As a young railfan, I was all about Diesels because they were modern and efficient and steam was of little interest to me, but in my older years, I don’t think I am a complete steam fanatic, but I am intrigued by the operation of steam and the what-could-have-been.
On the topic of steam and thermal and operational efficiency, I got my poppa’s ancient Keenan and Keyes, Thermodynamic Properties of Steam out to crunch some numbers on, what else, the Big Boy. I have used those “steam tables” to do calculations on dehumidifiers and air conditioners, but it just dawned on me: there is a lot of information relative to steam locomotive thermal efficiency in there.
Based on averages of several sources, I have come up with the numbers that the Big Boy consumed 28 tons of coal and 24,000 gallons of water running at a constant 40 MPH for about 1 hour climbing Sherman Hill. Go ahead and nitpick my numbers, but I believe that I am at least in the general ball park. It had 68" drivers, 24" bore by 32" stroke cylinders in rounded numbers, and if I understand double-acting, double-engined, simple-expansion steam correctly, there are 8 cylinder strokes per revolutions of the 68" wheels 67 cubic feet of swept cylinder volume for every 17.8 linear feet of travel.
OK. 28 tons of coal in an hour. I heard they were using Western coal, so I will assume 9000 BTU/lb or a total of 504 million BTU’s to make the hill climb. 24,000 gallons of water in an hour. Assuming 300 PSI, 800 deg F superheat, and making some assumptions about some waste-heat recovery on feedwater heat, I get about 1300 BTU to evaporate a pound of water or a total of 250 million BTU consumed in steam generation. Whoa! They were operating their combustion system at only 50 percent efficiency? Actually, doesn’t sound that crazy – during the hill climb, they may have been drafting like crazy to raise that much steam, and a good measure of the coal could be coming out the stack as cinders (the thick steam and cinders exhau
If your’re referring to N&W, they had 2-8-8-2s. The only 2-10-10-2s in the east were on the Virginian.
I assume you have Kratville’s book on BB. There are coal and water consumption figures there, IIRC. Sound similar to yours.
The 3% figure is probably only a little low, because the max I’ve heard is about 4% for a simple loco. According to Wardale’s book, The Red Devil and Other Tales…, C&O 614 was only getting maybe 3% during the ACE tests, without benefit of feedwater heater. A Y6 could do considerably better than that, but I don’t have the figures handy and I don’t want to guess and spread misinformation. Have to get back on that.
Are you sure about the 40 mph speed up Sherman Hill? I thought that it was closer to 25-30 mph on most uphill runs. They could let 'em ramble on the downhill side.
I’m gonna have to re-read your post about 5-6 more times. I’ve worked on the same stuff for years, but not from the same direction. Interesting stuff.
great analysis - but Sherman Hill is a bottleneck now and was then. One way of reducing the impact of a capacity bottleneck is to increase velocity. From UP’s response - it looks to me like coal was cheaper than more tracks and right-of-way.
Paul: Wow. You are serious about this. Couple comments.
Your BTU figure for “western coal” is actually “Powder River Basin coal,” which was used only by Northern Pacific. It’s a common mistake these days to confuse one for the other, I know, but it makes me cringe. Try 11,000 BTU and you’ll be in the ballpark for the Hanna, Rock Springs, or Kemmerer coal used by UP.
I deeply doubt the average freight train ran up Sherman Hill at 40 mph! Try 15-25 mph. Railroads generate cash by generating maximum GTM’s at minimum expense, and high speeds uphill are about the biggest blunder they can make. If you go back and look at Kindig’s and Perry’s notes on their photos, they give speeds in the 15-25 mph range uphill. And if you poke around in the Ehrenberger/Gschwind and Kratville books, you’ll find more evidence pointing unerringly to slow speeds uphill. Not fast.
One source of the 40 MPH is http://www.nps.gov/stea/bigboy.htm,
but a closer read suggests that may be average, not over the ruling grade.
If you believe that they used up 24,000 gallons of water in an hour, they had to be doing at least in the high 20’s. Otherwise you wouldn’t go through that much steam, even at no cutoff.
If you are burning 28 tons of coal to evaporate 24,000 gallons of water, your combustion efficiency has to be low, and if you are burning that much coal climbing a big hill at slower speeds and lower cutoffs than I had indicated, you are not only burning a lot of coal to raise steam, you are going through a lot of steam.
I am wondering if simple-expansion steam is pretty wasteful in climbing mountains. You can operate simple-expansion at high cutoffs, but not when you are climbing a big hill.
That NPS claim of 3,800 tons at 40 mph “across the mountains” is preposterous. The physics alone would require at least TWO Big Boys, maybe three or four.
Ruling grade on the Wyoming Division in either direction is 0.82% (not HELPER grade).
Grade resistance for 3800 tons on 0.82% is 62,320 lbs.
Rolling resistance using LS&MS empirical tests would be 16 lbs. per ton at 40 mph, or 60,800 lbs.
Total tractive effort required uphill at 40 mph would be 123,120 lbs.
HP = (speed x tractive effort)/375, or (40 x 123,120)/375, or 13,132 hp!
At 20 mph, rolling resistance would be 7 lbs./ton. That gives a HP requirement up the 0.82% grade of 4,742 HP. Now we’re in the ballpark. I think an average speed of 15 mph between Evanston and Hermosa Tunnel either way, including start and stop but discounting all meets and temporary speed restrictions, is more likely. Add a helper westward from Cheyenne and eastward from Ogden.
If Big Boy evaporated 24,000 gallons of water an hour, I believe that’s approximately 200,000 lbs/hr (8.33 lbs/gallon?). Sounds a little high. The PRR Q2 has the highest recorded total evaporation I’ve heard of (tank water + feedwater heater condensate), about 137,000 lbs per hour. This was sufficient to produce about 7,900 indicated HP at 57.4 mph. Unless the Big Boy was unusually inefficient, and I don’t believe it was, I’d say the tank water consumption would be in the 120,000-125,000 lbs per hour neighborhood, or 14,000-15,000 gallons per hour. These figures are probably a bit conservative (high), and it may have done better than that because my setup tends to overstate locomotive resistance unless I make some adjustments. That amount of steam would be sufficient to produce 6,100 dbhp at 30-40 mph, which is what BB actually achieved based on Kratville’s book.
You’re probably on the right track (pun intended) but some of your sources may be nonspecific or inconsistent.
The NPS figures were not location-specific, and were actually somewhat misleading because of the wording. Too much gee-whiz in the blurb.
Geez, this stuff is facinating, not quite as simple as a kettle boiling on the stove eh? with the power of steam, could it have been saved with the advent of modern insulations? the massive loss of heat was incredible but coal was cheap and today it’s looking pretty good compared to oil. Gee, and the fireman only had to shovel 28 tons of coal an hour, how big was his shovel???
Just as a comparison, an SD60’s efficiency (duty cycle weighted) making juice for the TMs is about 34%. It costs about another 15% or so getting that power thru to the coupler, so overall thermal efficiency is about 29% - which is about as high as some older coal fired power plants.
For a GP38-2, its 22% at the coupler and I’d imagine the early Fs and GPs were a few % pts worse than this.
It’s easy to see, just from this, why RR dieselized.
And to say nothing of ridding the property of coaling towers, water tanks, water treatment plants, ash pits, most of the shops, the armies of men who staffed them, and doubling or tripling the tonnage hauled by one train crew.
The question is not whether steam was scrapped too early: it’s whether steam was scrapped too late!
“I have come up with the numbers that the Big Boy consumed 28 tons of coal and 24,000 gallons of water running at a constant 40 MPH for about 1 hour climbing Sherman Hill.”
I haven’t been able to find that NPS claim, but I guess you’re not actually talking about Sherman Hill? Don’t imagine that UP freights (hauled by any engines) typically climbed long grades at 40 mph, on Sherman or elsewhere.
“If you run a steam cycle with 300 PSI, 800 deg F superheated steam inlet, 30 PSI absolute (15 PSI gauge) exhaust, you will operate at 85 percent cutoff and get about 20 percent thermal efficiency [based on the heat in the steam].”
When you say 85% cutoff, you mean steam admission is cut off when the piston stroke is 15% complete?
Am I right? the engine burned 28 tons of coal an hour, AND 120 TONS of water??? (24,000 gals, x 10 lbs /gal. =240,000 lbs. divided by 2000=120 tons) is this correct??? need some help on this one.
About “cutoff.” I am calling “85 percent cutoff” that steam enters the cylinder for 15 percent of the stroke and expands the remaining 85 percent of the way (the steam is cut off for most of the stroke). I am told this is about the highest expansion you can get typically with simple-expansion and conventional valve gear, but poppet-valve or other systems could do a little better (maybe 90 percent).
About the steam-table calculations. From the superheat tables, steam at 300 PSI (absolute, 285 PSI gauge), 800 deg F, has a specific volume v of 2.4 cu ft/lb steam, enthalpy h of 1420 BTU/lb, and entropy s of 1.7165. The specific volume is how much space is taken up by a pound of steam; as it expands, the specific volume gets bigger, and the ratio of initial to final specific volume quantifies expansive working and the valve cutoff ratio. The enthalpy is the energy in the steam available for doing work. The entropy is a number that stays constant in a reversible-adiabatic process (i.e. a piston expander).
I assume that an efficient steam expander takes the high pressure steam at high cutoff and exhausts at 30 PSI (15 PSI gauge) back pressure – I take this as an upper bound of what can be achieved with really good steam-circuit streamlining and a really good exhaust ejector. I go to the 30 PSI superheat steam table entry and look for an entry where the entropy is close to 1.7165 – I find that 30 PSI, 270 deg F gives v = 14.2, h = 1174, s = 1.7095.
The enthalpy difference 1420-1174 = 246 BTU/lb is the energy converted to work by the piston, if there was no heat added or lost and no piston friction or other losses. If we assume a heat-recovery feedwater arrangement where near boiling, atmospheric-pressure water is pumped into the boiler at 180 BTU/lb, the enthalpy input of the boiler is 1420-180 = 1240 BTU/lb, and the thermal efficiency is 256/1240 = 19.8 percent. Oh, and the ratio of initial or final steam volume is 2.4/14.2 = .169 so the cutoff is 1-.169 or 83 percent.
“I am calling “85 percent cutoff” that steam enters the cylinder for 15 percent of the stroke and expands the remaining 85 percent of the way”
Just remember when you say “85% cutoff” to railfans we’ll think you mean steam being admitted for 85% of the stroke. I certainly thought that was the usual meaning among railroaders.
Timz: You’re right, I used Imperial gallons, his quote was "it burned 28 tons of coal & 24,000 gals.(American gallons) water at 40 mph for about 1 hour.(up Sherman Hill) This is an enormous amount of fuel & water, and I knew more water was used than coal, but never knew just how much, also 40 mph seems pretty fast for a giant load of cars ripping up a big hill. (now I know how much a U.S. gallon weighs-thanks) It would seem the coal industry did nothing but supply coal for steam engines at this rate.
Does anyone out there think there is a scientific organization that is still exploring or improving steam power as a method of power???
It’s fascinating to realize how much water those beasts really used. You never see the water - it’s inside the tank. The coal you can see, so you know it’s disappearing into the firebox.