Steam Driven Locomotives

its history,

know past will know future, I thnk.

phanatic tools is still using (this may out of your question).

There is a project somewhere in the UK, reported in I.MechE. pubications I'm sure, to build a new A-class(? er, hope that's right) loco but it is a replica in the sense that the desing goes back N years. Perhaps what the poster had in mind was designing a new one without the benefit of hindsight, i.e. without the prejudice of what has gone before.

I believe the problem to overcome is how to match the warm up time of a internal combustion engine (it seems there's enough difficulty getting trains to station on time as it is!) and what to do with the stored energy when you want to shut it down - steam driven power stations run around the clock. Then there is the usual stuff pertaining to fluids at high temp/pressure.

Actually, although there are no commercial projects investigating steam locomotion at this time, I have developed a design for a modern steam locomotivbe, over the past 5-8 years.

My design lacks the aesthetic appeal of historic steam locomotives, indeed, from the exterior, except for some minor details, one would be hard pressed to identify this as being any different from a diesel-electric (also excepting the near dead silence when it is running).

My design is pretty much fuel agnostic, so long as the fuel is a combustible liquid or gas. It is modular, which makes maintenance a breeze, and first costs are EXTREMELY low, in comparison to either conventional steam locomotives or more modern diesel-electrics.

My design has very rapid startup (even from a dead cold condition), and does not store generated steam, so shutdown is no problem. To address fuel efficiency, my design runs multiple lower power steam engines/alternators, which combine to feed a conventional electric under chassis.

Given the cost of petroleum, and the likelihood that it is going to remain this high for the foreseeable future, I am becoming convinced that there may yet be a market for such a machine, so I don't want to go into much detail on design concepts.

In summary: no large pressure vessel, no huge firebox, low cost, renewable, ecologically responsible fuels, modular design, easy maintenance, safe operation, operationally not much different from contemporary diesel-electrics (quick, inex0penwsive training for engineers to learn to operate the machine). Oh, and a virtually ZERO pollution footprint. *heh* Important, that last point.

avrFreak

Thanks Guest,

I am not a mechanical engineer, but I kind of felt such a design would be possible, would run a smaller pollution footprint than a diesel-electric, be able to use multiple fuel types (virtually anything combustible) and be silent. Perhaps, a small coal or biomass gasifier could even be used to provide a combustible fuel source. Hope your project/design works out. Please keep us posted, as things develop.

GE produced a few massive gas turbine/electric locomotives for Sante Fe I believe in the early 1960's. These were on the order of 4500HP D-D (4 driving axles per truck or bogie). I understand these engenes screamed, you could hear them from several miles out. The gas turbines at the time were very sensitive to dirt and vibration, and the 4 axle truck were very hard on any curves. Sante Fe pulled the plug on them after a couple of years.

I have heard various debates about whether stem locomotive had a fair comparison to the diesel electric locomotives, but from what I understand it was a combination of operating efficiency and locomotive availability that tipped the railroads in favor of diesel/electric motive power. Whatever prime mover that will de-throne the diesel/electric will need to factor both items to convince the usually conservitive (and tight-wad) railroads to make a change in prime movers.

Although I do not know what the efficiency of Diesel Electric is, I doubt if it is much more than 40%, if that.

But I do happen to remember the efficiency of a coal fired steam locomotive, it is about 11%......so having almost a 4 x better efficiency factor was good for the DE.

I suspect that Electric would be much, much better, if you "forget" to factor in the costs of the overhead lines.......

That's the magic of electricity. Anything electric is more efficient if you ignore the cost of what's behind the walls, in the OH lines, or at the power plant that is hopefully on the other side of the hills.

Undoubtedly, the old coal fired steam locomotives were low efficiency, much of it due to mechanical issues. Perhaps use of gas fired steam systems to generate on-board electricty to run motors would be better than that though.

I would not doubt you in the slightest, in fact, it would be great to see steam making a comeback, its far more romantic and interesting!!

I like the sound of the idea in the main, but there does seem to be one too many energy conversions in there.

I understood there was steam to electricity and then electricity to mechanical via an electric motor......this is done everyday around the world in power stations.....it would be nice to have steam direct again of course......but can either be done to rival diesel electric?

I would anticipate that a modern system would use something like "Flash-Steam" to allow rapid starts & stops etc....but I am at a loss to think beyond that, not really being a "Steam" person.....

I've only witnessed a couple of steam cars (old) under way, they are so near silent as to be enchanting. I felt a bit the same way when passed by a Prius at low speed one day when the engine was in rest mode I presume. If only we could overcome general traffic noise in the same ratio - oh what joy! Noise pollution has crept up on us over the years so now very few people, certainly in the southern half of the British Isles, realise what their ears and brains are expected to cope with.