO; they would be out of business today. The clean air movement, begining in the 60's and continuing to today would have put them out of business had not diesels been invented and commercially successful.
This thread at the very outset, before the initial post was even posted, steered itself off topic! BaltACD seemed to have seen that and made a super valiant attempt to steer it back … or maybe actually put it on the tracks. I think more people should listen to the wise man BaltACD …
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- K.P.’s absolute “theorem” from early, early childhood that he has seen over and over and over again: Those that CAUSE a problem in the first place will act the most violently if questioned or exposed.
K. P. Harrier This thread at the very outset, before the initial post was even posted, steered itself off topic!
This thread at the very outset, before the initial post was even posted, steered itself off topic!
So?
It seems to me the original subject has been amply explored (altho I missed your contribution). If people want to go on to explore subjects of peripheral interest, who is injured?
Those who don't share that interest are free to stop reading -- to go take pictures or something -- instead of trying to crack the whip on the rest of us.
(Oh, and happy New Year.)
Dave Kleeper's original question could be divided in two parts, one being whether the US RR's could have survived as private enterprise without the diesel locomotive and the second being whether GM's involvement in diesel locomotive developmnt was crucial for diesel locomotives to replace steam locomotives. The second part is relatively easy to answer, in that there was enough development work on diesel locomotives outside of GM that the diesel would have replaced steam in roughly the same time period (this glosses over GM's role in financing the sale of locomotives). The first part is a lot more difficult to answer as it requires coming up with a scenario where some form of internal combustion locomotive was not practical - this would be getting into "what if the wheel wasn't invented" territory.
The answer to Balt's question on whether diesels would have replaced steam sooner had it not been for WW2 depends somewhat on the scenario for WW2 not happening or a smaller scale WW2 where there was no WPB rationing of diesel locomotive production. In either case, the RR's would almost certainly bought more diesels than steamers and the 50/50 diesel/steam would have ocurred perhaps 5 years earlier than it did. The complicating factor is trying guess what the US economy would have been like with a small scale or no invovment in WW2 (not to mention the world economy). One surprising factoid about WW2 was that the US ws the most highly moblized major participant in the war.
Another question is whether diesels would have replaced steam even earlier had it not been for the Great Depression. There was quite a bit of development going on prior to 1930, which was scaled down after the stock market crash.
Yet another related question is whether electrification would have advanced more had not WW1 intervened. [Edit: See "General Electric Review" January 1918, page 7 first full paragraph on top of right column of text.]
One reason that steam hung on as long as it did on some lines was those line's relationships with the coal industry. Had that dynamic not been in play, steam may have met it's demise even sooner.
N&W would have stuck with steam for a decade more if it were not for Stuart Saunders ( and Penn Station would still be standing, not to mention PennCentral ). If emissions could be severely cleaned up either through technology or an alternate method of boiling water then steam survives. The early road diesels from Baldwin, Lima, then BLH, FM, even Alco did not last long long or were immediate failures and generally represented more lost dollars. Without GM's sucess, some diversion as posed by the question, diesels could well have been a disaster for quite some time. Fast forward to today it is my belief that steam has a good future, not in my lifetime, but longer term, replacing anything using fossil fuels. So it is quite possible that steam survives long enough, given certain advancements all along, to make it to something we have not yet come up with.
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