Steam & Excursion > If steam hadn't stopped advancing...

We all know diesels were the answer to efficiency that steam could not fill. Does anyone know what else could have
been done to make steam a little more reliable and efficient. I know Lima was experimenting with pop it valves and they really
advance boiler performance with superpower. Just something to through out there.

Steam would still need much more support infrastructure than diesels such as water supply, water treatment, large amounts of coal or oil and refueling structures; ash removal and disposal, etc. Not to mention the diesel's easy treatment of the track, with no dynamic augment to pound it to pieces and greater torque at low speeds, which enabled it to start heavier trains than steam could and helped eliminate helper districts. The diesel's greater thermal efficiency also got a lot more work out of a given amount of fuel than steam did.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 03/04/15 09:46 by CPR_4000.

IMO, a better question might be how steam would have evolved if the diesels never came or came much later.

A good book on the subject, although a very difficult read is David Wardale's "The Red Devil". At the end of the book you are to the point of realizing there was nothing that could be done that would be better than internal combustion diesel power in a Steam vs. Diesel (internal combustion) world. Firebox technology, drafting, insulation, valve gear, valve timing, lubrication, firing technique, fuel, front end design etc. etc. etc.

It took me almost 10 years to slug through the book and a calculator and notebook to try and grasp what was going on in the charts, diagrams and calculations.

The list of improvements and potential improvements, testing, design calculations and such are utterly exhausting if you are interested in this topic.

One fallacy I recall going back to the mid and late 1960's was always the NYC Niagara 4-8-4 locomotive was worth two and a half E-7's. Well, not to detract from a Niagara, but so what ? This is (at the time) 1969 and the E-7 is obsolete and the rail passenger business is in the toilet. Any future passenger power, or corresponding freight power has to be better than an E-7 / 8 or a GP40. It has to be as good or better than whatever is on the drawing boards to replace the exiting diesel locomotives on the market place. Bottom line; it never was going to happen although I heard even into the 1970's about how New York Central and Paul W. Kiefer had steam power that would challenge the best diesel from the old steam heads. From what I understand, even Kiefer didn't buy into that thinking.

Realistically I would rather watch a Niagara hustle a train out of Syracuse or up West Albany Hill, but the little F40PH is what made the economics in the 1980's as the replacement for those grand old E units that were plumb tired and worn out with steam boilers that had trouble keeping the coaches warm in winter.

Interesting thing would have been if the steam turbine
like the Jawn Henry had come earlier and gotten the bugs
worked out

hollywood
NS B-Line MP 74

When 85% of the heat goes out the stack it doesn't matter what advancements are made. And, you still have that maintenance and all the people and machines required for it.

The problem with questions like this is you have to also ask, what else didn't advance? If diesel technology didn't really advance much, then semis would be smaller, which means Americans likely wouldn't be as spread out as they are now.

What about computers? Did they advance or stay in place?

What about electric motors? If diesels hadn't taken over, chances are railroads would have electrified. (Which is probably a better what if question. What if more railroads electrified?)

I'm sure a lot of of engineers and conductors who still had a job after diesel took over enjoyed a more modern cab!!

Re: 85%. They're NOWHERE that good!

At best, steam recip locos, across a class, rate lower than 6% thermal efficiency.
AND, that's at slightly powering a train rolling down the tracks

They are 0 (ZERO) % efficient while standing still.

There is simply no way that a machine that wastes 94% of its heat value, can be economically competitive!!

The "efficiency " we're talking about is the ratio of the heat, in BTUs, that is released in the firebox compared to the useful work that shows up at the drawbars, also expressed in BTUs.

So, a loco like a NYC 4-8-4, Niagara, that supposedly generated 6,000 DBHP, wasted 94,000 HP of heat, --- mostly up the stack.
How can anybody afford to buy a tender -load of coal, and totally WASTE 96 to 98% of it??

The losses are magnified by the heat lost just "sitting around". Steam locos spent 60 to 70% of their life just sitting waiting for trains to pull, waiting for open tracks in the receiving yards, waiting for signals and all the other vagaries of RR realities.

They had some advantages, but most were eclipsed by the diesel engines. The REAL cash savings to the RRs was in the numbers of paid employees that they could get rid of. The union crafts were dozing when most of their crafts were made obsolete by the diesels--- the steam-related crafts had no bargaining power as their jobs were eliminated , by the millions!

Turbines are even WORSE at sitting around, and it goes down hill from there. Trying to spool-up from a stalled condition simply blows the steam whistling through the stalled blades and up the stack. Even HotWater couldn't keep up with that. The Steam-Turbine electrics were also hobbled when they tried to
crank-out the RPMs and torque needed to crank the main generators at high-current demands involved in trying to get a heavy train started.

The C&O tried many combinations of exhaust nozzles to try to limit the free breeze up the stack ---- that only resulted in stifling the high revving turbines once underway. The reduced nozzels effectively added a high degree of 'back- pressure to the steam flow. By the time th C&O got tired of playing with the turbines, the E- units had already won!!!

So, it's too bad they're , steam locos in general, gone, but the reality is that they were obsolete when assembly -line technology was brought to the diesel erecting halls.

Long live the King!!

Wes C.

Ah, but wouldn't we all enjoy watching a NY Central Niagara operate ANYWHERE today? They are all gone to the scrapyard many years ago.

Wes is right. In power plants and in the very latest marine plants you can up turbine efficiency with high boiler pressure and reheat, which means superheat over and over again. A mechanical engineer sent me a paper that stated a marine plant could be as efficient as diesel but I have no proof of that. Of course you're condensing the water too. Needless to say none of this would be practical for the railroad. I agree with a previous poster about the labor factor. It wasn't the fireman that killed steam; it was the backshop and more's the pity because the folk that worked there were true craftsmen, not mechanics.

I loved watching SP and Santa Fe steam engines rolling down the track but in addition to being inefficient they pumped tons of pollution into the air. A week after my Dad's Shell service station across the street from the yard was painted in Mojave in 1949, when I rubbed my hand across the wall it came up black. God knows what that did to everyone's lungs...
Time marches on!

Bill Deaver
Tehachapi, CA

Nuclear powered steam turbines!

Look at China and you'd see how steam did advance.

MarkMeoff Wrote:
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> Look at China and you'd see how steam did advance.

Yes, building new, antiquated Mikados and 2-10-2's into the 1980's.

MarkMeoff Wrote:
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> Look at China and you'd see how steam did advance.


Surely you can't be serious.

Actually, look up the ACE 3000 project to see where it might possibly have gone. Mr Rowland of C&O614T fame ran in the dead of winter pulling coal trains to gather test information for the construction of a new steam locomotive. That is the closest you will get to a "what if...".

Here is a locomotive Wiki link to start...
http://locomotive.wikia.com/wiki/ACE_3000_Protoype_Steam_Locomotive

Jim Montague
IRVINE, CA
Train and Nature photo Art

The short answer is that if diesels hadn't come along, we would have a highly electrified RR system, much like Europe.

Thermodynamics aside, the head count of people required to keep a steam RR operating would have been decisive.

I'm not sure if I agree with the premise that our railroads would have evolved to all electric if diesels had not come along or a lot later. There is a much higher investment in the infrastructure for electric power than dieselization, even if in the long run it is cost effective compared to steam.

I don't think you can put our private railroad's on the level of European electrification funded by taxpayers. Most of our railroads didn't really have the money, credit or traffic to string thousands of miles of catenary, especially at a time when traffic levels eroded. From what I understand, Class One electrification has been studied time and time again by private freight railroads since big projects like that of the PRR, but there haven't been any more big leaps into it. Granted, dieselization was a big investment too, but it was quicker and less costly than electrification.

But, again, I'm arguing on the premise as if dieselization never came or came much later. I would argue that given the state of affairs by the mid 20th century, that without dieselization, our freight railroads would have hung onto steam begrudgingly, with some real clunkers on the iron like first generations diesels were used long after their useful lives by ailing carriers.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/05/15 13:46 by wabash2800.

Here is a good link for what may have happened had steam locomotives continued to evolve:

http://www.trainweb.org/tusp/