This may have already been beat to death here but I am new to the forum and was wondering what others thought. What if the railroads had stayed with steam what do you think the Locos would be like today?
I have heard all the reasons that were given for going to the diesels, but my thoughts are the biggest one was the railroad seen a way they could get by with less workers, even if it took four or five of the new locos to pull as much as one steamer. I know there were alot of other factors, but if the steamers could have been doubleheaded by one crew I don’t think they would have jumped ship as fast as some did. With todays controls this would not be a big deal but I guess in the 30’s , 40’s it was. Oh well what do some of you think?
Persionally I love steam. Its mans most strongest sorce of power. but man has never been able to draw out all the power. A steamer needs a highly trained crue that is in tune to that loco and changing anything in that is dazasterous. A diesal is fairly simple to operate in you move the throdle and its going to give you all that power almost instantly. Yes they are less powerfull but can be MU’ed together by one crew. Steam uses fire which is almost alive, so you need someone to keep it alive and working. I think the roads would have pushed for diesal no matter how good steam was, its just cheeper, easer, and more versital.
I have a 3 letter answer to the question of how viable steam engines would be today…EPA~! I’m suprised (and grateful) that some envirozealot hasn’t tried to shut down current steam operations.
I agree with the comment on the EPA. Another reason large steam locomotive could not survive in regular service today is liability lawsuits. Do a little digging as to what happened to neighboring houses when a large steam locomotive exploded. When a boiler full of water that is boiling at 200 PSI is suddenly brought to atmospheric pressure due to a collision, derailment, or crown sheet failure, the entire boiler full of water instantly turns to steam and expands 1000 times its own volume in a few seconds. There are numerous reports of large sections of the boilers being thrown over a half mile. Today’s public would not stand for such a hazard in thier backyards.
The 200 PSI boiler pressure was obsolete by the time diesels came around, If you look at the specs for engines developed during the 30’s and 40’s you will see operating pressures in the neighborhood of 300 psi plus superheat (which raised the temperature of the steam above the saturation temperature, about 420 degrees Farenheit). Thus, working steam temperature could easily be over 500 degrees versis the 380 degrees for saturated 200 psi steam. This provides a lot more energy to “launch” those exploding boilers.
The real reason the diesel supplanted steam was operating economics. Ignoring the fact that you could add engines without having to add crewmembers, while there might have been questions regarding fuel economy, the big advantage of diesels were their availability and lack of required maintenance costs. This enabled the diesels to far outstrip the steam engines in terms of revenue miles generated in any given period of time, particularly since they did not have to stop so frequently to refill their water tanks (which had to heated in the colder climates to prevent freezing.
Consider this, you know how effective steam cleaning is on the grease accumulated on you automobile engines,&nbs
The NYC ran a series of tests shortly after WWII. They were uniquely set up to do do since they had one of the better classes of modern steam engines (Niagaras), FT and E-7 diesels and straight electrics. The results of the test were, the straight electrics won hands down until the cost of establishing the infrastrucure was considered. In comparisons between the diesels and the 4-8-4s it was pretty much a wash since the 3 unit psgr diesels were more powerful than the steam engine but the steam engine was (slightly) cheaper to run. Comparing the Niagara w/ a 2 unit psgr diesel,the steam engine out performed the diesel but at a higher cost to operate. The two things that decided the issue were the ability of the diesel to exert full horsepower at any speed while the steam engine had to get up into the 45MPH and higher range before it put out full HP and the really decisive factors, the terrific infrastructure costs of steam and far greater availbility of the diesels.
Everybody seems to be thinking about 1920’s tech, my line of thinking was a new engine built with todays tech. Flue tube boilers were outdated before railroads went to diesel, auto lubing engines were not a big deal a lot of the last steamers had these features, the EPA thats a whole nother ball of wax. I think that with computter controled firing and modren tech that emissions could be handled, heck let’s burn alcohol[:)]
Well that was the idea of the ACE 3000 concept in the early eighties, that steam engine technology stopped being improved upon c.1950, what could you do with modern space-age technology?? One change was to try to hold in the heat better, make the firebox and boiler more like a giant thermos. Also, instead of burning chunks of coal, it would have used replaceable tender modules filled with coal slurry (coal mixed with water to create a liquid, kinda like what an oil-burner would use.)
During the early 1980’s “Reagan Recession” some tests were done on Ross Rowland’s Reading 4-8-4 hauling coal to get some data for the project but I think that’s about as far as it got. Too bad, at that time it was calculated that since coal prices were so low at that time compared to oil, that the cost savings of switching to coal were several times better than the coal to diesel savings of the transition era.
I’m sure there are drawings of the ACE 3000 steam engine on the web somewhere.
p.s. Coal smoke is much more visible that diesel exhaust, I suspect they’re pretty equal as to the amount of pollution they create in the long run though.[?]
I don’t know about that, I saw a CSX diesel about two weeks ago that would have put 1218 to shame. It was blowing so much smoke the first few cars couldn’t be seen!
What was interesting about the NYC tests is that the report was written by Paul Kiefer, who was NYC’s Chief Mechanical Officer and about as pro-steam as anybody outside of Roanoke might be. A three-unit E7 set was roughly equal to a Niagara in horsepower and costs but a two-unit E7 set could handle the same trains as the Niagara at a lower cost, which suggests that the Niagara, while being an excellent locomotive, was too big for the job. It also shows that diesel locomotives in multiple could be better tailored for a particular job than a steam locomotive.
I agree 100% with the above. I’ve seen a few steamers on excursions through the years and wondered how long until some enviro-nazi shuts them down. It’ll be a sad day when that happens. Wasn’t there an issue with a restored steam locomotive in Washington State being shut down by the local city because of asbestos fears?
I witnessed the entire test. The tests were not done on the Reading locomotive. Ross used the more modern and far more powerful C&O 4-8-4 #614. What the tests showed was that even a “modern” superpower steam locomotive design was only around 4% efficient, and at times only 2% efficient. Tonnage wise, a 4-8-4 is about equivalent to a GP40-2, which is what the ACE 3000 was designed to compete against. Ross & company never considered more powerful locomotives such as the SD50 that we were getting at the time. Granted, the 645F3 engine sucked, but the 50’s had a far more robust and powerful electrical system than the 40s (including the SD40-2). The 50’s had a far more advanced traction control system, and along with the more powerful main alternator/traction motors no 4-8-4 could compete with them in tonage rating. Even if you could bring a steam locomotive’s efficiency up to 13%-14% (probably the max), it still would have trouble competing with a 30 year old 50
At the end of the day, it’s going to comedown to cost. Steam locomotives required a huge infrastructure in which to operate. That infrastucture was extremely costly in terms of facilities, fueling and water, as well as engine houses, shops, and crews. The argument has often made that steam engines in general,are more powerful than diesels. There is much truth to that assertion, but it is equally true that the diesel is far more versatile. It’s interesting, even fun to speculate on what form the steam locomotive would have taken had it been allowed to develop into the present day. Had diesels not taken over,it is quite likely that the railroads would have gone into far greater electrification than they actually did, at least in North America.
Just think if diesels hadn’t showed up for another 10 years then, and that the railroads had dieselized 10 years later, do you think that railroading would have been much different today??
In my alternate universe, these would be roller bearing equipped garratts equipped with condensors, burning micronised coal in a gas producing combustion chamber with a tuned lempor exhaust from a high pressure boiler. Tenders would be prepackaged with fuel for easy reload. I thnk the fireman could be eliminated rather easily rather than MU capability being made reliable.
Everybody is still trying to think of steam in a 1920’s era tech, that is not what I was thinking about. What if steam had had the benefit of the last 60 years of new tech the way the diesels have what would they be today?
Comparing an old 30’s era steamer to a new MAC just ain’t fair, But I will have to disagree with the statement that at the time there were no 4-8-4’s that could compete with the diesels of the era, N&W, J’s for example, and there was no diesel in the 50’s that had anywhere close to the HP or tractive effort of a single J, when in an era that a lot of diesels had around 1200 horses the J had over 5000 at the drawbar . The thing that always got me was this, taken one on one a 50’s era diesel would run cheaper than about any steamer this is no doubt true, but when they had to hook six of them together to pull the same load that one steamer was pulling I think economics went out the window
Didn’t N&W modify a Class A 2-6-6-4 (1238?) and a Class Y-6b 2-8-8-2 (2197?) and beat a 4 unit F-7 and in “house” call those A-1 and Y-6c?? I think that it was in1957.
The Great Depression and World War 2 were major factors in why steam technology barely advanced from the beginning of the Super Power era in the 1920’s. During the Depression, nobody had any money for research and the WPB clamped down on research and development of steam technology during WW2. Aside from Lima and the Pocahontas coal roads, nobody was interested in advancing steam design after WW2.
The ability of individual diesel units to operate in multiple was an equalizer in the steam-vs-diesel debate and gave diesels a flexibility in service that steam rarely had. The five-unit GP9 set that equalled a Y6b on the road could be split up and equal five S-class switchers in the yard.