My grandfather made steam engines, my father made a scale steam locomotive for taking children on rides in the park and at the fair. Some of my happiest memories as a child were of sitting behind my father in the coal tender, chugging down the tracks, so any picture of a steam engine brings back fond memories.
[ UPDATE: I hadn’t realized it from the photo above until later, but the 4-6-4 “Hudson” locomotive above is the one my dad modeled for the 1/8th scale train of my youth, except his had the feedwater tank over the front like this one. Our family had to sell the train due to financial hardship after his death to somebody in Lebanon Ohio (probably the saddest day of my life). I’ve since lost track of it and would give anything to get it back, but I fear it has been scrapped. I hadn’t thought about this in a long time but the image provoked some long repressed memories. On the plus side, I’ve located a Lionel model Hudson 4-6-4 Steam Locomotive 665 with 736W Tender on Ebay, and exact match to the engine and tender my dad constructed, which I hope to buy so that I can show it to my children, and pass on the story with something to show them, along with the family photographs. I never thought this topic would come up on my blog, but here it is, serendipitously hitting me with emotion. – Anthony ]
When I saw this, all I could think of is how silly this idea is. All the greens seem fascinated with high speed rail due to Euro-envy, and in California they are ramming it down our throat at an anticipated huge loss, even worse than Solyndra. With a forecast price tag in the tens of billions and growing, it is just nuts given the economic climate right now, not to mention we don’t have people clamoring to climb aboard.
In retrospect however, anything that would put a steam locomotive back on the tracks is music to my ears, even if they ran it on used McDonald’s french fry oil like some of those hippie buses we see here in California.
Here’s the strange part, they are converting an oil burning locomotive to run “biocoal”, and somehow they magically think the production process and the burning of it won’t produce any net CO2, saying the process is “carbon neutral”. I think they’ve left out some parts, like the energy needed to produce and transport the biocoal fuel in the first place. Excerpts from the MSNBC story:
A steam train built in 1937 is getting a makeover that will turn it into a “higher-speed” locomotive that runs on biocoal, a coal-like fuel made with woody plant material.
When finished, the train will be able chug along existing tracks at speeds up to 130 miles per hour without contributing to the greenhouse gas pollution blamed for global warming.
…
“Computer simulations already show that the locomotive is about as powerful as two modern passenger diesel locomotives,” Davidson Ward, president of the Coalition for Sustainable Rail, told me Thursday.
“But it will burn carbon neutral fuel.”
The biocoal is based on a so-called torrefaction process pioneered at the University of Minnesota in Duluth. To make it, woody material — in this case trees — are heated in the absence of oxygen. The resulting flaky matter is then rammed together under high pressure to create coal-like bricks.
The charcoal briquettes aka “biocoal”
Biocoal has the same energy density as regular coal, but is cleaner burning, and since trees (the fuel source) sequester carbon as they grow, the system is considered carbon neutral, according to Ward.
…
Today, most higher-speed passenger trains are diesel-electric locomotives, which generate their peak horsepower at low speeds — about 25 miles per hour. Steam locomotives, by contrast, get their peak horsepower at higher speeds — about 40 miles per hour.
“Initial computer simulations suggest that the CSR’s modern steam engine will significantly out-accelerate a modern diesel-electric locomotive to 110 mph,” according to the coalition’s website.
…
I got a big chuckle out of this part though:
If all goes according to plan, they might build a new steam locomotive from scratch, which will have some modern looks.
For example, “no cowcatcher,” Ward said. “You don’t need a cowcatcher today unless you are a ‘Back to the Future’ fan.”
Just wait until they plow into some green gawker driving a Prius, you know it is going to happen.
From the “Coalition for Sustainable Rail” website:
Once its modernization is complete, CSR 3463 will have little in common with the smoke-belching steam engine it once was. Featuring a gas-producer combustion system, improved steam circuit, modernized boiler, low-maintenance running gear and steam-powered electric generator (to power the passenger train), CSR anticipates 3463 will be able to pull a passenger train with electric-like performance for less than the cost of diesel-electric locomotives. In order to further prove the viability of biocoal and modern steam technology, CSR plans to test the locomotive in excess of 130 miles per hour, out-performing any existing diesel-electric on the market and breaking the world steam speed record. In light of this achievement, CSR has named this endeavor: “Project 130.”
Historical 3463 Tech Specs
Locomotive 3463, acquired by CSR through the generosity of its former owner, the Great Overland Station of Topeka, Kansas, is the largest locomotive of its type left in the world and features the largest wheels of any engine in North America. CSR will completely rebuild and modernize the locomotive, doubling its thermal efficiency, converting it to burn biocoal and more. When done, locomotive 3463 will share only the most fundamental resemblance to the engine it once was.
The table below outlines characteristics of locomotive 3463 as built in 1937 by the Baldwin Locomotive Works:
Keep perspective folks.
This is ONE locomotive out of 64,341
in the USA. According to New York Times.
Some 50,003, or 73% were in Good Condition.
……. err but this was on August 7th, 1922 😆 http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=F60F1FFC385D1A7A93C5A91783D85F468285F9
So then we would need how many trees and bullrushes
converted into these carbon “pucks”? We could all keep
warm by skating across the landscape, in the new little
ice age, and deliver these carbon pucks, by slapshot !
Then the mini-briquets could heat us all up, keep us all
fit and transport our heavy goods at the same time.
Heavy goods such as supplies of “biomass” for the
carbon puck factories, and workers to and from the
great biomass farms, and the vast ashpile mountains.
:green:
What utter tripe and balderdash
👿
Neil Jordan
June 2, 2012 10:53 pm
Re: Dante’s inferno says:
June 2, 2012 at 8:26 pm
Looks like you have a strike on your hands. Refer to American Railway Association telegraph code here: http://books.google.com/books?id=ye49LZSD924C&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false
Turn to page 606 “STRIKES, STRIKE, STRIKERS” for labor relations. It covers just about everything except running the locomotives into the turntable pit.
Turn to page 609 “STRIKES, MILITARY, POLICE, ARRESTS” for responses to labor unrest.
Robertvdl
June 3, 2012 8:05 am
The Bankia train
More money more money we need more money http://youtu.be/A4QXhUFpmLI
Polonia is catalan humor Most spanish people call the Catalans Polacos
i remain astonished by the shallowness of the comments posted above. What do you think happens to woody mass in the forest? Or from limbs from harvested trees? It lies on the forest floor and either (a) catches fire and burns imperfectly, generating vast amounts of smoke and particulates, together with CO and CO2, or (b) it decomposes over time and produces vast amounts of methane and CO2. When this happened in eons past, the oxygen component in air was much greater, about 26%, and the planet was much warmer, and the sea levels were several hundred feet higher – with the Dakotas underwater. The planet has now stabilized at a certain equilibrium of water level, temperature, and oxygen level. When trees are harvested and the wood trapped in building beams, you are sequestering both carbon, carbon dioxide, and methane. The same is true for railroad ties, wood boats, furniture, even pilings. It takes the woody matter out of the decay cycle and traps it.
Taking wood slash out of the forest, burning it completely after pyrolization, and converting the product into CO2 and ash is far better than removing trapped coal or pumping trapped oil and combusting those carbons. The CO2 will re-absorb through leafy vegetation, and you take methane generation out of the decay cycle. That stabilizes water levels, oxygen levels, and planet temperatures. Don’t believe it? Fine; watch how much smoke is generated by the massive forest fires coming this summer, all caused by the giant fuel loads on the forest floors.
This is the problem with you critics: you forget that the buffalo no longer eat the prairie grasses, so they become fire fuel load; drier air now in the West and low snow-packs are leaving parched soils and no natural barriers to forest fires; and the accumulated forest debris is a huge fuel load that is going to burn uncontrolled if not removed. You think using this slash for transport or stationary stem fuel is dumb. Guess what: it is going to burn anyway, except the result then is that it adds to component loads in the atmosphere that will alter the current climate equilibria, and the results will be catastrophic. When you see the ocean at the City Hall of Cincinnati, then you can start thinking about revising your opinions.
I love steam engines. My dad worked for the old Missouri Pacific RR. I, too, managed to get a ride in the engine cab for a short run. Hot, noisy, and totally exhilarating. I think I was six.
Colorado has a wealth of steam locomotive runs.
Durango & Silverton: http://www.durangotrain.com/
Cumbres & Toltec: http://www.cumbrestoltec.com/
Georgetown Loop: http://www.georgetownlooprr.com/
More: http://www.coloradoscenicrails.com/
While I love steam engines, I can’t see the practicality of this. It doesn’t make sense at all. It would be far better to start from scratch, use current technology, and see how a train would fare. I still can’t see how it’s financially practical, though. As many have said, there isn’t the ridership to earn a profit.
It’s hard to explain to Europeans how vast the United States is, and how low the density is in many areas. I rode the train from St. Louis to Pueblo in 1964, and I’ve driven the Interstate system in some of our least-dense areas. I’ve also driven all over Europe. The only place where there are equally vacant areas is in eastern Russia.
John Wright
June 4, 2012 3:40 am
“When you see the ocean at the City Hall of Cincinnati, then you can start thinking about revising your opinions.”
You really think that will happen in your lifetime, Wolfgang? – or that of your great-great — ad infinitum — grandchildren, poor little dears.
That said, I agree about the shallowness of a lot of the comments on this post. The only possible boondoggle I can see is the biocoal. The steam locomotive project is so far only privately funded and looking for voluntary donations.
That “Stephensonian” locomotive configuration can burn just about any solid or liquid fuel with little or no pre-processing. That’s why the big primeval forests in the Eastern USA pretty well disappeared before the 1890s when they switched to coal.
By the way, I never heard of locomotives burning charcoal. In Britain from 1830 – 60, due to poor combustion of coal and heavy smoke pollution, they burned coke, a by-product of the coal-gas works.
Keith Sketchley
June 4, 2012 3:38 pm
Ah, I see the tender car has a huge quantity of water and lots of oil – was the loco an oil burner? (I don’t recall what was behind the engine in Revelstoke, which wouldn’t necessarily be a match anyway due availability and length.)
My faded memory was that a steam engine was operated from North Vancouver BC to Squamish BC years ago, as an attraction called the “Royal Hudson”, but I suspect they stopped when they faced a huge bill to refurbish it.
Any readers around Victoria BC might be amused, as the track of the old E & N railbed, now owned by a non-profit and/or government, has been let deteriorate to the point that someone called a halt to running the small tourist train because it wasn’t safe to run at a speed that made sense for the excursion time.
Keith Sketchley
June 4, 2012 3:50 pm
Ben Wilson says: “The only reasonable way to have a coal fired (or “biocoal fired”) locomotive is to have a stationery coal power plant that powers an electric railway.”
Isn’t that what the Japanese have now?
Neil Jordan
June 4, 2012 4:16 pm
Re the comments about the operating range of a steam locomotive before a water stop to fill the tender, see this link (and probably many others): http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?10,1324433
About 200 miles between water stops seems to be a common response. Water tanks have been removed from all but tourist railroads, so adding and maintaining a water supply at each stop would become an additional cost of operating this rebuilt steam locomotive. The supply wouldn’t be a garden hose, either.
Keith Sketchley
June 5, 2012 12:17 pm
Thanks Neil Jordan for the link on water range.
Varies widely, factors include water tank cars in the train, and how hard the engine was working (max acceleration and hill-climbing require harder work).
Good point raised about crew change being a factor, but 100 miles seems odd if that number is correct – that would be in steep mountains where speed is very low I presume, though stress of keeping an eagle eye out for people blundering onto the track is a question elsewhere.
Keith Sketchley
June 5, 2012 12:27 pm
Talk of speed reminds me of a helicopter pilot who didn’t think through what he was doing.
Arriving to pick up two people who’d been scouting timber in winter, somewhere out of Prince George BC, he decides that landing on the RR track would be a lot easier than landing in show in a meadow or whatever.
Besides thinking he knows the train schedules he flies along the track for a distance one way, then back past his landing area and a distance the other way, and returns to his landing area.
Lands on track, passengers load their gear and get in the helicopter. Then one of them taps the pilot on the shoulder and points to hte train he saw when reaching out to close the door.
They lifted off just in time to avoid being hit.
Given that a train probably runs about half the speed that helicopter flies, he could never be safe with his scheme – by the time he gets back from the second recon leg the train he could not see at the end of the first leg is about to arrive.
(Of course train schedules vary due delays and extra runs.)
Locomotive 3463, acquired by CSR through the generosity of its former owner, the Great Overland Station of Topeka, Kansas, is the largest locomotive of its type left in the world and features the largest wheels of any engine in North America. CSR will completely rebuild and modernize the locomotive, doubling its thermal efficiency, converting it to burn biocoal and more. When done, locomotive 3463 will share only the most fundamental resemblance to the engine it once was.
Keep perspective folks.
This is ONE locomotive out of 64,341
in the USA. According to New York Times.
Some 50,003, or 73% were in Good Condition.
……. err but this was on August 7th, 1922 😆
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=F60F1FFC385D1A7A93C5A91783D85F468285F9
So then we would need how many trees and bullrushes
converted into these carbon “pucks”? We could all keep
warm by skating across the landscape, in the new little
ice age, and deliver these carbon pucks, by slapshot !
Then the mini-briquets could heat us all up, keep us all
fit and transport our heavy goods at the same time.
Heavy goods such as supplies of “biomass” for the
carbon puck factories, and workers to and from the
great biomass farms, and the vast ashpile mountains.
:green:
What utter tripe and balderdash
👿
Re: Dante’s inferno says:
June 2, 2012 at 8:26 pm
Looks like you have a strike on your hands. Refer to American Railway Association telegraph code here:
http://books.google.com/books?id=ye49LZSD924C&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false
Turn to page 606 “STRIKES, STRIKE, STRIKERS” for labor relations. It covers just about everything except running the locomotives into the turntable pit.
Turn to page 609 “STRIKES, MILITARY, POLICE, ARRESTS” for responses to labor unrest.
The Bankia train
More money more money we need more money
http://youtu.be/A4QXhUFpmLI
Polonia is catalan humor Most spanish people call the Catalans Polacos
http://youtu.be/A4QXhUFpmLI
i remain astonished by the shallowness of the comments posted above. What do you think happens to woody mass in the forest? Or from limbs from harvested trees? It lies on the forest floor and either (a) catches fire and burns imperfectly, generating vast amounts of smoke and particulates, together with CO and CO2, or (b) it decomposes over time and produces vast amounts of methane and CO2. When this happened in eons past, the oxygen component in air was much greater, about 26%, and the planet was much warmer, and the sea levels were several hundred feet higher – with the Dakotas underwater. The planet has now stabilized at a certain equilibrium of water level, temperature, and oxygen level. When trees are harvested and the wood trapped in building beams, you are sequestering both carbon, carbon dioxide, and methane. The same is true for railroad ties, wood boats, furniture, even pilings. It takes the woody matter out of the decay cycle and traps it.
Taking wood slash out of the forest, burning it completely after pyrolization, and converting the product into CO2 and ash is far better than removing trapped coal or pumping trapped oil and combusting those carbons. The CO2 will re-absorb through leafy vegetation, and you take methane generation out of the decay cycle. That stabilizes water levels, oxygen levels, and planet temperatures. Don’t believe it? Fine; watch how much smoke is generated by the massive forest fires coming this summer, all caused by the giant fuel loads on the forest floors.
This is the problem with you critics: you forget that the buffalo no longer eat the prairie grasses, so they become fire fuel load; drier air now in the West and low snow-packs are leaving parched soils and no natural barriers to forest fires; and the accumulated forest debris is a huge fuel load that is going to burn uncontrolled if not removed. You think using this slash for transport or stationary stem fuel is dumb. Guess what: it is going to burn anyway, except the result then is that it adds to component loads in the atmosphere that will alter the current climate equilibria, and the results will be catastrophic. When you see the ocean at the City Hall of Cincinnati, then you can start thinking about revising your opinions.
I love steam engines. My dad worked for the old Missouri Pacific RR. I, too, managed to get a ride in the engine cab for a short run. Hot, noisy, and totally exhilarating. I think I was six.
Colorado has a wealth of steam locomotive runs.
Durango & Silverton: http://www.durangotrain.com/
Cumbres & Toltec: http://www.cumbrestoltec.com/
Georgetown Loop: http://www.georgetownlooprr.com/
More: http://www.coloradoscenicrails.com/
While I love steam engines, I can’t see the practicality of this. It doesn’t make sense at all. It would be far better to start from scratch, use current technology, and see how a train would fare. I still can’t see how it’s financially practical, though. As many have said, there isn’t the ridership to earn a profit.
It’s hard to explain to Europeans how vast the United States is, and how low the density is in many areas. I rode the train from St. Louis to Pueblo in 1964, and I’ve driven the Interstate system in some of our least-dense areas. I’ve also driven all over Europe. The only place where there are equally vacant areas is in eastern Russia.
“When you see the ocean at the City Hall of Cincinnati, then you can start thinking about revising your opinions.”
You really think that will happen in your lifetime, Wolfgang? – or that of your great-great — ad infinitum — grandchildren, poor little dears.
That said, I agree about the shallowness of a lot of the comments on this post. The only possible boondoggle I can see is the biocoal. The steam locomotive project is so far only privately funded and looking for voluntary donations.
That “Stephensonian” locomotive configuration can burn just about any solid or liquid fuel with little or no pre-processing. That’s why the big primeval forests in the Eastern USA pretty well disappeared before the 1890s when they switched to coal.
By the way, I never heard of locomotives burning charcoal. In Britain from 1830 – 60, due to poor combustion of coal and heavy smoke pollution, they burned coke, a by-product of the coal-gas works.
Ah, I see the tender car has a huge quantity of water and lots of oil – was the loco an oil burner? (I don’t recall what was behind the engine in Revelstoke, which wouldn’t necessarily be a match anyway due availability and length.)
My faded memory was that a steam engine was operated from North Vancouver BC to Squamish BC years ago, as an attraction called the “Royal Hudson”, but I suspect they stopped when they faced a huge bill to refurbish it.
Any readers around Victoria BC might be amused, as the track of the old E & N railbed, now owned by a non-profit and/or government, has been let deteriorate to the point that someone called a halt to running the small tourist train because it wasn’t safe to run at a speed that made sense for the excursion time.
Ben Wilson says: “The only reasonable way to have a coal fired (or “biocoal fired”) locomotive is to have a stationery coal power plant that powers an electric railway.”
Isn’t that what the Japanese have now?
Re the comments about the operating range of a steam locomotive before a water stop to fill the tender, see this link (and probably many others):
http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?10,1324433
About 200 miles between water stops seems to be a common response. Water tanks have been removed from all but tourist railroads, so adding and maintaining a water supply at each stop would become an additional cost of operating this rebuilt steam locomotive. The supply wouldn’t be a garden hose, either.
Thanks Neil Jordan for the link on water range.
Varies widely, factors include water tank cars in the train, and how hard the engine was working (max acceleration and hill-climbing require harder work).
Good point raised about crew change being a factor, but 100 miles seems odd if that number is correct – that would be in steep mountains where speed is very low I presume, though stress of keeping an eagle eye out for people blundering onto the track is a question elsewhere.
Talk of speed reminds me of a helicopter pilot who didn’t think through what he was doing.
Arriving to pick up two people who’d been scouting timber in winter, somewhere out of Prince George BC, he decides that landing on the RR track would be a lot easier than landing in show in a meadow or whatever.
Besides thinking he knows the train schedules he flies along the track for a distance one way, then back past his landing area and a distance the other way, and returns to his landing area.
Lands on track, passengers load their gear and get in the helicopter. Then one of them taps the pilot on the shoulder and points to hte train he saw when reaching out to close the door.
They lifted off just in time to avoid being hit.
Given that a train probably runs about half the speed that helicopter flies, he could never be safe with his scheme – by the time he gets back from the second recon leg the train he could not see at the end of the first leg is about to arrive.
(Of course train schedules vary due delays and extra runs.)