"Can Steam Trains Get Clean Energy on Track?" What do you think?

jordon412 said:

This is something that I found on the Yahoo! homepage. I'm going to try to keep from posting on this thread because I want to see what everyone thinks about the news article.
http://news.yahoo.com/steam-trains-clean-energy-track-200700298.html

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Interesting, but it seems to be asking the wrong question. Steam locomotives are inherently inefficient machines. A coal fired steam turbine can be somewhat better, but it's easier to make a larger plant more efficient, and use it to generate electricity. Ultimately, electricity is a much more flexible way to deliver power, as it can be generated by a number of primary fuel sources, including many which involve minimal pollution and loss of arable land.

Paul

Everyone keeps going on about repair costs but in reality would the repair costs be that high if we used new machinery where the rivets and other parts of the locomotive are standardized and mass produced? If you were to get rid of the issues old locomotives had with finding replacement parts than the price of said repairs would go down. Mainly the issue with steam locomotive repairs is simply that during their time there wasn't really a standardization for parts. Each locomotive was individual and had something different about them, be it an odd rivet to a one of a kind boiler.

If one were to take out the individuality and replaced it with standardization would it be logical that production costs would go down after the initial production cycle?

Thus it would be much easier and less costly to repair a steam locomotive. Now as for the use of coal or this new bio stuff I'd have to go with coal. Coal is a biodegradable fuel compared to diesel fuel and the price wouldn't be that high considering the fact the USA makes enough coal to export it to China.

Will any of this ever happen? No. CEOs don't want anything better than what they have or want to spend money to rebuild coal towers and water towers. In fact some railroads seem to never get new equipment and when they do it seems to come pre-rusted ( CSX)

P.S. Any bad ideas or thought can be gladly ignored, it's 2 am and I just realized I be a bit loony.

Sorry if it is a bit off the subject guys : The boilermakers used to pressurise the boilers with water washout hoses for testing and washout purposes , and a few times it happened that the reversor cut-off was not on zero and the regulator either leaking through or not closed completely, and the locomotives would move even though the pressure was not very high yet.Quite dangerous..The correct way off course was to insert scotches under the wheels and check the settings.

perry_weekley said:

Everyone keeps going on about repair costs but in reality would the repair costs be that high if we used new machinery where the rivets and other parts of the locomotive are standardized and mass produced? If you were to get rid of the issues old locomotives had with finding replacement parts than the price of said repairs would go down. Mainly the issue with steam locomotive repairs is simply that during their time there wasn't really a standardization for parts. Each locomotive was individual and had something different about them, be it an odd rivet to a one of a kind boiler.

If one were to take out the individuality and replaced it with standardization would it be logical that production costs would go down after the initial production cycle?

Thus it would be much easier and less costly to repair a steam locomotive. Now as for the use of coal or this new bio stuff I'd have to go with coal. Coal is a biodegradable fuel compared to diesel fuel and the price wouldn't be that high considering the fact the USA makes enough coal to export it to China.

Will any of this ever happen? No. CEOs don't want anything better than what they have or want to spend money to rebuild coal towers and water towers. In fact some railroads seem to never get new equipment and when they do it seems to come pre-rusted ( CSX)

P.S. Any bad ideas or thought can be gladly ignored, it's 2 am and I just realized I be a bit loony.

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Absolutely, matinence was the largest cost of running a steamer. I remember seeing a graphic that after 15-20 years, the boiler was 90% of those costs itself, with running gear and frames taking almost noting. BUT: We have GPCS now, which eliminates erosion of the flue plates due to cinders, and boosts effieincy W/O anyting else from at least 5% to (almost?) 10%. ALSO, we have PT, heavy duty water treatment, that keeps all dissolved soolids suspended in the boiler water, effectively prevents interior corrosin and eliminates generation of scale, reducing blowdowns to a minimim.

Standardization would be absolutely neccessary.

The biocoal sounds promising, but I don't know anything about it yet.

This is only a proof-of-concept locomotive, to prove that steamers can still work effectively and competitively with diesels. (pre-rusted = weathered)

Sounds an awful lot like this paper on Hugh Odom's Ultimate Steam Page:
http://www.trainweb.org/tusp/Coal Locomotive Final Paper.pdf

Go ahead, read all 120-odd pages of it. I DARE YOU!

Yes, if it's a solar powered steam turbine with hydrogen cell back-up!

Fueling of these solid fueled steam-electric locomotives can be accomplished using the same
equipment that is used to load unit-train coal cars. The largest bulk materials handling company
in the United States has stated that they would build, own and operate the solid fuel dispensing
stations at no capital cost to the railroads if suitable long-term fuel supply contracts can be
arranged. The T. W. Blasingame Company has designed solid fueled semi-tractors which can
deliver the solid fuels to locomotives in the field when such services are requested by the
railroads. The cost of these domestic solid fuels is approximately 25% the cost of Diesel fuel.

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http://www.trainweb.org/tusp/news/Steam Page Release 6-13-2005.pdf

Thus, there are people who do believe in 21st Century Steam, and have they have done considerable research on their own dime. Personally, I feel turbo-electics would be better for slow-speed freight (constant output for dragging), while conventiaonal rod-mechanical would be best for passenger service (rapid acceleration above 40mph and higherindividual rating than comparable diesels at speed).

Someone needs to make this NRRI product for trainz! :hehe:

Fred

Stop!
Steam is gone. Kaput! No more! Ever!
Quit dreamin'!

steamboateng said:

Stop!
Steam is gone. Kaput! No more! Ever!
Quit dreamin'!

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No way !
2/3 of the earth consists of water to make steam ..someone is doing something wrong somewhere.

I wanted to keep from commenting on this topic, but I couldn't help but post this. I was sweeping the floor of the warehouse I work at and began thinking about this thread. I noticed how there were many comments on coal towers and water columns. I realized that we need to think 'outside the box' on the topic of water and coal. True steam locomotives today use an auxiliary car to provide the extra water needed to run further without having to stop for water as often. The possible solution could be found in the tender used on South African Railways 'as-delivered' Class 25 4-8-4: the condensing tender. Though the class was later rebuilt with regular tenders, with refinement this possible solution might be able to reduce the amount of water columns needed along the line(s) these steam locomotives use. Add an auxiliary tender to hold even more water and you can reduce the amount of water columns even further. Flexible piping will connect the auxilary cars carrying water to the locomotive.
There's also the problem of the coal the tender can handle. I have been 'toying' with this idea in my mind for a long time. My idea of finding a solution to this problem came from a Lionel postwar accessory: the Lionel no. 397 Coal Loader. It uses a conveyor belt to lift the coal from a small 'bin' (you could call it) up to a height that will allow the coal to fall into the coal car positioned beneath it. What can be done is a coal car (the type of coal car found on at least Trainz 2010 (CSX Bethgon Coal Car (something like that))) placed behind the tender, near the tender (I'll explain later), and the bottom is sloped to funnel the coal into a conveyor belt that will move the coal up above the sides of the car and dropped onto another conveyor belt laying at a slight upward angle, located on top of another car. The coal will be dropped onto as many conveyor belts as needed until it reaches the tender; where another conveyor belt, lying on an upward angle to drop the coal into the area of the tender where the coal was located. Each conveyor (except the one on the tender) will feature a small funnel to make sure as much coal as possible to continue on its journey to the tender. All the conveyor belts will be semi-permanently bolted onto each car, allowing them to be easily removed. On cars that carry water, and the tender, the place where the water fills the car or the tender is located offset from the center, which will prevent the conveyor belt from interfering with filling the tender or the car with water. The conveyor belts will be powered my electric motors, with the electricity being provided from some source. A generator is the most logical choice, but remenber: the amount of oil (which powers the diesel engine connected to the generator) available is going down, so something to make the belts move has to get its power must come from something other than oil. I don't know if the 'coal conveyor belt' is possible in the real world, so it's just a thought.
I want to see what everyone thinks about these solutions to reducing the coal towers and water columns needed to keep a steam locomotive moving.
Besides, whenever I'm at a place where I can ride behind a steam locomotive, I say that some of you might remind you of George 'Hannibal' Smith's well-known remark ("I love it when a plan comes together"): I love the smell of burning coal in the morning.

jordon412 said:

Class 25 4-8-4: the condensing tender. Though the class was later rebuilt with regular tenders, with refinement this possible solution might be able to reduce the amount of water columns needed along the line(s) these steam locomotives use. Add an auxiliary tender to hold even more water and you can reduce the amount of water columns even further. Flexible piping will connect the auxilary cars carrying water to the locomotive.
...
It uses a conveyor belt to lift the coal from a small 'bin' (you could call it) up to a height that will allow the coal to fall into the coal car positioned beneath it. What can be done is a coal car (the type of coal car found on at least Trainz 2010 (CSX Bethgon Coal Car (something like that))) placed behind the tender, near the tender (I'll explain later), and the bottom is sloped to funnel the coal into a conveyor belt that will move the coal up above the sides of the car and dropped onto another conveyor belt laying at a slight upward angle, located on top of another car. The coal will be dropped onto as many conveyor belts as needed until it reaches the tender; where another conveyor belt, lying on an upward angle to drop the coal into the area of the tender where the coal was located. Each conveyor (except the one on the tender) will feature a small funnel to make sure as much coal as possible to continue on its journey to the tender. All the conveyor belts will be semi-permanently bolted onto each car, allowing them to be easily removed. On cars that carry water, and the tender, the place where the water fills the car or the tender is located offset from the center, which will prevent the conveyor belt from interfering with filling the tender or the car with water. The conveyor belts will be powered my electric motors, with the electricity being provided from some source. A generator is the most logical choice, but remenber: the amount of oil (which powers the diesel engine connected to the generator) available is going down, so something to make the belts move has to get its power must come from something other than oil. I don't know if the 'coal conveyor belt' is possible in the real world, so it's just a thought.
I want to see what everyone thinks about these solutions to reducing the coal towers and water columns needed to keep a steam locomotive moving.
Besides, whenever I'm at a place where I can ride behind a steam locomotive, I say that some of you might remind you of George 'Hannibal' Smith's well-known remark ("I love it when a plan comes together"): I love the smell of burning coal in the morning.

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Is this what you mean? Meet the Gerogetown Rail Equipment (GREX) DumpTrain. Couple of issues with such equipment on a loco: will either take an obscene amount of power or an obcene number of motors that suck an obscene amount of power. If we wanted to maximize coal capacity, we would want 2 seperate cars, 1 for water, and 1 for coal w/ water treatment at the tailend next to the cistern. Not only do we need 2 cars, but th angle of the stoker would have to be completely redesigned:



This is the old method, with a shallow angle lifting it up. Watwer is underneath the coal pile. If we eliminate the water, that gives us an extra vertical foot or so of coal capacity. As a matter of not, the tenders were not rated on "heaping" capacity, but rather on what could fit in the confines of the walls.

Finally, condensing: it worked well in SA because of the relative higher temps, the coolers would stay"cool". But if the fans were operating too quickly, the grids ICE UP, and then you got issues. Also, if the steam no longer goes through the stack, you still need forced drought, therefore, smokebox turbinnes. Utter failure in the USSR, the metal can't take that sort of stress in rapidly fluctuatin tempratures. It works alright for powerplants because those are constant forever, but not locos. If we want condensing economoies, we need to use the ACE 3000 concept "boiler in a box". Conventional existing frames and dreams will simply not be as effective at turning the "frowny face" into dollar signs.

Great thinking, I hate to be a nay-sayer, but I do believe steam has a viable future in the transportation industry.

Finally, if you want constant backup electric power w/o OIL or an auto/boat/lawnmower/weedwacker engine w/o OIL, check here:
http://www.cyclonepower.com/

UPDATE: I just bought the July 2012 issue of Trains Magazine, whose cover title says "What's ahead for Amtrak." It features the topic of this thread on page 13, under the "Commentary" section. The title is "Steam engines on steroids." Underneath it says "An innovative, young man sets out to prove there's a new life out there for steam locomotives". The article goes more 'in-depth' compared to the Yahoo! article.

Modern Steam is not a matter of "Can do", it is just a matter of money and will.
Steam works best, where coal and water are not a problem and, where labour is cheap or oil is too expensive/rare.
China ran regular mainline Steam freight untill 2005 and they dieselized just for prestige.
BTW: They didn't want modern steam.

If you have previously read, I talked about using condensing tenders, but I remembered another way to reduce the amount of time stopping for water. That solution: track pans. The New York Central used them on their mainline, and they picked up the water using water scoops to pick up water at speed, therefore they can pick up water without stopping to fill 'er up.

jordon412 said:

If you have previously read, I talked about using condensing tenders, but I remembered another way to reduce the amount of time stopping for water. That solution: track pans. The New York Central used them on their mainline, and they picked up the water using water scoops to pick up water at speed, therefore they can pick up water without stopping to fill 'er up.

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The NYC PT-1 tenders had a capacity of 43 tons\17500 gallons, according to my 1944 Cyclopedia. And if recall correctly, it took conderable timing to get the scoops down just so, and overflows could defnetly cause the tenderr walls to blow out, requiring a large amount of extra holes. Also, could all that extra water be harmful to MU'ed diesels? Just thinking.For comparisonRR 210F75B for M-1: 30.9 tons/20500 gallonsUP Big Boy: 25 tons/28000 gallonsProblem: Centipedes don't back up very well. (thinking a bit too much)

Track pans had a lot of problems like ice, evaporation, and not getting the scoop up in time, this did happen derailing the train.