Well, there's 'plenty of oil' from alternative sources... at $3+ US per gallon delivered. All that's happened with the 'shift' in peak oil is a longer run for high-cost (world-market is the excuse) fuel.
The logical liquid fuel from natural gas is methanol, which is (delightfully) the preferred fuel for direct-steam (catalytic) generation. By definition the expanders using this form of "combustion" are steam engines. I very carefully worked over the practical details and thermodynamics of this for a number of catalyst configurations. Unfortunately, the TATP problem (look it up if you don't recognize the acronym) still remains a deal-killer for any cycle involving even moderately 'enriched' H2O2.
The market for steam power (see also the Planndampf thread) is really where Porta said it would be: Third World power where renewables or relatively low-grade biomass are available at a realistic cost, but refined petroleum isn't. I have an argument in principle with advanced combustion systems, generally along the lines of what Wardale observed with the ongoing care and maintenance of the Red Devil -- only some of this can be overcome with reasonable materials science and tech spec. But I really don't see any point in high-speed passenger or freight power, and (as noted) it makes better sense to burn most forms of biomass for electrical power, efficiently in boilers and plant that are stationary, and then use that electricity either for traction or liquid 'carrier' fuel synthesis or concentration.
Supercapacitors are an inherently low-voltage technology; flywheels of ANY configuration that fit on railroad vehicles are intermediate-term storage at best (look at the bearing technology alone needed to deal with even conventional power density... or the consequences of quench in the bearings...ouch!) The technology nobody's mentioned is the analogue to fuel cell that involves pumped electrolyte or liquid anode/cathode... one example being the zinc-air battery. Some research has been done on this, but if you want 'liquid fuel-like' power density at required rate of energy release (remember this is the bugbear of displacer/Sterling engines!) out of a chemical system that survives road condition, that's likely to be it.
Steam BOTTOMING remains an interesting technology, if costed down to where it can be provided cost-effectively.
RME
W.Shawn Gray Way back last year (2012) on 24 July (at 1:42 AM) in the {possibly reaching a conclusion soon} thread 'ATSF 3463 Rebuild Project' Juniatha convincingly asserted;- Juniatha . . . By these aspects of efficiency and performance alone - not to speak of prohibitive costs of revamping infrastructure , as mentioned by some in this discussion - IMHO it would be absolutely beyond any serious consideration to propose a return of steam on a commercial basis . This would be like prosing to solve energy questions of today's aviation by returning to piston engine propeller planes like a Super Connie 'modernized' with piston engines tuned to present day high performance standards ( about twice the power then ) and consuming 'bio' oil , in other words consuming our food plants . I'd like to see a power-boosted hi-performance Super-Hyper Connie take off - yet as a darling of classic plane lovers only . With Mickey Mouse attemps like that we will never come to solve the challenging questions of our time ! Why , with oil becoming ever more scarce as inevitably it must with limited resources and limited capacity of atmosphere , too , mind it , American railroads sooner or late will have to realize the diesel locomotive has become outdated , too , and has to be replaced - those who realize according measures and modernizations first will benefit from it and will be among the winners . Forty years ago when I first pondered likely interactions of biosphere with human ambitions for pointers to future scenarios, I would have fully agreed with Juniatha's logic. While a boyish love of steam trains would have wished otherwise, even back then I knew that to be a romantic delusion. But I have since learnt that reality may in truth be far stranger than fiction. For in all seriousness I now argue that a commercial return of steam railway traction is the only plausible economic solution for some critical niches in any post-carbon global transportation outlook. I hasten to add this thinking is pitched at the mid to long term, ten to thirty year time frame. The readership here will be familiar with numerous reasons (I do not intend to reiterate) as to why electric locomotives are destined to become the major muscle of railway fleets world-wide for the 21st century. While diesel locomotives burning fossil oil will quickly become a thing of the past, it does not follow that the vast existing fleets of diesel locomotives will as quickly see the cutter's torch. Undoubtedly there will-be small operational nooks where the justification for burning extremely expensive carbon off-setted synthetic fuel-oil will trounce the significant capital cost in acquiring a new locomotive. Where there will exist reliable supplies of hydrogen many current diesel locomotives will continue a long operational life burning up to 90% hydrogen mixed with a smidgen of synthetic diesoline. Added into any future fleet roster the promised development of fuel-cell locomotive along with various battery hybrids then most railway operations will find a mix to match their commercial requirement without any need to resort to steam-traction, or any other exotic concoction for motive power. The adjectives; vast, unpopulated or remote dominate the post-carbon transport niches where I believe steam-traction (or other exotic concoction) of motive power, are destined to-be the most commercial and economically sound business solution. Starting with remote railways, as L.D.Porta proved in the case of Rio Turbio Railway there are far-flung locations where even now steam-traction is still viable option over diesel. Likewise there are small railways operations on the Indian subcontinent still ordering custom built steam locomotives from local firms. The economic attractiveness of such examples will only get stronger as the price of crude-oil rises then percolates through long-distant shipping cost. Long stretches of railway across expanses of negligibly populated landscape pose the other quaint niche where steam-traction may yet prove to be best commercial fit. The high establishment cost of overhead catenary electricity supply will scuttle many a low tonnage, marginal business case for any capital intensive switch to electric traction. With the inevitable return of the extraordinary high global spot prices for non-ferrous metals, there is a significant risk that once again (as previously witnessed) railway electrical infrastructure will overnight morph into a honey pot irresistible to criminals for random pilfering. The more remote a railway line physically is, or lawless a land maybe, the higher the risk that a railway operation could be jeopardised by any criminal theft of non-ferrous electrical conductors. Such clumping of risks would deter most railway managements from implementing any switch to electric tractions, especially if other even more but secure options like steam-traction existed. Long unpopulated distance also technically and economically militate against the viability of most direct hydrogen power or fuel-cell options. So given a maintainable carbon neutral fuel supply along with a reliable suitable water supply steam-traction appears to be the best fit in those circumstances. If for no reason than the selfish avoidance of knee-jerk derision my analysis invariably attracts I would love to be conclusively proven incorrect. - Shawn
Way back last year (2012) on 24 July (at 1:42 AM) in the {possibly reaching a conclusion soon} thread 'ATSF 3463 Rebuild Project' Juniatha convincingly asserted;-
Juniatha . . . By these aspects of efficiency and performance alone - not to speak of prohibitive costs of revamping infrastructure , as mentioned by some in this discussion - IMHO it would be absolutely beyond any serious consideration to propose a return of steam on a commercial basis . This would be like prosing to solve energy questions of today's aviation by returning to piston engine propeller planes like a Super Connie 'modernized' with piston engines tuned to present day high performance standards ( about twice the power then ) and consuming 'bio' oil , in other words consuming our food plants . I'd like to see a power-boosted hi-performance Super-Hyper Connie take off - yet as a darling of classic plane lovers only . With Mickey Mouse attemps like that we will never come to solve the challenging questions of our time ! Why , with oil becoming ever more scarce as inevitably it must with limited resources and limited capacity of atmosphere , too , mind it , American railroads sooner or late will have to realize the diesel locomotive has become outdated , too , and has to be replaced - those who realize according measures and modernizations first will benefit from it and will be among the winners .
. . . By these aspects of efficiency and performance alone - not to speak of prohibitive costs of revamping infrastructure , as mentioned by some in this discussion - IMHO it would be absolutely beyond any serious consideration to propose a return of steam on a commercial basis . This would be like prosing to solve energy questions of today's aviation by returning to piston engine propeller planes like a Super Connie 'modernized' with piston engines tuned to present day high performance standards ( about twice the power then ) and consuming 'bio' oil , in other words consuming our food plants . I'd like to see a power-boosted hi-performance Super-Hyper Connie take off - yet as a darling of classic plane lovers only . With Mickey Mouse attemps like that we will never come to solve the challenging questions of our time ! Why , with oil becoming ever more scarce as inevitably it must with limited resources and limited capacity of atmosphere , too , mind it , American railroads sooner or late will have to realize the diesel locomotive has become outdated , too , and has to be replaced - those who realize according measures and modernizations first will benefit from it and will be among the winners .
Forty years ago when I first pondered likely interactions of biosphere with human ambitions for pointers to future scenarios, I would have fully agreed with Juniatha's logic. While a boyish love of steam trains would have wished otherwise, even back then I knew that to be a romantic delusion. But I have since learnt that reality may in truth be far stranger than fiction. For in all seriousness I now argue that a commercial return of steam railway traction is the only plausible economic solution for some critical niches in any post-carbon global transportation outlook. I hasten to add this thinking is pitched at the mid to long term, ten to thirty year time frame.
The readership here will be familiar with numerous reasons (I do not intend to reiterate) as to why electric locomotives are destined to become the major muscle of railway fleets world-wide for the 21st century. While diesel locomotives burning fossil oil will quickly become a thing of the past, it does not follow that the vast existing fleets of diesel locomotives will as quickly see the cutter's torch. Undoubtedly there will-be small operational nooks where the justification for burning extremely expensive carbon off-setted synthetic fuel-oil will trounce the significant capital cost in acquiring a new locomotive. Where there will exist reliable supplies of hydrogen many current diesel locomotives will continue a long operational life burning up to 90% hydrogen mixed with a smidgen of synthetic diesoline. Added into any future fleet roster the promised development of fuel-cell locomotive along with various battery hybrids then most railway operations will find a mix to match their commercial requirement without any need to resort to steam-traction, or any other exotic concoction for motive power.
The adjectives; vast, unpopulated or remote dominate the post-carbon transport niches where I believe steam-traction (or other exotic concoction) of motive power, are destined to-be the most commercial and economically sound business solution. Starting with remote railways, as L.D.Porta proved in the case of Rio Turbio Railway there are far-flung locations where even now steam-traction is still viable option over diesel. Likewise there are small railways operations on the Indian subcontinent still ordering custom built steam locomotives from local firms. The economic attractiveness of such examples will only get stronger as the price of crude-oil rises then percolates through long-distant shipping cost.
Long stretches of railway across expanses of negligibly populated landscape pose the other quaint niche where steam-traction may yet prove to be best commercial fit. The high establishment cost of overhead catenary electricity supply will scuttle many a low tonnage, marginal business case for any capital intensive switch to electric traction. With the inevitable return of the extraordinary high global spot prices for non-ferrous metals, there is a significant risk that once again (as previously witnessed) railway electrical infrastructure will overnight morph into a honey pot irresistible to criminals for random pilfering. The more remote a railway line physically is, or lawless a land maybe, the higher the risk that a railway operation could be jeopardised by any criminal theft of non-ferrous electrical conductors. Such clumping of risks would deter most railway managements from implementing any switch to electric tractions, especially if other even more but secure options like steam-traction existed.
Long unpopulated distance also technically and economically militate against the viability of most direct hydrogen power or fuel-cell options. So given a maintainable carbon neutral fuel supply along with a reliable suitable water supply steam-traction appears to be the best fit in those circumstances. If for no reason than the selfish avoidance of knee-jerk derision my analysis invariably attracts I would love to be conclusively proven incorrect.
- Shawn
I really have no intention of starting an off topic debate about this but the "peak oil" prognosticators did not foresee the rapid development of advanced oil recovery techniques that are opening up vast deposits of previously uneconomical petroleum reserves. Short of a major effort by governments to ban fossil fuels (IMHO that is doubtful,regardless of any political debates) I just don't see the collapse in oil production that some of the Advanced Steam Technology affionados seem to think is inevitable.
If we're talking the long term future, I think it's conceivable that energy storage systems such as supercapacitators and superconducting flywheels could advance to the point that they offer a power density comparable to internal (or external, for that matter) combustion engines. So perhaps the biomass would be used in a thermal power plant and used to charge up storage systems for mobile use on ground vehicles. Of course that's idle speculation but then, so is predicting a re-transition to external combustion for railway traction.
"I Often Dream of Trains"-From the Album of the Same Name by Robyn Hitchcock
CSSHEGEWISCH Considering the finances of the interurbans that were still running in mid to late 1930's, the installation of air conditioning at that time would have been quite unlikely.
Considering the finances of the interurbans that were still running in mid to late 1930's, the installation of air conditioning at that time would have been quite unlikely.
The optimal time would have been the late 1920's to maybe early 1931 when there was still some money being spent on interurbans. Considering the impact air conditioning had on conventional rail travel, it might have made an impact on interurban traffic. FWIW, Northern Ohio Traction was running electrically driven refigerator cars in 1926.
My main point was that air-conditioning was one amenity available on passenger trains that wasn't really available in automobiles until the mid-1950's and wasn't common until the mid to late 1960's. Unfortunately for the high speed passenger train market, pressurized airliners automatically had a form of air-conditioning.
- Erik
OvermodAre you SURE those container ships were gas turbine? Because if they were the SL-7s they were built with steam turbines... there is or was an interesting article on the Web involving water treatment for the Foster-Wheeler boilers they used. It's possible that the ships have been refitted with some kind of GTCC replacing the original steam-generation system -- but I'd think that would be unlikely; you'd need to synchronize the gas and steam turbines on the final drive, or use steam bottoming for ancillaries (which are probablly better served via electricity generated by the modern generation of ceramic turbines optimized for that function). Oil firing makes it relatively simple to implement separately fired superheaters -- a great advantage, if you have the packaging space and operating regimen for it. Ships spend most of their time at fairly constant speed and load -- container ships in particular wouldn't be operating at speed in a sea state where the props are surfacing... ;-O Be interesting to see what's co-fired with the refuse -- one of the very immediate possibilities is 'bio-coal' torrefied fuel as described in the ATSF 3463 threads. RME
Well I was half-right. Seatrain lines did commission a class of four Gas Turbine powered container ships in the early 1970's but they never wound up as maritime pre-positioning ships, instead they were repowered with diesel engines and sold to another line when Seatrain went out of business:
http://www.seabreezes.co.im/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=269%3Aseatrain-gas-turbine-ships&catid=34%3Aships&Itemid=56
I'm doubtful that we'll see what is co-fired with the refuse as so far the West logistics ship is a paper proposal that the global shipping industry does not appear to be interested in investing money into..
Paul Milenkovic Maybe this is off topic, but I have the impression that steamships are pretty much on the way out, and that "freight" (i.e. cargo ships) is pretty much all these huge low-speed (reversible?) 2-stroke Diesels with direct drive to a single prop? That warships are pretty much all gas turbine apart from the steam-driven nuclear navy? That newer, more efficient gas turbines, perhaps powered with liquified natural gas, might displace the Diesels in the faster cargo ships such as container ships? Even the steamships had given up on coal and gone to oil firing a long time ago? That oil firing of steam and even the fuel used in the newer Diesels is in question owing to the desire of regulatory authorities in First World countries wanting to clamp down on the emissions of ocean ships? Trains and especially steam locomotives have quite the fan following and hence forums such as this -- are there steam ship enthusiasts who muse about the might-have-beens? My initial Google searches aren't turning much up.
Maybe this is off topic, but I have the impression that steamships are pretty much on the way out, and that "freight" (i.e. cargo ships) is pretty much all these huge low-speed (reversible?) 2-stroke Diesels with direct drive to a single prop? That warships are pretty much all gas turbine apart from the steam-driven nuclear navy? That newer, more efficient gas turbines, perhaps powered with liquified natural gas, might displace the Diesels in the faster cargo ships such as container ships?
Even the steamships had given up on coal and gone to oil firing a long time ago? That oil firing of steam and even the fuel used in the newer Diesels is in question owing to the desire of regulatory authorities in First World countries wanting to clamp down on the emissions of ocean ships?
Trains and especially steam locomotives have quite the fan following and hence forums such as this -- are there steam ship enthusiasts who muse about the might-have-beens? My initial Google searches aren't turning much up.
Not that I am an expert on Marine Propulsion systems but there is a single coal fired bulk carrier steamship in service in the US :
http://www.intship.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/Belt_Bulk_Specs_ISH.pdf
I am familiar with this vessel as it was originally built and operated by a local electric utility in my area and was a frequent sight in our local waters.
I have, over the years, found online documentation about proposals for new build steamships burning coal due to high costs of petroleum based marine fuels (which are generally "bunker" type heavy fuel rather than diesel even though they are burned in diesel powerplants). It does not seem that the global shipping industry was that interested in the ideas (shades of some of the "bring back steam" discussions/debates we have had on these forums).
There is a recent proposal to build steam powered container ships which use refuse derived fuel(i.e processed municipal trash):
http://www.westlogistics.com/download/5%20BIMCO.pdf
This does not seem to be something the industry is going to embrace...
There were some gas turbine powered container ships built back in the 60's but rising fuel prices made them unattractive compared to diesel powerplants (they wound up as reserve maritime resupply ships for the US DOD)..
There is a great deal of R&D going on in LNG fuel for ship use, either using gas turbines(in fact,there are some LNG tankers so equipped) or in dual fuel diesels..
If GM "killed the electric car", what am I doing standing next to an EV-1, a half a block from the WSOR tracks?
erikem One advantage of travel by train vs auto was air conditioning, which was pretty rare in cars prior to the late 1950's. I also wonder if many interurbans would have lasted longer if they installed air-conditioning in the 1930's. - Erik
One advantage of travel by train vs auto was air conditioning, which was pretty rare in cars prior to the late 1950's. I also wonder if many interurbans would have lasted longer if they installed air-conditioning in the 1930's.
Overmod And you'd have to posit no new private automobile production after the War. And no road-building -- which on the state level in the USA would have been well-advanced even in the absence of either turnpike building or Interstate 'defense' highways under Eisenhower. In between those two, there CAN'T be a sustained market for relatively service-expensive long-distance trains, whether or not there was diesel-electric power to run them. You may recall the numbers from Kiefer's 1946/7 study, which indicated that steam at least as effective as diesel power, even net of all servicing, could be competitive... but also that the falloff in NYC passenger traffic made the Niagaras functionally obsolete early.
And you'd have to posit no new private automobile production after the War. And no road-building -- which on the state level in the USA would have been well-advanced even in the absence of either turnpike building or Interstate 'defense' highways under Eisenhower. In between those two, there CAN'T be a sustained market for relatively service-expensive long-distance trains, whether or not there was diesel-electric power to run them. You may recall the numbers from Kiefer's 1946/7 study, which indicated that steam at least as effective as diesel power, even net of all servicing, could be competitive... but also that the falloff in NYC passenger traffic made the Niagaras functionally obsolete early.
One of the things that made providing fast passenger traffic less desirable for the RR's was the ICC rule requiring ATS or cab-signaling for operating above 79 MPH. The increased costs costs from installation, maintenance and property tax outweighed the loss of revenue from reduced running speeds.
The post war coal miners strike made steam a lot less attractive as oil production was less likely to be interrupted by the actions of a single union.
The key issue with roads was the limited access highway, particularly when built to built to bypass towns and small cities. Having to deal with speed zones and stoplights significantly limited the end to end average speed of a long auto trip. One example was that the AT&SF San Diegans were doing good business prior to the completion of I-5 ca 1964 as the downtown to downtown time on the San Diegan was competitive with driving prior to I-5's completion.
Overmod 2) Likewise, you would have to posit the absence first of effective large transport aircraft after the War, first with large piston engines (DC-7C) and then with largely Cold-War-financed turbojet/fan evolution.
2) Likewise, you would have to posit the absence first of effective large transport aircraft after the War, first with large piston engines (DC-7C) and then with largely Cold-War-financed turbojet/fan evolution.
I would think that the DC-6's and Convair 240's would have been the compettiors to high speed long distance passenger trains (both powered by the P&W Double Wasp) rather than the DC-7 series, which were designed for transcontinental and intercontinental routes and were powered by the more tempermental Wright Turbo-Compund.
P.S. My last piston engined airliner flight was on an UAL DC-6 in July 1968.
P.P.S. The DC-7C and L-1649 were the last piston engine airliners to be designed in the US, both were significantly quieter than previous airliners due to an extra five feet of wing spliced between the fuselage and the inboard engines. As mentioned before, they were very specialized designs and ended up having a very short service life, much like the PRR T-1.
W.Shawn Gray... diesel technology development...
Here's my thinking about 'evolution' in fast passenger technology:
1) High-speed diesel engine technology would have developed during the period of interest whether or not the EMD people had pursued the experiment. Granted, even as late as the mid-Twenties, the hp/weight ratio, cost and complexity, etc. of a 'diesel-engine electric locomotive' were not particularly favorable, but (if we can believe Clessie Cummins) PRR was actively interested in large IC-engine power by 1927, and only the death of the 'key' person caused the lack of (practical) experimentation there until the F road-unit era. Might have been with heavy four-cycle power, and not the Kettering two-cycle lightweight engine... but by the late '40s the diesel technology available to, say, Fairbanks-Morse would have been available, and to posit a history in which compression-ignition heat engines as a technology don't exist is to strain engineering credibility too far. (Just as the world might be different had the Baldwin 12- and 8-cylinder engine projects worked out in the '30s... but probably not, as Baldwin's problems did not hinge on the engine technology...)
2) Likewise, you would have to posit the absence first of effective large transport aircraft after the War, first with large piston engines (DC-7C) and then with largely Cold-War-financed turbojet/fan evolution. And you'd have to posit no new private automobile production after the War. And no road-building -- which on the state level in the USA would have been well-advanced even in the absence of either turnpike building or Interstate 'defense' highways under Eisenhower. In between those two, there CAN'T be a sustained market for relatively service-expensive long-distance trains, whether or not there was diesel-electric power to run them. You may recall the numbers from Kiefer's 1946/7 study, which indicated that steam at least as effective as diesel power, even net of all servicing, could be competitive... but also that the falloff in NYC passenger traffic made the Niagaras functionally obsolete early.
3) As you get into higher horsepower, steam capability drops off dramatically in different ways than constant-horsepower diesels. The debacles of high-speed power, both recognized and unrecognized (example of the latter: catastrophic mainpin fractures on Milwaukee F7 Baltics) would have almost certainly kept effective train speed limited to the 100mph range... which isn't sufficient to attract substantial long-distance traffic even if the right-of-way could be cost-effectively kept lined, surfaced, and leveled to take the square-law-incrementing augment forces... are you going to posit that the cost of track gangs wouldn't have gone up dramatically, or the union work rules didn't evolve as they did, or that coal prices didn't either spike up (as they did in the latter '40s) or go back down again afterward (which is less likely if coal were kept as the preferred fuel).
Them's are the points I was trying to emphasize, not just the relative technology of making fast steam power. If you're going to discard any of the history (outside of EMD et al.) you must also amend all the rest of the history to match -- for example, how serious would the competition from interurban railways have become in the '40s if private automobiles had been restricted in capacity or been priced unavailably, or if Electroliner-style technology had been implemented while interurbans were still a preferred mode...
G'day Robert, et al,
Overmod A few points: Passenger power for North America would have been deprecated, even in the absence of a diesel alternative, due to the massive falling off of demand from the latter half of the '40s through the '50s.
A few points:
Passenger power for North America would have been deprecated, even in the absence of a diesel alternative, due to the massive falling off of demand from the latter half of the '40s through the '50s.
The economic socio-political reason for that would not have been the same if diesel technology had faltered in the transition to rail-transport. But that is another big what-if to look at another day.<SNIP>
Overmod...The AC38 is something of a 'holy grail' on steam_tech: we know at least one model was built, but it could have been 'fantasy' details. Was the running gear actually going to be common with the C38 Pacifics?
That really got me digging. I went back and read much of the interesting chat about AC38 proposal~tender in the steam_tech archieves. I can confirm first that the running-gear for the AC38 was very differnt to that of the later C38 locomotive. Per the following details.
Locomotive various Data Source
231-132BT C.F.Algerian
AC38 NSWGR
NSWGRC38
AD60 NSWGR
First Bldg. Year
1934
proposal 1938
1943
1952
Gauge 1435mm
Standard
ft
4' 8½”
Wheel Arrangement
4-6-2+2-6-4
4-6-4+4-6-4
'4-6-2
4-8-4+4-8-4
(2 C1 )(1 C2 ) h4t
(2 C2 )(2 C2 ) h4t
2' C1' h
(2 D2 )(2 D2 ) h4t
Length (over all)
mm
29,432
34366
23,279
33,121
(over all)
ft. in.
96 ft. 6â…ž in.
112 ft. 9 in.
76 ft. 4½ in.
108 ft. 8 in.
Tender
not applicable for Garratts
(less tender)
Max Boiler Diameter
6' 10 3/4
7' 2
(2209 mm) 7' 3
Leading Wheel Ø
1,000
914
in.
36
Driving Wheel Ø
1,800
1778
1,753
1,397
71
70
69
55
Trailing Wheel Ø
1200
Cylinder Ø
490
495
546
489
19¼
19½
21½
Piston Stroke Bore
660
26
Valve Gear &Valves
Cossart with Poppet Valves
Walschaert with Piston Valves
Max. Axle Loading
Mp
18,4
16 / 18
23,2
Ton
18.2
19
16
Weight on drivers
Adhesive Weight
(111.0 tonnes)
114 t.
68.5 t.
128
lb.
241000
150000
Weight (total)
216 Mp
256
205 t.
269
47500
451000
when in steam
201 Ton (204000 kg)
Working order (Tons)
212.6 (216.0 tonnes)
260
sans tender
Tender weight
kg
14,224
Fuel
Coal
lb
24,000
(16,256.750 kg)
31,500
(14224 kg)
10.8
16 tons
14.5
14 tons
Water
m³
30
(45,460.9 lt)
37
(42,075 lt)
imp gal
6,600
10000
8,100
9,350
gal US
7,900
9,700
Boiler Pressure
MPa
20 hpz/bar
1.378
1.69
kp/cm²
20
17.25
psi
284
250
245
200
Grate Area
m²
5.4
6.03
4.4
5.9
ft²
58.1
65
47
63.5
Heating surface: Firebox
220
274
(21.89m²) 238
Heating surface: Tubes
2574
142 tubes
2792
dia each
2¼
(l.) 13 ft. 6½"
51.7
(length) 4127
Heating surface: Flues
36 flues
50 flues
139
(5½") 139
Heating Surface Area
281.8
243
2,794
2,614
Superheater Area
36 element
50 element
91
63.17
70.2
69.8
975
680
755
750
TOTAL Heating
Surface Area
350.26
313.2
3,369
Power Transmission
Rods
Power
hpi
3,000
kW
2238.8
Tractive Effort
29.38
55,080 lbs
16.12
23.8
kN
161.02
264.92
29,920
16,425
lbf
65,960
55080
36200
59,560
(@75% BP)
58,200
52700
What I find most interesting in the above data is how much bigger the AC38 would be by comparison to the famous AD60. In the steam_tech I saw comments that the Auzy preference for Garratts was driven by the notorious patchy uninspiring permanent-way here. Not that the quality enjoyed in North America wasn't aspired to, but rather given this countries sparse low population densities it would be impossible to build any business-case for a more world best practice standard of track-work.
Overmod Yes, improving an Algerian Garratt (or perhaps a Meyer variant following the original Vernon Smith 'duplex' idea, with smaller drivers on the boiler-side engine) would be the logical follow-on to a loading-gage-maxed eight-coupled locomotive. You would preserve the Cossart 'salmon-rod' valve drive for horizontal balance, perhaps even with OC poppets. The only question is whether passenger service, much of anywhere, needs six-axle steam power at high speed. The train length is limited by factors such as platform length, and weight is limited by a variety of factors. The closest thing to this model is the Chessie service as expanded in the late '40s (which IIRC postulated trains as long as 32 cars, combined into one consist for parts of the run) and this of course was never put into practice. I am not familiar with any heavy 'head-end' traffic that would give longer passenger consists, either. And there would have been great reason to discount fast, heavy running with steam over very much of the NSWGR trackage... even if the double-Garratt were no more capable than doubleheaded C38s. And you have the typical problem with Brobdingnagian passenger
Yes, improving an Algerian Garratt (or perhaps a Meyer variant following the original Vernon Smith 'duplex' idea, with smaller drivers on the boiler-side engine) would be the logical follow-on to a loading-gage-maxed eight-coupled locomotive. You would preserve the Cossart 'salmon-rod' valve drive for horizontal balance, perhaps even with OC poppets.
The only question is whether passenger service, much of anywhere, needs six-axle steam power at high speed. The train length is limited by factors such as platform length, and weight is limited by a variety of factors. The closest thing to this model is the Chessie service as expanded in the late '40s (which IIRC postulated trains as long as 32 cars, combined into one consist for parts of the run) and this of course was never put into practice. I am not familiar with any heavy 'head-end' traffic that would give longer passenger consists, either. And there would have been great reason to discount fast, heavy running with steam over very much of the NSWGR trackage... even if the double-Garratt were no more capable than doubleheaded C38s. And you have the typical problem with Brobdingnagian passenger
Nearly the whole question turns on the steep grades with crazy sharp turns that is the NSWGR trackage. The AC38 was envisaged for the daily express passenger up and down the Great Dividing [mountain] Range. Pulling the four carriage express trains; "The Fish" along with the slower "Chips" and "Summit". These timetable slots where filled soon after WW2 with the electrification of the Western line across the mountain to Lithgow.<SNIP>
Overmod. . .Do you have drawings or other details for how these three proposals would be designed? More than usually, I welcome criticism and comments on this part of the thread/topic... RME
More than usually, I welcome criticism and comments on this part of the thread/topic...
W.Shawn Gray.
Forgot to mention a couple of other details that were problematic on LNER 10000 as built:
Gastightness of the combustion space was supposed to be the big problem that wasn't effectively solved with contemporary materials. I have always suspected that some part of this was involved with the unusual-to-say-the-least method of "air preheating" tried on the locomotive. What materials and techniques that would have been cost-effective in postwar Britain would have been used?
I note in passing that an updated 10000 was certainly something that Riddles could have considered in designing the Standards. He did not. That tells me something...
Passenger power for North America would have been deprecated, even in the absence of a diesel alternative, due to the massive falling off of demand from the latter half of the '40s through the '50s. It's possible that a 'corrected' version of divided-drive would have been the short-term development path (we have drawings for NYC and ACL, for example, ATSF at least considered the idea, and B&O had their own 'take' on the idea that went as far as boiler construction and a test motor, even though the George Emerson duplex wasn't exactly a long-term answer) -- I do not have actual drawings of what Riley Deem was proposing, but it isn't difficult to figure out a method of conjugating engines in slip.
The AC38 is something of a 'holy grail' on steam_tech: we know at least one model was built, but it could have been 'fantasy' details. Was the running gear actually going to be common with the C38 Pacifics?
The only question is whether passenger service, much of anywhere, needs six-axle steam power at high speed. The train length is limited by factors such as platform length, and weight is limited by a variety of factors. The closest thing to this model is the Chessie service as expanded in the late '40s (which IIRC postulated trains as long as 32 cars, combined into one consist for parts of the run) and this of course was never put into practice. I am not familiar with any heavy 'head-end' traffic that would give longer passenger consists, either. And there would have been great reason to discount fast, heavy running with steam over very much of the NSWGR trackage... even if the double-Garratt were no more capable than doubleheaded C38s. And you have the typical problem with Brobdingnagian passenger locomotives (let's bring up the C&O M-1 while we're here!) that they aren't particularly economical to use, either in capital or operating cost, on shorter-than-enormous consists. (Cf. the Niagaras in practical NYC service...)
I don't think a Sentinel is much of a long-term solution for anything; the Besler motor train was at least as mature a prototype for consideration, and was in parallel with early diesel development for motor trains and hence received much the same consideration as a design as it would in the 'absence' of dieselization at that time (mid-to-late '30s). I was not of the opinion that the South American Sentinels, or really any other Sentinel designs, were particularly preferable in the kinds of service generally operated by steam. Yes, it would have been interesting to see how the Woolnough boiler held up; yes, it would have been interesting to see how Abner Doble rather than the Beslers built a practical high-speed individual-axle motor. But as an alternative to locomotive-hauled push-pull trains it would be falling short, both on cost and operating flexibility.
Perhaps better contenders for 'bidirectional' fast trains would be the lightweight trains run with 2-4-2s in Germany before the war, or the French suburban consists run with 2-8-4T and 4-8-4T power. In particular, the 19 1001 would have made an interesting tank engine for this sort of thing, as 'remoting' its valve gear in particular would have been a trivial additional exercise.
If I recall correctly, ASLEF would have blacked any service that separated driver (in the 'push' cab) and fireman (at the backhead) even in the presence of good reliable interphone and signal communication through the train. So that might not have been a contender in Britain even if fast locomotive/lightweight consist design hadn't been the 'model' for postwar development.
LNER 10000 had problems other than those Chapelonian development would address. I personally think there's no point in going to the cost and complexity of a Yarrow without high pressure, and to make that workable you'd need compounding. Is there enough room in the British loading gage for the Smith-style compounding on, say, 242 A1, even with proportional IP injection? Especially given the need for better cylinder insulation? Would you retain the weird articulated trailing truck, with the clear need to carry equalization from the drivers to at least the first axle in that truck?
Perhaps interestingly (according to Fryer) LNER experimented very carefully with boosters in the '20s... and did not consider them particularly useful, even well before dieselization was even a glimmer on the horizon. So even as attractive as that idea might seem for making a 4-6-4 temporarily into the equal of a 4-8-4 but only as needed... t'wouldn't have been.
Do you have drawings or other details for how these three proposals would be designed?
carnej1 An interesting page I came across with some (kind of far out, IMHO) speculation about future use of steam traction (and "Near steam" too!): http://www.auzgnosis.com/pgs/auzloco.htm
An interesting page I came across with some (kind of far out, IMHO) speculation about future use of steam traction (and "Near steam" too!):
http://www.auzgnosis.com/pgs/auzloco.htm
G'day. Thanks all for a very enjoyable Boxing Day reading your interesting thread {after Overmod mentioned it to me.} As to my own activity I admit I'm guilty as charged. Well at least when water is not the working fluid under-consideration. However for water as working fluid options I felt my proposals where all rather conventional. The only difference between my (posted) speculation and what has been covered in this thread, is the burning of Pyrolysis Oil [unrefined BioOil] instead of coal or bunker-oil. So I found the chat here about blowers especially instructive.
As to the subject of this thread "provided steam development had continued beyond 1945 , say into 1952 .. 54 - might / would / should then have been the next step-up in fast passenger steam power" especially here in Australia (or at least outside of North America's grandiose loading gauges) I have a few bets .
First would have to be an incremental series of the [New South Wales Government Railways] NSWGR AC38 tender proposal. Starting with a copy of the Algerian Railways 231-132AT-1 [2-C-1+1-C-2 French built Beyer-Garratt] locomotives. Then by a few steps a full realization of same along the familiar Porta / Wardale line of improvements.
Second bet goes to a push-pull railcar passenger set configuration (akin to the current diesel XPT sets) following along the lines of Sentil Wagon Works examples that went to South America prior to World War 2.
Third and final bet would be on variation of the British Hush-Hush updated along the lines of Andre Chapelon research.
All the best, W.Shawn Gray.
And a Merry Christmas to you too, Juniatha! Glad you're busy, beats the alternative!
Wayne
The "Germinal Material" folio includes a short science fiction-al description of Garrat type locomotives running through the Australian outback using Pritchard uniflow engines powered by cryogenic nitrogen (?!). The author favors this rather than steam expansion engines due to the arid conditions.
The author also describes steam locomotives which use some type of interchangeable,containerized thermal battery pack to produce steam as the dominant type of motive power in other areas.
I suspect that he is familiar with Harry Valentine's writings.
Juniatha Wishing Merry Christmas to all of you and your beloved ones ! Sincerely Juniatha
Wishing
Merry Christmas
to all of you and your beloved ones !
Sincerely
Juniatha
And a very merry Christmas to you as well.
carnej1I do think some of those industrial processes produce sufficient steam, after all such industries were major users of Fireless cookers back in the early-to-mid 20th century, and there are still a few active operations in Europe (Germany mainly).
It's not so much the 'sufficient' mass flow of steam as it is the temperature/pressure. The older fireless cookers generally involved fairly short working distance, and lower working pressures, and MUCH more primitive construction (it was cheap then, maybe not so cheap now). If you're going to the expense of new construction, I'd be tempted to say that the net cost of OTS diesel gensets plus fuel to run them in this service might be cheaper than the fancy Voith tech to make use of the 'free' heat and water in the process steam. 'Net' here would involve overall cost net of operation, but not necessarily full 'well-to-wheel' welfare economic analysis. You can shift a lot of cars with a Trackmobile for what it would cost to build a rail-only fireless locomotive... and the resale value of the Trackmobile for anyone without process-steam hookup would be higher, I suspect.
Not criticizing either the idea or the infrastructure - just noting that the economic analysis should be done with data when assessing the idea.
My fantasy locomotive is as "off the shelf" as I could conceive...
The consideration with the Voith system is just how 'off the shelf' all the pieces of the design would actually be. It's a situation similar imho to the 'active suspension' that SKF, the bearing company, has acquired the rights to. (Or the Bose suspension!) In both those cases, you have a manufacturing company, but they don't make the stuff yet. And there might be both costs and risk involved in being the 'first of the early adopters'. (Don't ask me how I know about this, but I have a pre-9/15/2003 Power Cerebral Accident engine in my truck, which hasn't run reliably for over 6 years now...)
There was an interesting article in the January 2009 issue of "Trains" about the economics of importing new- build fireless engines from Europe (both DLM and Dampflokwerk Meiningen have said they could build them) for industrial use, so that's what I was thinking about. Roy Blanchard(IIRC, he is active in steam preservation/restoration), who wrote the article said the ROI might be favorable given high prices for Diesel fuel.
Often a bit dangerous to use 'high cost of Diesel fuel' in a commercial context. Here it's appropriate, because a plant wouldn't have any reason to use a 'fuel surcharge' to recover some of the additional fuel cost. On the other hand, if there's any possible deduction in taxes for 'fuel cost' or increases... there goes at least some of the attractiveness of the 'alternative energy' approach, except in terms of cash flow. (I still think there is a prospective market for relatively-unrefined Fischer-Tropsch synthesis product, especially now that there is So Much Natural Gas supposed to be running around out there begging to be used for synthesis, but, absent an effective use for the unrefined product (it would be for external-combustion firing) that market will be slow to develop and dependent on a chicken-and-egg-situation critical mass of adoption...)
That might be a more realistic alternative than what I was suggesting but it's fun to speculate...
Well, while we're speculating: it might make sense to develop SOME of the propulsion enthalpy from a reservoir of overcritical water, even if the water doesn't have the full heat to make the right mass flow of 'traction' steam. You'd then need onboard heating of the water, perhaps in a once-through setup of smaller size than a typical flash boiler. I use just this approach in my house, with a water heater set to right at the point where radiant losses start to bite (about 95 degrees F, inside the lagging blanket), with the desuperheat of the GSHP in that water, and final 'tempering' rise made through an on-demand tankless heater.
While there historically hasn't been enough 'heat' in diesel exhaust to make power steam (consider the Kitson-Still and the Russian experiments in 'teploparavoz') the situation might well be different if the water is already at high, overcritical preheat. Or if the diesel exhaust is useful in generating appropriate superheat...
I am sure very little is lacking in your thinking!
If you prefer shorter posts taking things point-by-point I can make them. I'm happier using the old 'reflector' idea of putting all the responses for one post inline with the text being addressed -- in the old days, that saved bandwidth and made it somewhat clearer to follow when a lot of things were being 'bounced around' at one time.
It is not my intent to be excessively critical, or mocking in any sense; I take steam design seriously even when it's hypothetical.
Just as something to chew on over the holidays: an incomplete list of some of the 'trends' that might have been seen for RECIPROCATING steam in the late '40s and forward. (This is in the American context; there was at least one fascinating 'future history' for European... in fact, I think German in large part... steam on the Web).
Interesting to see whether 'duplex' bugs would be addressable via Deem-style conjugation, perhaps with a Bowes drive acting as the Ferguson clutch between engines. You can put the conjugation on the mains (for faster action) or on the driven axles (less mass on the mains) -- but I don't advise going from the main on the forward engine to the leading undriven axle even if your universals will tolerate it. You conjugate the two units some multiple of 45 degrees apart rather than doing Withuhn conjugated duplexing; this gives you smoother power per revolution and (de facto) cuts down on relative propensity for high-speed slipping (which was the real 'insoluble' problem with T1s, and I firmly believe, the T1a too...)
In any case: MUCH better addressing of dynamic augment and slip propensity. Automated procedures for dynamic balancing of driver wheelsets to within a few lb @ 500rpm, then trim balancing rods-on at the same cyclic rpm. Lathe approaches to keep the driver tires properly profiled (perhaps to some analogue of Porta's HAWP) with compensation for 'egg-shaped wear' due to torque peakiness -- I have not decided whether some flavor of 'Lidgerwooding' with tools or portable grinders on the locomotive frame itself might be a workable alternative to a portable or under-track wheel lathe setup...
Fast traction control, probably via air-over-hydraulic calipers acting on the driver rim faces, or on cheek plates on the drivers (cf. the brakes on an AEM-7 electric). This doubles as the part of the independent brake that acts on the drivers -- no displacement causing slippage or skidding, reduced tendency for tire overheating. Slip control is not a loss, as it is on diesels with wheelset braking, because steam pressure is kept on, proportional to stroke, as the brake holds the drivers, and is still 'elastic' for further expansion.
Better, more reliable automatic cutoff control. This an expanded version of the '20s systems, using some of the Valve Pilot logic, but more featured (I'm positing nothing more sophisticated than fluidic, relay, or vacuum-tube logic)
Two big additions: Snyder preheaters in the air gap between water legs and ashpan; and a good Cunningham circulator setup. (The jet pump from the Cunningham also circulates water through the cylinder jacketing, a point I'll address in a moment.) If using a watertube box, the Cunningham pump can do Lamont-style forced circulation without moving parts...
I don't think the welded 'staybolting' used by Bulleid in the Leader boiler got a reasonable test -- it would be at least interesting to see if flexible hollow-tube stays could be made workable in practice. In the absence of that -- resurgence of interest in watertube fireboxes (NOT WATER TUBE CONVECTION SECTIONS) with proper steam separation at the top, circulation at the bottom). The Cunningham system probably eliminates need for discrete downcomers. I see no particular reason why Bulleid-style syphons wouldn't hold up well -- and staybolting was a primary reason why arch tubes were preferred over syphons in many cases. Note that waterwall firebox construction, even with substantial excursions in firing temperature, can give you much better practical absorption in the radiant section (and of course are amenable to forced circulation)
I'd be expecting to see at least some experimentation with sliding-pressure firing a la NYC, particularly on locomotives with good superheater installations. Fully astounding reductions in fuel and water rate can occur when pressure is modulated to suit demanded hp (cf. Tuplin's report of a Niagara doing the work of a 2-8-0 on a 2-8-0's budget...)
Heat the brake air going into the overfire system -- probably with exhaust steam, with the condensate perhaps going into the FWH system. Steam in the overfire might produce some interesting shift of heat transfer in the convection section, or in the Franco-Crosti range.
Asynchronous compounding, and perhaps Franco-Crosti economizing as part of the feedwater system. All the plates and surfaces in the economizer are either Parkerized (like the inside of the boiler, via some electroless process) or made of material resistant to sulfur corrosion at lower temps in a wet environment. (Be nice to spec low-sulfur fuel, but that's not '40s or '50s priority!) I'd certainly expect to see at least some attempt at Holcroft-Anderson style recompression, even if for no other purpose than reducing the effective water rate. If you run a certain percentage of exhaust mass flow via exhaust-steam injection, and another percentage via recompression (using a proportion of the exhaust steam for the recompressor) you might get within specs for some further ejector-then-exchanger condensation -- and prompt clearing of exhaust back pressure from cylinder-cycle perspective...
Double-piston valves. Note that only one set of these needs active drifting bypass (a la Meiningen-style damped Trofimov valves, or the Wagner setup used on ATSF 4-8-4s) and this gets you around most of the kerfuffle involved with either vacuum or steam-on drifting.
More use of Franklin System (or British Caprotti) style poppet valves and some flavor of cam-timed valve gear. This might NOT involve using the external gearbox-and-shaft drive to physically move the valves; separating the control timing from the actuation gets you around the problem seen on 3752 in testing. Another solution is either to adapt Cossart drop valves or use Berry Accelerator gear to get the drive motion into phase to use salmon rods -- no longitudinal unbalanced moment in the running gear, hence the ability to do very precise dynamic-augment compensation...
Proportional compression control (cf. Jay Carter) rather than just pop reliefs a la Okadee. This is especially needed for very high speed (high cyclic rpm) as you have to match pressure across the valve carefully to avoid gas cutting as the port starts to come open. Poppet seats made of hardened material and made adjustable; valves themselves on ball/spring seating so they close and seal without pounding even when slightly worn.
You'll heat the cylinders. Not with exhaust-steam jacketing: too bulky, too much condensation, not enough enthalpy -- Wardale understands this situation quite well. But pure insulation isn't a full fix. Chapelon's late approach of directing the incoming steam around the cylinder and head before admission to the steam chest is interesting... but not the best approach to keeping the cylinder mass well above the nucleate-condensation point of the expanding steam near the exhaust point. For that I think overcritical water through tubing, with heat-pipe distribution, is a better approach (and as noted above something that 'works' with the Cunningham jet pump) -- this also makes opening cylinder cocks at starting relatively unnecessary, as there won't be condensation there as the cylinders take steam...
Better care with circulation patterns in the convection section -- Cunningham ports, for example, and circulator exits. Very few people seemed to have looked at exactly how the water moves inside those things.
I don't know what the early history of industrial antifoam is -- but some approximation of what has become Porta treatment would surely have become practical if the priming problem could be addressed. There are mechanical ways to improve practical water separation at the dry pipe, but many of the more logical ones involve a higher loading gauge ('a la Rus') rather than just a Woodard-style external dry pipe to forward dome over throttle. That's practical for stack-train era... but not by any means in the '50s or even later. Some of the fancy devices for detecting boiler foaming were interesting, but of limited use in actually preventing problems with carryover in a working environment... I have noted with some amusement how many instantiations of Elesco centrifugal 'dryers' wound up having their separated water dumped over the side instead of being 'drip tray' poured back into the boiler... some question, looking at their literature, as to whether they actually realized what the top of the boiler water acted like...
More use of Centipede tenders, with better control of lateral compliance for reverse/wye moves. This might involve 'softer' Fabreeka springing on the rear wheelsets, a Cartazzi-style curve to the rear pedestals (with radius relative to the yaw center of the tender in motion) or an actual Bissel truck with proper rollers and guiding (it came to me recently that this isn't like a Delta trailer, but more like the lead truck on a Berkshire, in its guiding dynamics and principal purpose...)
Better ash handling. Perhaps some use of an 'ashaveyor' system to allow longer running between ashpan stops... or an automated system for knocking the pan down and running water into it, similar in principle to the way some ore cars were dumped. Not yet in the era where full 'accounting' of ashpan material needs to be made... or where total-loss lubrication becomes prohibited in new construction. But there are approaches for those things with 'contemporary technology' if desired.
Continuation of N&W/NYC style servicing facilities, both in running and shop service. It would be nice to have aircraft-style spares provision for all complex assemblies, including articulated-engine power trucks -- but as I've already noted, I don't think either the money or the justification was there for very much 'overstock' just in case of unplanned failure: the emphasis was increasingly on reliability and ease of service ACCESS going into the '50s, but there's a limit on how much even a fully mechanically reliable steam locomotive 'saves' when so much else about it requires fairly frequent attention (e.g. in lubritoria)
Better lateral compliance and damping, and vertical suspension at the drivers. This involves some care with the trucks as well as good lateral motion in driver wheelsets. Remember that the truck suspension in a reciprocating locomotive is NOT the same as that for a high-speed truck-driven locomotive; you're relying on lateral guiding pressure to steer the chassis, not just accommodate curves with the absence of weird wheel-rail oscillations.
Besler tubes, especially on liquid-fired engines. Better burners... and control theory... for heavy-oil firing. (Would have been interesting to see the practical results of waste-oil recovery from the growing automobile industry, especially if government restrictions on dumping crankcase and lube oil had been used (perhaps passed as wartime legislation in '50-'52?)
Better front-end design. This can't be covered here or you'll all go even deeper to sleep. But practical improvements were just getting under way, and even shy of Lempor/Lemprex mathematics, there was still some flavor of Giesl ejector -- which I think would have been more successful had the combustion-gas path into the smokebox been better understood.
Better (or less expensive) fabrication techniques. The one that jumps out at me is centrifugally-cast, perhaps NNS, driver axles -- these were actually marketed in the late age of steam! Steam-locomotive-grade welded frames probably have to wait for better welding technology (it's only just now coming into practical cost range to do full-pen keyhole welding on heavy plate sections to make a box-section locomotive chassis frame) BUT the welded attachment and NDT testing of driver tires might have been in the realm of possibility.
Enclosed cab, with some form of air filtration, and probably some form of air conditioning or cooling or at least tempering for the crew.
I'd be looking for some method of providing 'remote vision' (perhaps via the TV systems developed during WWII for Aphrodite) that would get round the problems of seeing forward out of a locomotive with full developed boiler diameter -- or, for the V1-style locomotive, full developed volume for the coal bunker. I would staunchly claim this could be 'hardened' enough to be reliable if comparable sorts of ATC circuitry could. There are optical approaches, too, but they're not as 'tolerant' of temperature cycling, dirt and wetness, etc.
For fast locomotives: reduction of both frontal area and Cd, both in longitudinal and 'quartering' sense. This need not be the same thing as 'streamlining' until you get well up into the speed range, as the relative contribution of frontal resistance stays relatively low for longer heavy trains -- BUT rising air resistance rapidly meets falling developed HP at high cyclic rpm, and for even comparatively small speed increases in that region of the curve, anything permitting better incremental acceleration becomes useful...
I'd expect eight-coupled locomotives to be used in favor of six-coupled for new construction -- including Dixie-size locomotives to replace Pacifics and the like. We now run into the intersection of engineering and politics. Richard Leonard says, with some justification, that a 4-8-2 with efficient systems can do any logical work a 4-8-4 does; meanwhile, we have Lima going to vast fireboxes with three axles under them... even for eight-coupled locomotives. A large part of this is going to involve fuel quality -- there was a fairly big push for clean and well-graded coal in magazines like Railway Age in the late '40s, which made great sense to me and might have been of much greater import in the relative absence of road dieselization. I for one would greatly enjoy a discussion of this design aspect based on the merits...
Merry Christmas to you all, and I hope you recover from MEGO in time to eat the cookies and Coke Santa leaves behind on Christmas Eve... ;-}
Overmod In my extremely humble opinion, you should use something better than just an 'accumulator tank' for this: You'd have a vessel partly full of hot water, and 'bubble' the steam in until you made all the water overcritical at the given admitted-steam pressure (and associated saturation temperature). 1) There are better means of 'storing' enthalpy from various flavors of process heat; see some of Harry Valentine's ideas on 'modern fireless locomotives' for more and better discussion than I could put in here. 2) I hadn't thought the waste process steam in many of these operations was at high temperature and pressure. You could 'tap' the main steamline on a high-pressure boiler (or recovery system) of course, and factor the resulting use of heat into the plant Rankine cycle just as you presently do with powerplant heat-balance calculations for FWH via multistage turbine bleed. But I'd have to wonder about the net ROI if you try using 'spent' process steam unless it is still high (enough)-pressure saturated... 3) Consider the use of some amount of 'onboard' generation that has high enthalpy, or an external heat source, and use this heat (modulated appropriately) for superheating or 'steam drying' (as in the original Indian Point proposal). There are some external 'green' sources that might be used to accomplish this task, but imho they are somewhat 'fiddly'. At the very least you will reduce the 'onboard' combustion requirement to something lower, and potentially gain some of the clean-burn advantages of external combustion or full-stoich internal combustion...
In my extremely humble opinion, you should use something better than just an 'accumulator tank' for this: You'd have a vessel partly full of hot water, and 'bubble' the steam in until you made all the water overcritical at the given admitted-steam pressure (and associated saturation temperature).
1) There are better means of 'storing' enthalpy from various flavors of process heat; see some of Harry Valentine's ideas on 'modern fireless locomotives' for more and better discussion than I could put in here.
2) I hadn't thought the waste process steam in many of these operations was at high temperature and pressure. You could 'tap' the main steamline on a high-pressure boiler (or recovery system) of course, and factor the resulting use of heat into the plant Rankine cycle just as you presently do with powerplant heat-balance calculations for FWH via multistage turbine bleed. But I'd have to wonder about the net ROI if you try using 'spent' process steam unless it is still high (enough)-pressure saturated...
3) Consider the use of some amount of 'onboard' generation that has high enthalpy, or an external heat source, and use this heat (modulated appropriately) for superheating or 'steam drying' (as in the original Indian Point proposal). There are some external 'green' sources that might be used to accomplish this task, but imho they are somewhat 'fiddly'. At the very least you will reduce the 'onboard' combustion requirement to something lower, and potentially gain some of the clean-burn advantages of external combustion or full-stoich internal combustion...
I do think some of those industrial processes produce sufficient steam, after all such industries were major users of Fireless cookers back in the early-to-mid 20th century, and there are still a few active operations in Europe (Germany mainly).
My fantasy locomotive is as "off the shelf" as I could conceive......
I enjoy Harry Valentine's writings though I suspect many of his proposals would require major R&D.
Hi all
At present I just don't have time to spare to answer or write anything . We'll meet again next year .
RME : the way you compose your comments , sometimes it seem slightly difficult to get your point . Just one note in general :
My skipping something I consider self explaining , self-understood , logical or of secondary importance to the point at hand , this way omitting many details for to keep post concise , should not mislead you to believe it was lacking .
On the other hand some points about my early Triplex scheme I touched but briefly may have escaped your attention . So we're square . Don't worry - be happy .
Overmod Left out the point about the genset engines! The principal difficulty I see with using bottoming on gensets is that the average size of the 'genset' is such that it doesn't provide a sufficient amount of high-grade, recoverable heat to make the economics of the bottoming plant worthwhile. (In the absence, of course, of huge amounts of throwaway-money subsidy for putting it there and then maintaining it, but that's another story!) If we look at steam directly, Harry Schoell's Cyclone project is both sized and directed toward use in just this type of locomotive -- I think of it as an updated version of the old Baldwin 6000hp 'Centipede' from the late '30s, which were going to use individual genset drive (with not all of them producing traction all the time) for power matching and fuel efficiency. The problem is that I doubt you will see an ultrasupercritical plant running on exhaust heat -- even turbine exhaust heat -- although I certainly would like to see it tried. (There is an approach that would permit high baseload operation of a gas turbine setup, but it is predicated on electrical transmission...) Shy of the Cyclone/enginion AG approach to genset engining, I don't think you can get the water rate down to where a bottoming cycle *of adequate power* will work acceptably with the level of condensation available to it. RME
Left out the point about the genset engines!
The principal difficulty I see with using bottoming on gensets is that the average size of the 'genset' is such that it doesn't provide a sufficient amount of high-grade, recoverable heat to make the economics of the bottoming plant worthwhile. (In the absence, of course, of huge amounts of throwaway-money subsidy for putting it there and then maintaining it, but that's another story!)
If we look at steam directly, Harry Schoell's Cyclone project is both sized and directed toward use in just this type of locomotive -- I think of it as an updated version of the old Baldwin 6000hp 'Centipede' from the late '30s, which were going to use individual genset drive (with not all of them producing traction all the time) for power matching and fuel efficiency. The problem is that I doubt you will see an ultrasupercritical plant running on exhaust heat -- even turbine exhaust heat -- although I certainly would like to see it tried. (There is an approach that would permit high baseload operation of a gas turbine setup, but it is predicated on electrical transmission...) Shy of the Cyclone/enginion AG approach to genset engining, I don't think you can get the water rate down to where a bottoming cycle *of adequate power* will work acceptably with the level of condensation available to it.
My thought experiment for a "steam genset" would be 3 or 4 of the Voith "SteamTrac" 4 cylinder steam expanders on a rebuilt GP(or SW) frame with a steam accumulator tank mounted on a drawbar connected flatcar. Good for about 900-1100 HP for switching industries that generate large amounts of process steam (i.e refineries,food processors, ethanol plants, etc.)
After all, there are still some fireless locomotives operating in similiar service in Europe and DLM is trying to market rebuilt (and new, if a customer desires) fireless cookers..
BTW, I use the tem "Genset" in my previous post to describe a multiple power plant setup, I was certainly not suggesting applying the Voith technology to existing diesel-electric Genset designs. I do however, suspect Voith would like to promote the technology to the EMD's(Progess/Cat ect.) and GE's of the world for application to full size road locomotives.
carnej1 As far as your Gas Turbine with steam turbine bottoming idea here is a recent Patent for such a locomotive: http://www.google.com/patents/US20100005775?dq=combined+cycle+locomotive&hl=en&sa=X&ei=AaXQUNa4JemJ0QGOx4GYDQ&sqi=2&pjf=1&ved=0CDgQ6AEwAA It's essentially a combined cycle powerplant on rails.
As far as your Gas Turbine with steam turbine bottoming idea here is a recent Patent for such a locomotive:
http://www.google.com/patents/US20100005775?dq=combined+cycle+locomotive&hl=en&sa=X&ei=AaXQUNa4JemJ0QGOx4GYDQ&sqi=2&pjf=1&ved=0CDgQ6AEwAA
It's essentially a combined cycle powerplant on rails.
It IS a combined-cycle powerplant on wheels. (Did I edit GTCC out of my previous post?)
My non-technical/engineering background opinion is that the flaw in the design above is having both turbines drive a common alternator using a complex clutch system to engage/disengage the steam turbine. I would suggest a "Genset" type configuration with the steam turbine coupled to a seperate,smaller alternator might be an improvement, although it is interesting to note that former TRAINS magazine columnist John Kneiling proposed something very similar to what's described in the patent as one power option for his Integral Train system concept.
That's the spirit -- we don't hear nearly enough about Kneiling these days, and we need to resurrect his memory (and, perhaps, some of his iconoclasm) nearly as much as we need the Lippmann idea back...
I actually wouldn't combine the feeds from the GT and ST systems into a common alternator (didn't I say that, either?) as they have to run asynchronously (not in the electrical sense, but the mechanical, as in Russell Brown's asynchronous compound). The thing I'm working on is a conversion of the system designed at UT for ALPS, with the gas turbine on one MegaGen and the steam turbine on another.
You could probably tinker around, as Kneiling was, with mechanical or hydraulic drive from the (distributed) gas turbines -- I tried to talk him out of it then, and would still do so now. (Especially now that so much of the container-train 'action' is ELF, and the distributed turbines would have to 'live' on the end platforms or articulated like that 20' container patent between adjacent units...)
There's a place for direct hydraulics aside from the torque-converter Voith-type transmissions, see the Lewty booster, but a hydraulic road slug begins to raise some potential issues, and its usefulness with other types of locomotive might be limited at best. I think that here, electrical transmission rather than hybrid is the 'best' solution for locomotive use -- at least, for large American locomotives.
One other point: The great insight of the BMW people, when they did combined-cycle with positive-displacement IC engines, was to use the bottoming heat recovery for ancillary power, rather than to try like Volvo et al. to put the power back into the engine shaft a la Wright Turbo Compound. Again, asynchronous operation gives you better operating flexibility over a wider range of 'turndown' -- and there are quite a few systems other than straight traction that need to be powered or otherwise operated on a locomotive...
You know, I like the way Overmod and Juniatha think. Bring back the Triplex! It NEVER got a fair chance. Now, say we install a nuclear furnace to take care of the poor drafting problem by eliminating the need for drafting entirely....AND we'd only have to refuel it maybe every ten years or so. Let's see a diesel beat THAT fuel economy!
Wouldn't need a headlight or classification lights either. It'd glow in the dark anyway.
My non-technical/engineering backround opinion is that the flaw in the design above is having both turbines drive a common alternator using a complex clutch system to engage/disengage the steam turbine. I would suggest a "Genset" type configuration with the steam turbine coupled to a seperate,smaller alternator might be an improvement, although it is interesting to note that former TRAINS magazine columnist John Kneiling proposed something very similiar to what's described in the patent as one power option for his Integral Train system concept.
There IS a major OEM manufacturer offering a Steam Expander bottoming system for diesel locomotives and railcars; Voith turbo whose product line included diesel hydraulic locomotives:
http://www.voithturbo.com/applications/vt-publications/downloads/1809_e_g_2161_e_steamtrac_2011-02-15_screen.pdf
JuniathaThe Heilmann locomotive - yes I had read about it in an early number of the LokMagazin ( ger for loco magazine ) of a collection lot of well over 100 numbers I had bought in an antiquarian bookshop in Berlin in 1992 .
Is this by any chance "Die Lokomotive"? Because if it is, you should know that nearly ALL the back issues have been scanned and put up as high-resolution .pdfs on the Internet (cf Claude Bersano's site on fini.net). They make very interesting reading...
The loco concept put up by Jacques Heilmann was remarkably advanced with a frame supporting boiler , cross mounted two cylinder compound engine plus generator unit , cab and supplies , resting on two eight wheel power trucks , all axles driven by electric motors
Not to mention the nifty steeple-compound high-speed engine in the later versions. But the real problem was that for all that machinery, and all that length, you really didn't have much more horsepower than a fairly small six-coupled locomotive (not even 1000hp at the railhead even at optimal speed). The follow-on locomotives were underpowered, too.
Even by the time you get to the UP condensing turbines in the late '30s, the power density required to justify all that stuff wasn't there, even with MUCH better boiler pressure, turbine design, and better generators and motors.
As with later diesel-electrics the locomotive showed a great potential in starting and hill climbing, the article described it as quite successful and two more powerful locomotives were built with an early 'Jules Verne' or 'Nautilus' type of streamlining while on the prototype the engine unit had been mounted pretty much on open deck with the front shaped in quite an earnest looking wooden wedge . The first test locomotive of 1892 had Lentz boiler of 180 psi , 1000 A / 400 V generator, 44 kW electric motors, all electrical equipment from BBC; tests were run on the St.Germain-Ouest to St.Germain Grande Ceinture railway of the Ouest (Western Railway Co.) The two locomotives built for the same railway company by Cail & Co , Demain in 1896 as # 8001 and 8002, intended for passenger service on the Paris - Trouville and Paris - Rouen mainlines, were 60.7 feet between bumpers, had a boiler with a Belpaire firebox , nominally steaming 30000 lb/h at 200 psi , feeding a longitudinally mounted vertical six cylinder Willans steam motor with external eccentric shaft for driving piston valves and wooden shrouding for insulation; electric equipment again was provided by BBC, eight traction motors of 92 kW each were suspension mounted in truck frames and developed a total of 736 kW (991 hp), service speed 75 mph.
The first test locomotive of 1892 had Lentz boiler of 180 psi , 1000 A / 400 V generator, 44 kW electric motors, all electrical equipment from BBC; tests were run on the St.Germain-Ouest to St.Germain Grande Ceinture railway of the Ouest (Western Railway Co.)
The two locomotives built for the same railway company by Cail & Co , Demain in 1896 as # 8001 and 8002, intended for passenger service on the Paris - Trouville and Paris - Rouen mainlines, were 60.7 feet between bumpers, had a boiler with a Belpaire firebox , nominally steaming 30000 lb/h at 200 psi , feeding a longitudinally mounted vertical six cylinder Willans steam motor with external eccentric shaft for driving piston valves and wooden shrouding for insulation; electric equipment again was provided by BBC, eight traction motors of 92 kW each were suspension mounted in truck frames and developed a total of 736 kW (991 hp), service speed 75 mph.
But that rated kW per motor isn't at 75mph, is it? Nor is the developed power of the Willans engine though the generator and other components of the drive practically greater than 'constant horsepower' of -- well, call it 750kW. It's possible that forced cooling of the motors might have improved performance somewhat... but: note what the cylinders of a steam locomotive of equivalent weight and length would be developing at that speed... with MUCH less overall cost and complexity.
(I now omit much of the historical details of condensing turbine-electrics, as Juniatha described, and as contained in the delightful pages of the Self site. I would note that the chief problem is that the condenser, even with water spray, can't handle the mass flow and volume from a turbine operated in its efficient range; the 'successful' turbine locomotives all had atmospheric exhaust operating for induced draft.)
Only much much later, in the mid 1990s, for afternoons on end spent cooped up to the bewilderment of her mother, one American in Berlin privately made another attempt at designing a double truck full adhesion Do-Do steam loco concept (in quadruple truck BoBo-BoBo flexicoil suspension version, actually ) this time with a full treatment of everything of promising potential to improve thermal efficiency: oil fired water tube boiler , high pressure / high superheat steam , turbine-electric drive plus condenser . Well , I tell you I really dug into it , bugging dad about it until he raised arms admitting he was at his wits' end, too, and why wouldn't I just see a movie or go to a concert with friends like any other girl...
Where were the girls like that when I was growing up? ;-}
...a high pressure / high superheat water-tube boiler steam turbine-electric condensing locomotive is a formidable exercise in engineering indeed and while it can be done , the sheer complexity and total mass of it will always stand against it.
And that, largely, because you designed it too small. As I've noted, the locomotive can't be like a Sentinel, or one unit of a first-generation diesel-electric -- you need enough capacity both to carry and support all the ancillary systems to use external-combustion steam in an efficient Rankine cycle. That's tough enough without trying full condensing. You were about halfway there with your Bo-Bo+Bo-Bo; the modern 'minimal' configuration would be four Co trucks, but with more traction motors on attached road slugs.
In the end I threw out all steam equipment, replaced it with a gas turbine ( incl beefed up electrical equipment possible with mass saved by getting rid of boiler and condenser) and - wow ! - there was the power I was looking for!
But not the flexibility, and not the easy maintenance, and certainly not the economical fuel consumption, that you could achieve with a positive-displacement engine in a locomotive that size... let alone a free-piston engine with electromagnetic-coil generation on the pistons...
But wouldn't it have been interesting to use GTCC-style steam bottoming on the turbine exhaust, to get your thermodynamics neatly up? Well, yes, you're back up to a large overall unit size, but the practical 'competition' in America is two 4400-hp diesels -- your engine, like Baldwin's original 6000hp Centipede concept, would have been notably shorter and lighter than that combination. (And in Europe, where freight has to run faster and shorter to keep in proper pathing with express passenger service, the much higher hp at speed would have been more useful...)
More fun, still, is to look at the ALPS locomotive, and tell me whether you could spin one generator with a gas turbine, and one with a boosted steam turbine (recovery heat plus some combustion)...
Meanwhile, returning to the original topic: consider the PRR V1 turbine, probably the 'right' answer at the time to how steam power would have evolved. This was NOT originally a steam-electric, and in its 'best' development phase it used what might be considered a fancy self-exciting electric clutch in an otherwise mechanical drive to get higher turbine speed at low wheel rpm. This locomotive would neatly and effectively produce 8000 hp on the steam from a slightly-modified Q2 boiler, with no augment and very little requirement for rigid wheelbase. The catch was that 8000hp worth of mass flow going to atmosphere meant a very, very high water rate. Any other conventional steam locomotive making high hp would also have a high water rate. And this was the one thing that nailed the coffin of powerful-enough steam locomotives shut.
In a modern steam locomotive, you will do as much recompression as possible (to recover the latent heat of vaporization without requiring very large 'condenser' plena and mass-handling capacity). You will have air preheaters, probably in multiple stages, and probably some gas economization a la Franco-Crosti too. Look for high initial pressure (and low exhaust) -- and that means compounding, the continuous compounding of a properly designed and operated turbine. But the key is to get the turbine power to the wheelrims. And for that, electric drive is complex, relatively wasteful, and comparatively fragile... in the period we are considering for near-term evolution.
One interesting thing about the V1 as it was developed is that it was prioritized as a freight locomotive. Just as the T1 was intended as the working counterpart of the GG1, the V1 was the counterpart of the larger electrics being developed by the early '40s with the 428A instead of the 387 -- one of which was a 2-Do+Do-2 like a long GG1 with continuous rating of 7500hp. After the latter half of the '40s came the great falling off of passenger traffic -- if you want a vivid demonstration of the importance of that, consider how quickly the Niagaras were retired and scrapped... when their very high horsepower at high speed was no longer useful for what made the railroad money. Even in a world without diesels, there wouldn't be a place for large heavy steam power.
Meanwhile, consider the C&O M1, a locomotive designed for a particular, and interesting, service. The Chessie trains were intended to run as long and heavy consists, almost like multiple sections of a fast Eastern Pullman train run into one. That's the only possible service for which so large, heavy, and complicated a steam locomotive would have been suited. And when those trains failed to materialize, what was the point, and what was the use, of such large single locomotives? (And, while we're looking at this, why were the M1s unsuited for heavy freight service on C&O...)
There's a fairly direct evolution from the V1 to the early N&W design, through to the TE1, and it's an interesting story to follow. How much of the TE1's design depended on contemporary diesel-electric practice (in ways that wouldn't have happened in the absence of diesel-electric development) is a hypothetical question, of course. Equally hypothetical is what might have happened if the PRR official who was so enthusiastic about diesel and other IC locomotives in the late '20s hadn't died (it's in Clessie Cummins' book) and left the field to lightweight motor trains... and the slipshod electric-derived attempts of the traditional locomotive builders... for a decade. In particular, if you posit WWII and the changes it produced, you get enhanced diesel locomotive development on the 'other side' that might well have occurred quickly even in the absence of Hamilton, Dilworth, Kettering et al. And if a great many historical events hadn't occurred, the shape of steam development might have been very different. (Consider the great hysterical rush to experiment with oil firing when Mr. Lewis pulled the miners out on strike...)
Keep thinking. This is fun.
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