With the economy bein what it is and has been for quite some time. how Cost effective would it be to bring all the steam engines out of retirement and have them burn AMERICAN ETHONOL? It it possible? Would it be cheaper? Just wondering!!!!!! Sure would be nice to see those beauties run again, and at a cheap, effective way of bringing back jobs and boostingt our economy!!! OK, I CONFESS I AM BEING A BIT SELFISH, I JUST WANNA SEE FRISCO STEAM RUN AGAIN!!! LOL
In as much as this is a non-politcal site, I will avoid any commentary on ethonol. As much as it pains me to say it, the physics of electric traction will never be trumped by steam. Regardless of what one burns in the firebox, the battle of steam vs electric traction was decided a long time ago.
Will, factually, there is more energy expended producing the ethanol that one gets out of it. Coal is a truly American energy source, but what killed the steam engines was a combination of inefficiency (converting a given fuel source into motive force) and labor (maintenance) costs versus the diesel electrics. No politics involved in factual data...
Doubt there are enough steam engines in any condition remaining to run the A&M, let along the whole system. GS
The lack of aesthetics aside, the C&O gave it an admirable try with their M-1 steam turbines. Seems that somewhere I once read that they later investigated a coal-gas turbine late in their independence or shortly after the creation of the Chessie System, but with nothing moving beyond the drawing board. Best Regards,
The only workable turbines were those of the Union Pacific, which ran on cheap, low grade oil. Even they couldn't compete with the modern diesel-electrics in the long run. Too bad as they were kind of nice, and made big-time noise! Ken
The PRR tried there hand at coal turbines as well with about the same success as the C & O, probably the most successful turbine was the N&W's Jawn Henry, it was quite the machine. Brad Slone
Whatever happened to those college kids at (I think) the University of Minnesota who were trying to get some steam engine to run on bio-fuel? Did that ever get past the "gee-whiz" stage? GS
Greg, I'm sure our tax dollars will be properly wasted on the project since it was/is funded by a Federal grant on the order of just under 100 million dollars.
Even as a Frisco First fan, I have to tip my hat to the gang at Roanoke for the work they did back in the steam days. Best Regards,
The Norfolk & Western TE-1, known better as the "Jawn Henry", was indeed an impressive machine, and was likely the most innovative coal-fired steam turbine locomotive. But, it too did not enjoy success, was always in for maintenance, was never repeated, and was written off early in its life. Again, the Union Pacific was the only road that enjoyed any commercial success with gas turbine locomotives. They had 55 of them, of two basic designs, 4500 HP and 8500 HP, that lasted about ten years or so. Four of them logged in over 1 million miles, none of them logged in less than 700,000 miles. The reason for their success - the UP gave up early on the idea of a coal-fired steam turbine, and switched the design to an oil-fired combustion gas turbine. Still, maintenance costs were relatively high, and when the cost of cheap bunker fuel oil increased, they were taken out of service. I have a good book on them - "Turbines Westward", by Thomas R. Lee. They made a loud shreeking, hissing sound, and had a neat knickname - "Big Blows". Ken
Ken, I probably couldn't argue that the UP turbines were the only locomotives with turbine driven generators to enjoy any kind of success, but the N&W's TE-1 was visually a much more impressive machine to look at and for the diehards (Don Wirth) they were steam driven! Brad
