With the cost of oil high, could steam make a comback?

JoeS Apr 13, 2011

  1. ddechamp71

    ddechamp71 TrainBoard Member

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    That looks odd as on the opposite US group RJ Corman which is specialized in railroad maintenance and contracting purchased 3 chinese QJ Class 2-10-2s a few years ago... These can be seen in the north-eastern US for various duties, mainly tasks dealing with advertizement or promoting.

    http://www.rjcorman.com/

    http://www.rjcorman.com/gallery_smokey/index.html

    Dom
     
  2. Mzbringh

    Mzbringh TrainBoard Member

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    Electrics

    Like Europe you will have to go electric at some point, babysteps. Powerplants can handle steam turbines better at a larger scale. But before that you will see the use of diesel replacement like bio-fuel in more or less standard diesel engines, and hybrids and fuel cells.

    But I liked this one. They tried it during the war when they where short on coal. Never worked but it looks cool.

    http://www.aqpl43.dsl.pipex.com/MUSEUM/LOCOLOCO/swisselec/swisselc.htm

    Mikael
     
  3. Michael Bahls

    Michael Bahls New Member

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    The biggest resistance against new steam will surely not come from the "tree huggers" but from the opposite side - the big diesel locomotive companies. I don't know of US "tree huggers", but European "tree huggers" are usually very well aware of the facts like that the diesel emissions (PM) are exactly that size that causes cancer; steam loco exhaust is rather not that dangerous.

    In the 1990's I met such a "tree hugger", the transport-political speaker of the Nordrhein-Westfalian Government (West germany), in a steam special train headed by a Pacific. I was a bit astonished to see him there and asked him about his opinion towards the steam loco emissions, as the Greens always are "environmental friendly"... He answered to me exactly what I would have answered to an environmentalist if he had asked me the same question:

    " Imagine all these guys from the train in their private cars and then see, who makes more emissions, the 500 cars or the steam locomotive".

    There has been a quite recent study in the US about the possibility of a steam conversion of class I RRs, about 2007. They even took quite conservative values for the new steamers as to their economy, and calculated that the break-even point in "steamization" would be at about only 11 years. Then, the ratio coal-oil was not as it is now. The replacement for an EMD SD70AC would have been a modern 2-8-8-4, the GE P42 would be replaced by a modern 4-8-4 etc. Of course the cost of modern coal infrastructure was included in the study.

    As to the ACE project mentioned here, which took place in the 1980's and which even mobilized Ross Rowlands C&O 614 for test trains along the New River Gorge: Among the designers were L.D.Porta (Argentina) and D. Wardale (South Africa), then the two most excellent living steam locomotive engineers, to be named in a line with Andre Chapelon. Whilst they did excellent work and tried to get a "realistic" modern steamer to show the world its feasability at all, some others in the project wanted to make the loco as diesel-compatible as possible. This included many new electronic features never before being tested in steam locomotives. Years of expensive R&D work would have been necessary to make this work reliably. In the end, after a 7-digit spending on research, the oil price fell again and the possible big RR's became disinterested.

    I doubt US RR's will ever be fully "steamized" again, some regions are better off with catenary. Yet there is space for modern, rugged steamers given by the skyrocketing oil price. The late Porta developed a small 0-6-2t with biomass firing for Cuba and other developing countries. The key to a successful future steam locomotive would not be getting the last percent of efficiency (adding complexity) but its reliability.

    Just one freight-carrying RR with some modern steamers replacing diesels for economical reasons might bring a change. Just find that RR willing to try and find somebody willing to pay 10-15 million $ for a few modern, reliable coal-fired workhorses - and don't expect them to look like they did in 1930.

    Cheers,

    Michael
     
  4. Mzbringh

    Mzbringh TrainBoard Member

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    Diesel vs Steam

    I just read an article that turned things around a little bit. Scania, a Swedish truck-maker, said that they just put 2 billion dollars into a new combined muffler, catalyst and particle filter to their diesel engines just to be able to live up to the new European environmental regulations for truck emissions. When asked what the next step will be they answered maybe we put a steamengine on it. Even though todays diesel engines are much more efficient than they used to be still 40% of the energy is wasted, goes out through the chimney or rather the exhaustpipe. One way to make use of that wasted heat is to add a small steamengine or turbine and let it charge the batteries or something else useful. I just thought it was funny that they mentioned adding a steamengine to a truckdiesel.

    Mikael
     
  5. Garth-H

    Garth-H TrainBoard Supporter

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    Maybe not so funny we have been using exhaust gas from large marine diesels in ships for years to produce steam which is used on board for various jobs
    cheers Garth
     

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