'Tornado' saves the day!

The Evening train was only half full, as of 2 weeks before the trip. If it is an indentical formation to the York trips of 13 Carriages, 10 fare paying( 3 standard including Buffet, and 7 first Class coaches - 5 of these dining), there should have been enough seats available.

 

Strange you should roll out the "steam could never the current traction" mantra. There have been numerous studies that show this not to be the case. "Tornado" is not a modern steam locomotive, it might be new but it is not modern. If it were modern it would be capable of developing well in excess of 4000ihp continuously. It is incapable of meeting this criteria let alone any of the others pertaining to best steam traction practice and so is incapable of showing how well steam can perform. Want to know what steam can do? Fund the building of a modern engine.

 

I agree with j4141. steam be it ancient or modern just can't compete with today's traction be it diesel or electric, on first cost or manpower costs, let alone everyday running costs.
Then as he mentions where is the engineering infrastructure to build the thousands of modern steam loco's and rolling stock to replace the present stuff?
It's okay having a steam loco that can develop 'well in excess of 4000 ihp continuously' but it's the effort needed to attain that from a standing start or even to reduce it when coming to a stop that takes time. And any experienced steam crew will tell you that it's in the area of attaining maximum power and in slowing and coming to a stop that steam loses vital time on the railway.
Sorry to say it but all steam traction is so thermally inefficient that it's a non starter as far as today's railway is concerned.

 

Stop basing your views on the performance on what essentially are antiques. Do you drive a car? Is it 70 or so years old? Do you fly? In a Dakota? In the USA diesels are hugely inefficient. Why? Because for every dollar of fuel the railroads use six dollars is spent on defence to protect the supply. How much energy is used to produce that six dollars? There is no problem in stopping steam powered trains any more than there is with other forms of traction. If you have any doubts check out Westinghouse and their views on what would have been possible for SAR.

 

I'm not basing my views on 'antiques'.
Today's traction is built with very lightweight materials that are absolutely useless for building what is essentially a high pressure vessel on wheels. So until some one comes up with a safe way of building a steam boiler and it's accouterments out of aluminium or some other light weight material then I'm afraid that the weight equation will remain when it comes to acceleration and deceleration of steam hauled trains.
As for the idea that switching back to coal power from oil will save on the costs of defending the supply from attack.....do you really believe that the loonies will just say ' that's ok they aren't using oil any more'? Of course they won't they'll just switch their attacks to the worlds coalfields instead.
Could you please give a link for your comment about Westinghouse and SAR.

 

Hang on! Has anybody, apart from you, brought defending supplies and 'attack' into the equation? What's that got to do with it?

And what has lightweight materials got to do with the argument? Who said that a boiler on a steam loco had to be a conventional pressure vessel? What is wrong with an instant steam generator?
Braking is also irrelevant. An air braked system can be equally applied to any form of motive power. Electrical braking can only ever be regarded as a nice to have as it is not fail-safe. But that is not the essence of the argument. It is whether a suitable 21st century steam locomotive, allied to a suitable infrastructure, could be a viable alternative to the present status quo?
21st Century steam may,or may not, be an instant steam generator using coal, diesel or electricity to provide the heat source. Who knows?

 

Those who propose modern steam locos conveniently overlook the reason why it died out in the first place - it was the difficulty of getting people to crew and service engines, carrying out manual hard labour under arduous conditions. Although there are plenty of people willing to do it as a hobby I doubt whether there would be as many waniting to do it as a full time job. The steam age is over, learn to live with that fact. The future is electric.

 

A lot of 'electric' relies on 'steam' to generate it.

 

Re the first line of your post, read the quote I was answering.
As for instant steam generators, well most of them seem to be manufactured for heating jaccuzis and those for industrial use are for very small scale use. And they are electrically powered so whats the point of having an electric motor to produce steam to power a traction unit? Might as well just use the electric motor.
The braking question remains the same no matter which system you use air, vac or electric it's the weight of the thing that you are trying to bring to a standstill from speed that determines the time needed to stop.

 

If you make a lightweight traction unit what do you think it is going to haul? You need weight for adhesion, on a conventional railway at least. The tare weight of your rolling stock is another matter, you are aiming for low tare and high nett for a given vehicle. Who mentioned attack? Get a grip, we are talking efficiency here. Overall efficiency, trying to take into account all factors, so in the example of ignored factors that I used, the true amount of energy being used is the concern. The US railroads may like to kid themselves that they are only using one dollars worth of oil, for example, but what is the real amount of energy used overall, that is to say what is in that dollars worth that they pay for plus the true energy cost of its provision? What is the real amount of diesel being used? For Westinghouse, read "The Red Devil", its not too technical.

 

Yes, but it doesn't need coal, water and maintenance facilities, fitters, etc up and down the country - just concentrated in one area - ie the power station.

 

The first problem you would have with many in the modern British railway industry is the obsession with using Multiple Units and now distributed drive. Probably very sensible for EMUs, although oddly much of Europe still uses loco hauled stock with electric locos!

There is an excellent article by Ian Walmsley in the latest Modern Railways demolishing the IEP which makes the case for loco haulage but also raises and debunks much of the "be nice to the track" argument for multiple units and distributed power. However, the belief that locomotives just stand there with wheels slipping seems very deeply entrenched amongst many rail engineers. Convincing them that locomotives are a good idea would be the first stage of looking at a modern steam loco!

Two things to remember in this debate. All modern diesel locomotives in this country are diesel electric - i.e. they have a mini-power station on board using a diesel engine to produce electricity to drive traction motors - the diesel engine does not apply power directly to the drive. Could a minim-steam turbine doe something similar more efficently? I don't know as I am not an engineer.

This leads to the final point - a modern steam loco will not look like a traditional one. It would probably look like a diesel loco, with automated feed of fuel (oil or coal dust effectively!), electronic control and a cab at each end. There is still the issue that whatever the fuel, water needs to be carried and replenished and I suspect the answer would come back "just electrify the d**n line"!

Steven

 

An updated 'Leader' anyone...? :heh:

 

I think it would be better to get Leader working in the first place!

 

Cloud cuckoo land.

At the end of the day Red Devil is just a really souped up conventional steam loco and the overall thermal efficiency won't even get near to a forty year old class 86 electric which was reckoned to be around 18 to 20% after electric transmission losses. As a note you can reckon on 30 to 35 % overall efficiency for a coal fired power station and anything up to the high 40's for a gas fired CCP station. So what are we going to run this modern steam on, coal or oil. Coal is becoming a dirty word and you are running against the tide if you think that the world is going to fall over itself to start burning coal in lots of new era steam loco's. Oil - well anybody with the slightest situational awareness knows where that is going. Most of us probably don't like it but the only way that the lights are going to stay on in this nation is nuclear electric and that might just buy us another 50 years of civilisation as we know it, so whatever you do for transport in the coming years is going to have to be nuclear electric powered. There is no doubt that steam could be improved beyond the final stages that it got to, but you really need to face the reality that only a miniscule minority of people in this world are going to listen to you let alone fund something that is not going to be acceptable to the world's vested interests.

And if you did by some miracle do otherwise, go back to j4141's comments. where are the resources to build a fleet of loco's such as you propose? There are no commercial scale skills or knowledge left, and the last ten years has seen a huge part of the necessary production resources in this nation either scrapped off, closed down or put into crates and exported to the third world. so you would be left with the stigma of a so called technologically advanced nation importing heavy engineering products in from third world countries. And before you say it forget China they just ditched steam as well because it was old fashioned.

So sorry 242A1 but you are going to have to get on a much bigger soap box than NatPres if you are to even stand a chance of being heard, let alone heeded.

Now can the mods get this one back on track because this current line of debate doesn't seem to have an awful lot to do with Tornado saving the day does it?

 

surely all the pro steaam lobby here are missing the point. as much as i love steam (i'm involved with a group restoring a loco) it will never make a comeback. if it were ever to do that engineers would have in previous years come up with new designs. they havent. as much as we all love the idea of a steam strategic reserve as well they would only ever make a comeback would be in a time of crisis. i for one would love to see David Wardales 5AT but peope in my opinion wont back it as its not a heritage machine its a modern loco which maybe could hold its own against diesel but the people that matter in this the TOC'S and their engineers would never even consider steam.

 

To Crewe Hall. Very calculating appraisal there, but i'm afraid you're right.
Apart from that, one of the biggest scandals of the last 10 yrs or so is the destruction & selling off , as you say, of our industrial manufacturing industry ! We dont even make washing machines ,as of this year, in this country now!

 

I agree that coal has become a dirty word and the nuclear nettle should have been grasped years ago. My main point is that Tornado does not represent the best of steam locomotive design practice, welcome though it is. And if Tornado could be built, why not something better. As to efficiency, it is rather like statistics. It is amazing how often factors get overlooked.

 

You still don't get it, do you? People like steam engines because of their heritage. Almost everyone apart from a very few luddites such as yourself accept that their time has gone, hence we appreciate what we have and we perhaps try to recreate what we perceive to be ipmortant gaps in what remains. But there appears to be absolutely no interest in developing new designs because they are irrelevant, really.