Err well, let me see.
Steam engineering isn't difficult. Tolerances are not particularly high. There's a real danger that a modern steam train would be better designed and built than what has gone before. Enthusiasts working at the weekend perform every trade necessary. A modern steam engine has been built.
How wrong are you determined to be? Do you spend time outside Heathrow screaming that the aeroplanes can't possibly fly?
Cracking sight though. Best bit was the awe on JC's face when the loco lurched suddenly at 70mph and he said "what the hell was that" and they said "wheel spin" - instant conversion!
It was pretty graphic way to remind us WHY coal powered steamers were ditched. Frequent stops for water mandatory, unless you count the water troughs systems..unreliable and needed very frequent servicing, and a filthy dirty backbreaking job to stoke them.
I rad somewhere recently that even modern electric trains are ot very carbon efficient: the trains are, but the amount of track servicing signalling and so on is a huge overhead of goods materials and people that need to be shipped around to keep it all going.
It really is an argument for doing away with all local services and using them as high speed intracontinental links.
Yes:))
Indeed, 'ho there never seemed to be a shortage of people willing to do the job;)..
Sometimes railways are it seems, more expensive that what you'd think they ought be;!..sometimes of the way they go about things..
So I take it the Philosopher hasn't seen the amount of traffic through Cambridge station for quite some while then?..
All of which could be fixed if someone wanted to. A fluidised bed fire with auto feed would work fine. Water requires more thought but why couldn't it be condensed and reused? Preheating the water being boiled would save fuel and save water. There just wasn't any reason to do it before steam was dumped so it was never done.
It depends on where they get the electricity. If its from nuclear they are quite carbon efficient, maybe even as good as cars.
Have you ever seen the number of people 'local' trains shift round London? Put all those in cars and there'd be total gridlock. Even before they started looking for somewhere to park.
I'm sure a modern design could overcome a lot of those problems.
And, might one add, there must be shelf miles of surviving printed matter, storing much useful material on steam engineering (including even some of the "tricks of the trade").
That isn't a local service.
Its a high speed commuter link.
You entirely miss the point. Their fuel cost is not the main issue, on te train itself. The main fuel cost is in the maintenance. It takes a lot of steel to make tracks, and trains, and the only way to make steel is to burn carbon to reduce the iron oxides to iron metal For example.
Sorry, I dint mean local in the sense of 'intra urban'. I meant in the sense of rural.
What do you call local?, bury to dullingham;)..
Word is that the plans for Tornado were found in a skip somewhere;!...
But not the efficiency, which, even using superheated steam in a turbine, is at best about 15%, as you simply cant slap a massive final stage and condensers on it.
Its far beter to burn the coal in a power statin where you CAN get efficiencies up to 45% or more, and then let electric trains do the grunt: the motors are far better suited to moving trains, not least because you can have multiple power cars..one goes down, the rest carry on, and the traction from multiple drive wheels is infinitely better.
The one advantage steam had over diesel - the ability to operate at altitude - vanished with the turbocharger. There is no advanatage over electric in any sense other than the romantic, and businesses don't survive on romance unless that is what they are selling.
I love steam engines, but as reliable day to day rail transport on a budget, they are an accountants nightmare.
There are no tricks of the trade. Steam engines survive in power stations. That is where the boiler design still is well known and understood.
The physics and theoreteical efficiencies are also well understood and taught under general heat engine theory.
Reciprocating engines are very well understood from petrol and diesl engines..lets face it, you only need to take the spark plugs out and attach a steam pipe to a typical 2-stroke and you have a steam engine..with slight mods to the timing..
Still not quite sure what you mean. Doubt there are many uneconomic rural railway lines left. And anyway pretty well all the services I'm talking about start in rural areas and feed into London. Solely intra intra urban trains are rare if you exclude the underground.
What would you replace them with? Have you done the comparative costs against building, maintenance, policing, etc., required for road transport, plus all the infrastructure to keep it goiong such as fuel distribution?
MBQ
There is also a considerable body of knowledge around the creation of flash steam boilers for other uses such as autoclaves and even steam catapults.
Yes, I suppose I was thinking along the lines of building to original spec
- not changing things like bearings to some uber-modern equivalent.
I suspect all of those examples are ones that have far less hours of run time than would have originally been the case, surely? (Hmm, although aren't there still steam trains still in daily use in India?)
I'm not sure how well plans have survived - or how much was really documented in steam's heyday (there seems to be a wealth of knowledge all but forgotten about '60s and earlier IC engines, little tricks and tips for repair and servicing that the modern generation simply don't know - is that not the case with steam power?)
My experience of other technologies is that the theory survives pretty well - but the practice just dies out for anything that's not in widespread and frequent use.
Indeed, but at enormous cost and with all sorts of modifications. It'd be interesting to know how its price tag and build duration stack up against its original counterparts - but that's just too much of a vague question (counterparts would have been done with pre-existing tooling in some cases, or from parts that had already been fabricated etc., and steam power was once such an evolutionary process that I doubt such thing as a "from-scratch build" has existed since the early 1900's)
Not determined at all; I'm not sure where you got that from :-)
But Tornado's the only example of a recent 'new' build I can think of; all the rest have been restorations and are treated with very low running hours (aside from the unconfirmed India cases).
I should maybe have phrased my question better as "can we build a [reciprocating] steam engine any more with the uptime* and longevity of the originals?"
Have you ever stood at the end of a major runway? Screaming anything wouldn't get you very far ;)
cheers
Jules
Hmm, not sure that I can from this side of the Pond - I'll give it a go in a bit, though (I believe there's a Linux version of iPlayer, finally)
I'm sure it'll be on youtube eventually anyway - lots of the TG clips are (or were, not looked recently)
Well, that sums up Top Gear really - not that it's a bad thing :-) It's one of the very few progs from the UK that I really miss.
cheers
Jules
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