The future of rail could be this 75-year-old steam locomotive

Jamie, my apologies-I failed to study the thread properly at the point I made the posting you refer to. It was me that was being assumptive!

 

If by some chance of dilligent application this venture should achieve the aims it has set out so publicly, just glance over the horizon into the future, "Mallard" is no longer acknowledged as the fastest steam locomotive in the world. What then? Do we do nothing? Gresley considered his A4 design as good for over 130mph. So should the worst happen should the enthusiast world within the UK continue to live in the past? Think about it for a moment.
Should it be judged necessary to react to the situation, what should we do? Nothing? In that peculiarly gutless British way.
Doing less than nothing appears to be standard practice in the UK.
Consider H.M.S. Warspite widely regarded as the most successful battleship ever built. Preserved? No. Sent to the breakers.
More recent, the TSR 2, the best aircraft of its type of its generation and possibly the next. No end of conspiracy theories about this one. It exploration of the history of this aircraft leaves one with no faith in any politician or in any party they pretend to be a member of.
I believe that should the worst happen British enthusiasts would do nothing. It is what the people are best at. You can divide and conqueror your way through the people with relative ease. Work in the public sector when the very worst is happening. See people willingly endorse racism, ageism, misogyny and worse in order to retain their possition in life. So it is that the LMS, GWR and SR factions would happily obstruct if they could any attempt to return the speed record to the UK if it was proposed to make use of a LNE based design.

 

5AT is the answer. When the A4's were going like the wind-so were the fitters at Doncaster-especially with that middle big end!

 

I'd like to see an explanation of why it makes more sense to make solid biomass fuel and burn it in a steam engine with a probable thermodynamic efficiency of less than 10% rather than make liquid biomass fuel and burn it in a "diesel" with 30% efficiency. I am not saying it doesn't make sense, just like to understand why it does.

 

I suspect that this whole business stems from the all too common human instinct to come up with an conclusion which suits the prejudices of the person concerned and then thrash around for "evidence" which justifies that conclusion.

 

What would be the point? You of all people should be aware that this least scientific of speed records was mainly achieved by having a steeper hill then the other guys. Does anyone seriously not believe that on equal terms the German locomotive would have been faster?

 

The middle big end design was changed significantly shortly after nationalisation. A new design was used on both the Gresley pacifics and the Thompson and Peppercorn pacifics. Provided the routine maintenance schedule was followed the middle big ends were much more robust. It does seem likely that a freshly rebuilt A4 could now achieve a higher speed.

 

However the 5AT project has been suspended
Project Suspension Announcement | 5AT Advanced Steam Locomotive Project

 

That's the killer question...

Seems to me there are two possible reasons for doing this project, and neither arrives at building a steam locomotive as the answer.

If the objective is to try and develop a biofuel with the handling characteristics of coal - fine, but to prove the technology, you need your "demonstrator technology" to be the same as the major current industrial use of coal. Which means make your briquettes and see if they work in a power station. No point proving they work in a steam engine, because that isn't the potential market for them.

Alternatively, if the answer is to find what the future of rail technology is - that was pretty well settled 50 years ago. Where the service density warrant the capital investment (as it would in some parts of urban USA), the best answer is electric. Where there isn't that service density (for example, on the lines between cities in the US, which often go large distances through sparsely populated country), the best answer is diesel. What it will never be is a steam locomotive - conventional or so-called "new generation" since the thermodynamics won't support it; and the availability and maintenance requirements are also worse than diesel or electric (meaning you need to build more units for a given level of service because the availability is poor, not least because of the length of prep and disposal time needed; and you need more labour both as loco crew and shed staff).

There was a reason why every European country got out of steam between the 1960s and 1980s. You can argue that maybe in Britain we did it in too much of a hurry and threw away equipment that still had capital value, but fundamentally even had we done it more slowly, mainstream steam would have been dead by about 1980. Even in China, where they have plentiful coal, they have been going hell-for-leather away from steam as the country has developed, because as the population becomes (relatively) more affluent, there is no longer a ready supply of cheap labour for all the frankly cr*ppy jobs that running an intensive steam service requires.

Tom

 

Yes I'm aware of that- but 5AT is still potentially the ultimate steam locomotive. Somebody needs to get to grips with its construction.

 

Why? To use your own phrase - hasn't the law of the jungle already prevailed, and the project has failed because it can't convince enough wealthy backers it actually makes any sense?

The promoters of these types of projects need to answer the question: what's the point of making the ultimate steam engine when even the ultimate steam engine will not be a patch on a fairly run of the mill diesel or electric in everyday service? By the same logic, a defence planner in the 1970s might have been saying "if I only put these enhancements in, I can make a Spitfire do 500mph and climb to 40,000 feet", ignoring the fact that every other airforce had jets capable of flying at Mach 2 and climbing to 60,000...

Tom

 

Firstly, I have not been arguing that steam at its current 10% and Diesel at its 30% is less than being the truth in the efficiency stakes. All I have said is that is that every encouragement should be given to those who wish to pursue the goal of perhaps evening up the odds-the laws of physics(and the jungle) exist to be manipulated. The 5AT project has failed because the promoters needed more effective salesmen. They needed the team that sold 'Tornado' for example. The 5AT team presented a case which was never claiming superiority in efficiency over diesel and electric traction. They only ever painted a picture which was the production of a steam loco which would replace existing heritage machinery and perhaps provide rail traction in a 3rd world environment. Also maybe the question of strategic reserve was on their minds. 'Law of the Jungle'

Your analogy with aircraft was interesting however- not damning- as nobody ever believed that piston engines should be retained over jets in the defence of the realm. It only started to stink in the jet age with TSR2 debacle. A demise attributed to the 'law of the jungle.'

You see, there are those who maintain that steam was a pinnacle from which we have suffered a great decline-which indeed we have- but not in the technological sense-but in the localist way of life. Never was a 'jungle' law so reviled and resented. Enter the railway preservation movement. In essence this was in reality a reaction to the stench of rail and steam withdrawal and a big 'UP YOURS' to the establishment of the time. Why else are the Bluebell still striving to get to East Grinstead and the KESR to Robertsbridge. With a minister of transport of the time who was a motorway builder, there was also definitely at one stage an agenda to eliminate rail travel all together-never mind steam traction. 'Law of the Jungle'.

The 'law of the Jungle' is not necessarily attributed to the effect of market forces but to the will of the people. Projects fail,projects succeed-but 5AT perchance it sleepeth. The guys who keep trying to revive steam are an irresistible force-they will prevail to one degree or the other. Maybe the jungle will get them-but wait a minute that isn't going to happen...not in this jungle anyhow.

 

I think you'll find this is due to the differing natures of the feedstocks. Bi-diesel / Bio-Ethanol etc tend to be produced from crops such as rape seed oil or wheat which are readily chemically processable in liquid fuels. So called Bio-coal is derived from wood waste, be it forest or sawmill derived, via is a more thermo-mechanical process known as Torrification. Having produced the briquettes, these can be substituted for lump coal feed in the power station and then be ground down to pulverised fuel and fired on the existing boilers - at least that's the plan according to various web-sites!

 

The issue I have with the whole idea is that it's the future of Rail travel in the United States (freight or otherwise). I simply can't see on a practical level the need for a steam locomotive when we're moving into an age of greener and more fuel efficient diesel electric locomotives. Why go to the hassle of burning briquettes in a heavily modified steam locomotive if an off the shelf diesel-electric from General Motors can do the same job with less maintenance costs and preparation times?

The speed record is a red herring designed to detract from the belief purported by the group that they are going to more or less revolutionize the railway world with their steam locomotive. I'm a steam locomotive lover through and through, but all the various questions of this project and factors which would need to be taken into account just don't ring with me. It doesn't make business or environmental sense to me.

I just cannot make heads or tails of a project which suggests a steam locomotive, built in 1937, could be the future of rail transport, whether in the states or over here. Even taking into account the Porta and Wardale developments of the last thirty years; is the expense of modifying the locomotive beyond all reognition going to produce a prototype which justifies itself as an experiment, to in future produce more in the same vein for a specific goal (fuel efficiency savings on rail transport)?

 

I don't think that answers the question though - if you can make bio-fuel briquettes, why burn them in a steam locomotive when it would be more efficient to burn them in a power station - surely that is where the potential market is?

Tom

 

I was trying to answer the question of why make solid biomass rather than liquid bio-diesel - where you choose to combust it is of course it is another question!

 

You might be able to manipulate the laws of the jungle. But the laws of physics, if not immutable, have stood the test of time pretty well. At a macro level, I don't think the laws of thermodynamics are going to change after all these years; and these projects fail because they simply aren't thermodynamically efficient enough.

But onto the substantive point: 5AT failed because it was a fundamentally flawed project; not just because it had poor salesmen. Claiming it would have succeeded just had it been sold better is to stick your head in the sand as to the viability of it as a project.

If the aim was to build a "new" heritage machine, that fundamentally misunderstands what the heritage market is about. Afterall, if I go to Beamish, I know the "Locomotion" I am seeing is a modern replica. But at least I am seeing a replica and can make a connection with the original machine. If instead I saw an engine called "Locomotion", but someone told me it had had some "improvements to make it more suitable for the 21st century", and those improvements were of such a substantial nature that it no longer looked or sounded or performed like the original - well, what's the point?

As for the third world: all the evidence suggests that countries that are third world do everything in their power not to be, or at least to appear not to be. That includes not being identified with a technology that the "developed world" scrapped long ago; and certainly not equipping themselves anew with such technology. To take another historical example from the world of aviation: In the late 1940s, many British colonies had short, rough runways. The British Government therefore put out a specification for a post-war airliner that could operate from such runways, but the downside was that the high-lift wings meant the resulting aircraft - the Bristol Brabazon - was slow, and flew at low altitude through poor weather. Meanwhile, the Americans built the Boeing 707 and simply assumed that anyone who wanted one would upgrade their airports to two mile long concrete runways. Guess what? Even the most impoverished countries preferred to upgrade their runways to modern standards so they could use the better aircraft, than keep their runways but have to accept slower, less comfortable aircraft. Resulting sales: Bristol Brabazon - 0. Boeing 707 - over 1000. Pretty clear what the law of the jungle said about that one.

As for "strategic reserve": I'm not sure we should go there. But let's say, any disaster that wipes out modern diesel electric traction is going to have a far more fundamental affect on our lifestyles than just not being able to get the 07.53 to Paddington one morning. Moreover, the type of disaster envisaged would be a major solar pulse, but by its nature is unpredictable, and I can't see any government stockpiling a few hundred 5ATs, along with the necessary (resilient) infrastructure needed to fill them with water every few hundred miles, "just in case". Oh, and modern signalling systems would be wiped out, so they wouldn't get out of the yard anyway.

If despite that, you think the 5AT, or this new project in America, are sound investments, go ahead and invest. But in the words of Dragon's Den: I'm out.

Tom

 

I'd agree with most of what you say, apart from that highlighted above. I think most of those who fork out the big bucks to ride on the VSOE's etc down in the smoke really don't care what's on the front so long as it smokes, steams and whistles. So a loco that provides this, whilst being capable of higher speeds and lower operating costs could have been of interest to such operators.