Hey Joe, I'm a boiler operator. One thing you touched on that makes steam boilers so dangerous is that the water super heats under pressure like you said. But if there's a sudden pressure drop, like a small rupture in the pressure vessel, the ENTIRE volume of water instantly flashes to steam at a volumetric ratio of 1600:1. You read that right. 1 liter of superheated water will instantly flash into 1600 liters of steam. Big bada boom.
@@mihan2dThe Krakatoa explosions were Plinian explosions. But the principle is similar. Gas-saturated magma is under high pressure and then the pressure suddenly drops when the mountain can't contain the magma anymore. Suddenly all the gasses are released and sputter the magma into a humongous dust cloud.
And the vessel breaks if the water level is low because some heat exchanger pipes are not being cooled and get glowing hot. If the hot water is then slushing around and hitting these pipes it immediately evaporates and the pressure jumps, breaking the vessel. Boom.
Not all of the water would be converted to steam. In order to flash boil every bit of it, it would have to be superheated to around 700 C or more. The highest temperature I can find for a steam engine is a little under 500 C while most are well under that. I could see it making a few hundred liters of steam for every liter of water with the higher pressure boilers.
My grandfather, born in 1879, lost all the fingers on one hand and had his lungs scalded in an industrial steam engine explosion. Even years later he was not able to get life insurance because of these injuries. He died at 87 years old, peacefully in his bed, outliving all his doctors and the insurance company.
@@JBrd79 I was going to say something about how he was an immigrant from Eastern Europe who worked at a series of low paid jobs after the accident. He wasn’t able to get work as a steam engineer again.
My father did his boilermaker apprenticeship in the 1940's on steam loco's. Kept all of his fingers. Maybe a little deaf from the rivet guns. Now he's 93 and doing fine. Still driving everywhere.
I worked for 14 years as Maintenance Supervisor for a Tourist & Heritage Steam Railway, & I used that photo as my phone screensaver so that I would see it 50+ times a day, to remind me to never ever let that happen. ...I succeeded.
The heritage rail here put their steam enging aside to be restored. They kept a diesel on hand to run the trains as backup on days when they didn't think it safe to run it... then it became their primary source of running the train.
My great-great-grandfather, James Stephen McDonald, was a fireman on the MKT line around 1900. There was a boiler explosion. He ended up so horrifically burned, that his family moved from Dennison, TX to Ft. Worth where a new sanitarium had been built that specialized in burn treatment. His wife, Ida, took a secretarial job for the hospital's president of the Board of Directors to support her family and cover her husband's hospital bills, until he succumbed to his injuries. After that, all of the women in our family began attending college and developing professional skills. Because, even in pre-WW1 Texas, my family adamantly believed all of our women needed to learn to be self-sustaining. And ofc, nobody ever worked on a steam engine again. Over 124 years later, the horror of my great-great-granddaddy's massive burns still resonates loudly in my family. I've had a hard time digging up details about that specific train accident. So your video provided me with a lot of contextual info that I hadn't previously understood. (I'm no engineer, lol.). Thank you very much!
That’s a fascinating piece of history, and I hope your past family members found strength and comfort in each other. I am definitely inspired by their grit.
Hey Joe, I am a locomotive fireman. I did not read through your previous comments, so someone may have already said this, but your research is lacking. The explosion of this locomotive did not end the steam era; the end of WWII and the refinement of diesel technology did. Steam engines were not affected by running uphill, causing their internal pipes (called "flues"} to become exposed. Not only were they built to account for that, they never ran on tracks with grades that steep because they simply could not climb them { the standard grade was 2.5 %, though some were steeper. Not in Ohio, though.} The most likely cause of the explosion was crown sheet failure which is too complex to detail here. Finally, the engine crews never, NEVER deliberately ran with engine water too low. It would be more efficient to just play Russian Roulette. When I was being trained I was required to memorize the order of importance for firing a steam engine: water, fire, pressure. In other words, water level was priority. There were other problems in your video but again - space. I can be found and contacted if you would like to hear more.
@@JR-sf6ws I had to laugh when I read your comment. I have watched videos and then gone to Wikipedia for more info and discovered the video was just a copy and paste job from Wiki. 😄
Well, you may technically be right, but the guys from the 1977 in Bitterfeld, Germany deliberatly run without enough feedwater, because it would have been a shame to take the fire from the engine on open track! "Proper people don't run into such problems, only idiots do, so if we don't shut off the fire, we are proper people!" End result was a proper disbang (yes, that the most best translation of the german word for it) in a railway station. Luckily only 9 people died, because the boiler made a perfect salto and landed on the track again.
You mention diesel, but you forget to mention electricity. Yes the US are lagging behind in that field, but many countries, especially in Eurasia are mostly working with electric trains, and have been for a while now ! The diesel part is very specific to very low population density regions.
If the water level in the boiler gets to low the "low temperature metal fillings "in melt plugs, in the fire box roof Liquefie and fail ,and the whole steam content in the boiler dumps in to the fire box. Probably very bad for the crew ,especially if the "fuel hatch" is open when it happens. I have worked in stationary steam generator waggon( fire tube type) on a wodden ship building site. It's very stressful when you get low water levels and the steam driven injection pump is acting up . If you dont get water into the boiler you have to extinguish the fire and let the boiler cool down to below 100 degrees. When the boiler is pressureless you can fill water with a hose into it ,and fire it up again. We did not have powered pumps for feed water when steaming, the only pumps where two ejektor pumps driven by steam pressure alone. If they got to hot you had to cool them of with wet rags to make them suck water. Another traps not to fall into was wanting the boiler in the afternoon ( they can implode due to vacum buildup when the steam goes into water fase) Or over filling the boiler in preparation for the next days burn . Hydraulic pressure build up when the water expands in sub steam temperatures, can explode the boiler, the safety valve may not work properly when it's to high water pressure , I Only for steam ,with is more like pneumatic pressure. Did not melt any melt plugs doe...... a fue times the over pressure valve opened ... laud but not dangerous.
Fun fact: Boiler explosions were very common early on and especially on ships. Boiler manufacturers would eventually stamp a warning on the plates of the firebox stating that the manufacturer was not responsible for any death or injury from the use of the boiler. This is where the term "boiler plate warning" comes from.
And to add to this…I work in the insurance industry and there is a type of commercial property coverage that is still called “Boiler and Machinery” harking back to the days of steam power and its risks.
The biggest reason steam was put to pasture is that steam is very, very labor intensive to maintain and takes a lot of hours to keep running properly and safely. It is much simpler and cheaper to run diesels and multiple locomotives can be ganged together and operated by 1 crew. Diesel also does not need a huge infrastructure to resupply water and fuel. When the UP takes their steam on tour it takes a big staff to service it in many planned stops.
This. Much could be improved and automated with a clean sheet design, but it still doesn't make sense from a safety standpoint to have a small bomb being carried through populated areas, especially when a loss of working fluid can trigger it. With a diesel, your worst case with a loss of coolant is that the engine seizes or a piston gets tossed through the side - but with no where near the energy. The lower energies involved just make it safer.
@@HoboProphet Still less energy in the individual components than with a steam explosion. Plus with a runaway you have lots of warning that it's happening so you can get clear.
the other big difference from steam to diesel was the convenience of startup, steam engines must start fire like 5 hours before they can move, oldest diesel like 30 min before, its a huge difference in operational change
One of the destroyers I sailed on was steamed powered and the stokers could crash start the boilers in under 2 hours. Yielding enough power to sail out of harbor with additional power becoming available later. This approach was reserved for emergencies only since it would add significant stress to the system.
Steam locomotives, especially the boilers, also needed quite a bit of regular maintenance. Wash and brush up - British Transport Films - British Rail steam loco maintenance: ruclips.net/video/LC1BEc04i-0/видео.html LMS - General Repair: ruclips.net/video/nZ3AN-kd66g/видео.html
My last ship could be put in 5 minute standby, but normal "cold' was 1 hour. Though in practice we could be ready to get underway in 20 minutes (we had a tsunami warning once) @@cidercreekranch
@@tortoisetortellini228Electric motors have a lot of torque as well. Steam locomotives became huge and powerful because each locomotive required a crew of 2 to operate. Diesel-electric locomotives are smaller because multiple locomotives can be coupled together and all controlled by one operator.
Steam is CRAZY powerful and I got a first-hand demonstration of this when I was a kid at the local county fair back in the late 70s/early 80s. I always hopped the fence to watch the tractor pulls. This year a monster showed up called the Blue Flame, a jet powered tractor! I had never seen a tractor pull the skid as far as that jet powered monster did. Just after that pull a local steam enthusiast that was well known in the area came putt-putt-putting up in his giant steam tractor. He hooked his steam tractor up to the sled and proceeded to pull that sled around the entire race track! My guess is he never went faster than 10MPH during the entire thing, he didn't need to because it had so much power. I later heard that old JP, the steam tractor owner, said he didn't even have the tractor passed half throttle. Steam power is awesome!
Yep. Steam engines have been mostly replaced because they are less convenient, less economical and more labor intensive than diesel or electric alternatives. But, if all you care about is pure, raw power and nothing else, the steam engine has been waiting for worthy competition for 200 years, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.
@@Chico_Julio And run at much higher pressures than these steam locomotives. The primary side is almost 2200 psi and the secondary side, which turns the turbine generator, at 900 psi with about 60 degrees of superheat. Edit: Varies by design of course.
@@chryssalidbait8765That's simply not true. One of the most powerful steam locomotives was the "Big Boy", who had around 5000 kW. Compare that to the Siemens Vectron (an up to date Locomotive for freight trains), which has up to 6200 kW, or an ICE 3 (high speed passenger train), which has 8000 kW. Or an ICE 4, which can have up to 11550 kW if it is made of 13 cars. All of them are electric and have more "raw power" than any steam engine.
Thanks for another great video, Joe. This one triggered some fond childhood memories for me. I was born in 1947 and grew up during the transition from steam locomotives to diesel. As soon as I got my first bike I would ride it down to the nearest railroad tracks, about two blocks from our house, hoping to see one of those big black iron horses roaring through. When one showed up, the ground shook as it rumbled through the railroad crossing. The black smoke, the white steam clouds, the clanging of the brass bell, the loud shriek of the steam whistle, the "chuff-chuff-chuff-chuff" of the pistons, the sounds from the coupling rods and steam valve gear, and the enormous size of the great dark beast made it such a thrilling experience. So thanks for reminding me!
Dick Vincent, hero, did something not a lot of people today will do: saw a problem, made it his problem, solved it and saved many lives. I'm glad he's being remembered.
Not a lot of people will do that in any time period, it has nothing to do with the when - but more of the human psyche assuming that someone else will take care of it, if more than one person is witnessing the event.
@@quillaja Nope. People will hit the emergency call button at the train station, or use their mobile phone to call the emergency services. Don't be daft. Once that's done, obviously people take pictures, but that's not a thing limited to the modern world. Hell, people literally crashed steam trains as entertainment, at the risk of the people in the audience, back in the day.
@@crazydrummer181 No I said that because I spend a lot of time OFF the internet and see what people do. I worked at a trauma one hospital for years and I cannot tell you how many times I saw someone walk right past someone collapsed on the ground or many other situations to that effect. A few years ago I was in a horrific car accident with tons of cars around and no one stopped to see if we were okay. There are so many instances I could find the character limit of the YT comments section. No, when I made that comment I made it out of my own 38 years of experience watching apathy infect nearly everyone around me, a whole society of narcissistic people completely consumed with only their own lives. Just look at what people are willing to excuse in modern politics when a politician's ideology aligns with their own.
Steam engines weren't replaced because of boiler explosions. That had been solved in Victorian times with tamper-proof safety valves and a better inspection regime. They were replaced because they are incredibly labour-intensive and the thermal efficiency is typically only 5-10%.
Actually late generation superheated steam engines were well above 30% efficiency. It was the hours required to get them started and safely shutdown compared to just hitting the start button on a diesel or electric locomotive.
It was not just the engineer and fireman who made a steam loco run. It was the army of machinists, boiler workers, water service workers who kept the large volume of water at the ready to be boiled in the many water tanks along the routes, and the many other workers who provided the maintenance of the loco to be cleaned, oiled, fueled, watered, and whatever else had to be done. Yes, there are maintenance workers who tend the diesels, and what few electrics there are for the motive power of trains but, for safety, there needs only to be an engineer and conductor or 2 engineers on a train of multiple-unit diesels on a modern train. The actual demise of steam locos was the total labor force dedicated to the care and well-being of the steam loco fleet that did them in.
Not to mentioned the pollution, the routes they ran along were literally turned black from the soot, not ideal in cities and towns especially and one of the reasons that outside big cities railway stations, goods yards and routes tended to be built on the absolute peripheries of towns, again not ideal as a practical method of commuting.
@@darthwiizius Train stations were built on the peripheries of EXISTING cities because that’s where land was cheap. Train stations wound up in the centre of newer cities because the cities were built around the tracks. London legally banned railway stations in the 1850’s from the city of London.
Railway shunter for V/Line in Victoria, Australia for 23 years. As part of the Bicentennial celebrations in 1988, Britain shipped over The Flying Scotsman steam loco to run around the country with our carriages. As the new(ish) guy, I was "volunteered" to attach it to the set of cars for the Melbourne-Sydney run. I thought it was kinda cool, to work with such a famous beast for a change. Afterwards, I realised why they shoved me at it. Dirty, dirty bugger of a thing it was. 😂 I was covered head to toe in soot.
As an asthmatic kid in the 1960, who liked machines, I really wanted to ride on the steam powered cog railway up Mount Washington, NH. My late parents wouldn't do it until I was in my mid-teens. (Even I didn't question not taking our personal auto up there.) And my dad made sure we sat at the front of the carriage closest to the engine. Born in the late 1920s, he had seen steam locomotives as a boy. The things Dads do for their families. 🥰
@@mortisCZ It was, yes. I tried to convince myself that the hordes of people standing on the platform were there to witness my shunting prowess...but probably not. 😁
Damn I remember that! We'd put coins on the tracks to create souvenirs of the visit. There was a great pub in Perth called the Flying Scotsman, unfortunately shitty landlords during Covid killed it. :(
10:30 you kinda hit the nail on the head. Steam WAS more powerful, but deisel and then electric were just more fuel economical and cheaper to run/maintain/upgrade.
5:38 see how that locomotives boiler is ENTIRELY GONE? That's a german class 01 express locomotive that ran out of water. The boiler is 40m (130ft) down range on the rails. This accident, killing 7 people happened when the 01 1516 came to a stop in Bitterfeld station. Hard braking upon entering the station and coming to a stop uncovered the firebox. The locomotive stopping made the remaining water in the boiler rush forward, leaving the firebox uncooled. With the coal below rapidly heating the steel to 740°C, its tensile strength drops from 510 N/mm² to only 88 N/mm² - it loses over 80% of its strength. As the locomotive comes to a stop, the water now rushes back, smashing into the firebox. The pressure in the boiler can now drop, all the remaining, superheated water flashes to steam, expanding 1600:1. The boiler was ripped off the locomotive, racing forward on a jet of steam.
@@HalfdeadRider well as much as it “should be” common knowledge, it’s not, I had to recently understand that most people aren’t as smart as any of us. And for that fact alone, it’s underrated💪💪💪
I"m an old mechanical engineer and my first job was in designing water pressure vessels. The first thing they taught us was to watch out for steam. It is a compressed gas which expands (explodes) quickly. Water is almost incompressible and very little expansion occurs when the pressure is released.
I would imagine the pipes would burn through eventually. Back in the 70's during the oil crisis, our University offered a bonus to employees who came up with energy saving ways to heat. This guy won, he routed through hot water pipes through the burner, so when the trash was burned on Tuesday, we got tempid hot water and a boost in building steam temperature. The pipes burned through on the coldest day of the year. The pipes froze and burst, so we had a winter wonderland of ice and steam. I was on the University Bio department newsletter and got a great photo of a professor barely visible in his office. A misty ice cave and a grinning bearded guy. I wish I had that newsletter!
Sounds like they ran with the design without properly engineering it to limit the heat transfer rate and scaling potential of the water. The failure could be turned into a great lesson program for both your Mechanical and Chemical Engineering departments.
@@jameskanuth4274also fluency and fatigue probably had an effect. I agree this would be a nice case-study though, you learn more through failure than successes
@jameskanuth4274 LOL. The person who came up with the idea, as I recall, was one of the Physical Plant workers. In what division, I have no idea. The award and implementation of the concept was by committee and bureaucrats, and that is typical. My old professor said:"God so loved the world He didn't send a Committee."
So, the boiler design you mention is specifically a firetube boiler. The first boilers just put the firebox beneath them. The really high performance steam plants are water tube boilers. They're essentially the reverse of firetube boilers where water pipes run through a large firebox. This maximizes the surface area for a given volume of water meaning more efficient transfer of heat to the water. The most powerful steam engines forgo the use of pistons for steam turbines. These pump the steam through what look a lot like jet engine blades to turn a drive shaft. These turbines are large, too large to put on a steam locomotive. They were used in ships to produce sustained speeds for extended periods. By World War II most warships used steam turbines, although the adoption of diesel had already started. For fuel, wood was the first type used, before widespread adoption of coal. A ship engine room or coal power plan used to need several people to stoke the flames of one boiler. This job was labor intensive, and temperatures were dependent on the speed at which they could shovel coal by hand. Sometimes larger ships had multiple boilers with multiple fireboxes each, and this could mean over a hundred boiler technicians. Unlike now, this process couldn't be automated. Oil fuel was a game changer for steam. It eliminated the dozens of stokers with a simple valve. Want more steam? Just increase the flow rate of fuel from the tanks. It was cleaner and easier to transport too. Anyone who has used a coal grill knows how dirty moving coal is. Imagine tons of the stuff. But the ultimate fuel for the steam engine is nuclear. That's right. Nuclear fission power plants use the heat of radioactive decay to heat water into steam. Chernobyl, the most famous reactor incident in history was a steam explosion. While steam locomotives might be dead, steam engines are alive and in widespread use.
You're too focused on America, as you Americans always tend to. Neither wood nor oil was really a thing in Europe, where we used mostly coal throughout the entire steam age. Wood doesn't burn well enough, and while the advantages of oil were acknowledged, most engines were designed for coal consumption and test with oil conversion didn't go that well. Mostly, it's a question of availability: in Europe, coal was what was always the cheapest. We have no oil wells, you know.
"Seriously. I'm surprised anyone ever leaves home." Yeah... I stay home as much as possible these days - but we live on 8 acres of thick woods and have a pool, so there's ALWAYS something to do or be fixed around here. It's a very high-maintenance place, and I have a To-Do list as long as my arm of stuff that really NEEDS to be done. But thankfully, there are ZERO steam boilers on the premises! 😵💫 I am a rabid railfan and I knew about this incident in detail, but it's always good to hear your take on things, Joe! 💥🚂
The thing that really did traditional steam locomotives in was the maintenance and man power. They were hyper labor intensive, requiring full boiler clean outs and de scaling essentially every month during full revenue service. It has been said that at any time, 50% of a railroads steam fleet would be down for regular required maintenance on a normal day. You needed twice as many locomotives just to cover your bases. Diesel engines had far fewer and far less complex moving parts, with longer intervals between regular maintenance cycles. Steam engines were all hand built with very little parts interchangeability between models in opposition to diesel locomotives which were built like modern autos have been built, so spare parts could be mass produced and regularly stocked with no machining or modifications required to install. And many diesel locomotives from the same manufacturer shared many of the same basic maintenance parts, vs each model requiring specific replacement parts. Also, steam engines were designed to specific railroad's preferences and terrain as well --- the nature of steam locomotive design in terms of wheel diameter, cylinder and piston sizing, and how many driving wheels the engines made freight service or passenger service engines for the most part mutually exclusive. There were a few "dual service" designs, but not till fairly late in the era. And while some diesel engines are purpose built for passenger service, it has been FAR more common now for basic freight designs to be slightly adapted for passenger service (basically, add an extra generator for the electric power supplies to the coaches).
Yes the diesel engine offered interchangeable parts, and also standardised wear parts, so you could simply replace the part, and be off again soon, only needing a yard period every 3 years. Also the oil bath meant little wear, and enclosed all of the oil path so you just reused the same oil, filtering it in a bypass or full flow filter, and then changed it all out on a running hour schedule, which is fast, and can be done during idle time as well. Drain oil, change filters, put new in, fill the fuel, and away you are in 3 hours, not a week for the steam loco, plus the need to lubricate all those parts exposed every day before operating, and again at end of day. remember also the boiler is considered a consumable part, it will need to be pressure tested every so often (depended on the operator and local regulations, generally annually), and when it is found to be failed, too thin in the fire tubes, excessive number of plugged tubes, scale build up in the base, pitting in the steel. Then you have to remove it, and replace it with a rebuilt or new one. As it is under all the rest, you strip to the chassis, and then build it back up.
Tremendous machines but, yes, it was the maintenance and running cost that did for them. Combine oil with super-heated steam, and they basically ate themselves - and all those steel parts needed a LOT of lubrication. Plus you had a choice: either keep them outdoors, which meant taking hours to get up to steam as all the different parts need to heat up and expand together until reaching working temperature; or keep them warm in a heated engine shed, using enough coal for a small town. Here in the UK, the remaining engine sheds are iconic buildings, but are never going to be revived to original purpose.
You brought up BetaMax so im going to chime in. People always talk about how Porn was on VHS and thats what killed Betamax, but it really wasn't, Sony wouldn't license Betamax out, all Betamax players and tapes were Sony they did the same thing with minidisk. VHS meanwhile was owned by JVC, they licensed it out to dozens of companies to produce tapes and players, so they were WAY cheaper, like half the cost, and the tapes were easier to buy and rent. The nail in the coffin though was a Standard VHS tape ran 2 hours they even had 3 hour ones a Betamax tape was 60 minutes, meaning even for short romcoms, you had to change the Betamax tape to watch a movie, which got around as annoying they took more space to shelve so video rental stores didn't carry BetaMax, so people didnt buy the players.
All about the playing time. Most movies fit inside the 2 hours VHS had at SP speed on a standard tape. (Later, the 2:40-at-SP tapes appeared.) Beta provided only 1 at B1. Later, with the slower LP and B2 speeds, most sporting events fit inside 4 hours. (LP provided 4 hours, B2 only 2.) EP provided 8 hours with the longer tapes, 6 hours with the standard tapes. By then, it was all over for Beta in the consumer market.
Working with stills and having one pop I can tell you a small one was catastrophic with medium pressure. the shed was just gone. I cannot imagine a steam locomotive going.
given that water expands nearly 1600 times! when it turns to steam(which is invisible, what we see as white is condensation), a quantity of liquid water under pressure will ALL AT ONCE evaporate turning to steam when the pressure reduces below its transformation point creating a HUGE blast effect. The higher the water temperature, the higher it's boiling/evaporation point.
@@lotan9398 I'm sure it did have reliefs, but the stuff inside stills is well known for being splashed up & plugging up the relief port. At times the contents can be basically the consistency of hot oatmeal, and it'll stick to everything.
One other thing to consider is that at this time, diesel engines had one other advantage over steam engines: the ability to play well together. If you had a typical freight operation you needed several types of engines depending on the freight requirements of the day, and you had a round house to turn them around for the return trip. But you could attach multiple diesel units together. You could set them up in a "push-me-pull-you" arrangement so that all you needed to do was move the engine to the main line, go to the other end of the train and your train now can go in the other direction. Sure, they all had to be in the front, but you could link as many as necessary, even ones where the second unit was just an engine with no cabin (a "B" unit). Later radio control allowed the "distributed" power units that would allow engines to be in the front, back, and even middle, putting less stress on the couplers that connected each car in the train.
I was an engineer in a boiler house for a number of years. Superheater pipes are always run dry on the outside not wet. In fact getting them wet can be hazardous. If they were covered in the boiler water they couldn't heat steam beyond the saturation temperature of the water. That would prevent any superheating. The big hazard with locomotive boilers is letting the top of the firebox known as the crown sheet get dry. If the crown sheet is dry the steel heats to a temperature greater than 800F and loses strength. It is well documented that this is what happened with C&O 1642. You are correct that the shift in the water was important. Engineers have to keep the water level in the boiler high when approaching the top of a grade. When the engine levels out water moves from the back of the boiler to the front as you described and the crown sheet can become exposed if there was not enough water in the boiler. For any boiler operator whether a steam locomotive or stationary boiler the most important thing is to keep the water level up.
So it's highly unlikely the train shown in the movie could hit 88mph. Given the timeframe of when the movie took place, I would say a more realistic top speed would be around 50, maybe 60mph. However by the time railroads stopped using steam power, 88 mph was nothing. High speed passenger trains would routinely top 100mph. The official record for the fastest steam engine is held by Mallard, a British Class A4 Pacific locomotive which reached a recorded speed of 126mph. However, it is speculated that there were other locomotives that may have reached a higher speed but were never officially recorded. Particularly the Pennsylvania Railroad class S1 and T1 locomotives were rumored to have hit up to 140mph.
@@Kboyer36 More precisely, the locomotive in question is Sierra Railway 3. She's been in over 100 different movies and TV shows. And no, she could never reach 88 mph. Even 50 would really be beyond her.
The Age of Steam Roundhouse Museum in Sugarcreek Ohio is a really nice place to check out. A guided tour includes an 18-stall, accurately reconstructed brick roundhouse and the largest private collection of steam locomotives in the world.
This wasn’t the reason steam engines were replaced. Diesels had already started catching on in the 1930s but the thing is, steam locomotives as a technology still had so much potential to improve and advance even in the decades following World War 2.
Maybe there was some things that could be done but the diesel was much better from the getgo, no steam engine of any kind has half the thermal efficiency of the just average diesel. The only place in the world that still builds steamships is the US because we're so far behind in our diesel technology. Both India and China built steam locos thru the '90s, they both have coal and lots of cheap labor. Both are now all diesel or electric.
@@henryostman5740 Diesel being more thermally efficient means nothing - a diesel engine and its electric transmission are complex beasts that took time to develop to the point of being able to compete with steam, at the same time as steam was reaching its ultimate form. As for ships, again efficiency isn't that important - bunker oil and natural gas are extremely cheap in the US. India and China have different considerations as importers of oil(China especially so, given how easily it can be cut off).
There was also a labour shortage in the railway industry post WW2, at least in the UK, due to poor wages and lousy working conditions (think of firing a locomotive over Shap on the West Coast main line, or on the long drag up to Ais Gill on the Settle & Carlisle, in winter weather) and steam is very labour intensive.
I had to check the fact about 1.9 million people being killed by automobiles. The fact is true but more than 90% of road traffic deaths occur in low- and middle-income countries. Road traffic death rates are highest in the WHO African Region and lowest in the European Region. Even within high-income countries, people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds are more likely to be involved in road traffic crashes. Another 50 million people are injured from car accidents without undergoing death.
** Correction: 1.19 million, as stated by the WHO. So the annual automobile death toll is actually closer to 1.2M, not ~2M. I had to double-check it too :)
I remember my grandpa telling me the old steam donkeys used for cable logging on the west coast were a 4lb system. 4 psi, pulling 10,000+ pounds of trees up a slope. I’ve come across a few out in the mountains that blew up 100 ish years ago and they left one hell of a crater. That really puts the 300psi locomotive explosion into perspective for me. Not just the pressure difference but the volume of water/steam there is crazy
I travelled from France to England on a steamboat. Nothing exploded, no bad things happened. But I did get to be stoker / oiler on a freaking STEAMBOAT for a couple of days :)
The reason why steam traction was abolished is not the immanent risk of boiler explosions, but steam engines are inefficient, require a lot of maintenance and are limited in their range of operation. So you got it all wrong. Mister!
I don't know if the US Navy still has any active duty pure steam ships but they did in the late 90's early 2000's when I worked for Naval Shipyards. My Dad worked for the department of the Navy and steam propulsion was kind of his thing. He'd also worked on nuclear power but we didn't have any nuclear ships at our Naval base at that time. I once spent 12 hours a day, 7 days a week for 7 months straight working inside the Fire Box of one boiler on the USS Kennedy Aircraft carrier with one other guy. We were cleaning boiler tube joints for inspection by someone like my Dad. I was around 19, thought I was rich lol. My shift was 5pm to 5am so it's not like I could spend much money besides bills. Those ships had this periodic long inspection period every so many years that itself lasted at least a year. Maybe longer, can't really remember the details now. That ship has since been retired and I think all the operating Carriers are nuclear now. But they still run on steam, steam produced by the heat of fission reactors. My Dad got a lot of job offers to export his expertise to other ally countries Navies that still ran oil burning steam ships. Even some in the private sector. Back then it was, if not a dying then a rapidly shrinking art/science. But we could never get the family to agree on moving to wherever it was that time. Even if he'd make 2 or 3 tines his normal salary and have living expenses covered. The way politics has changed here kinda makes me wish we had. Might be nice to have a familiar back up country somewhere. Love my country but people be loosing their shit over weird things now. And ignoring all the actual problems, anyway. Companies would hire hundreds of guys for a particular contract, then lay them off when the contract was done. My Dad had worked with all those companies so long we'd been to barbecues and stuff with the GM's and CEO's since I was a little kid. So I got the cushy jobs, like getting covered in toxic red dust for 12 hrs a day, over night, for 7 months without a day off. Dad didn't believe in nepotism so it kinda screwed me working for people he knew. It might have got me the interviews but it made my jobs at least twice as hard. Had to prove everything until I'd estaished my own reputation. And those are already hard jobs. I was nearly killed 3 times I remember by some of the idiots I worked with. Usually the kids, nephews or incompetent friends of the GM who absolutely did believe in nepotism. Almost got crushed in a basket lift by an aircraft elevator at one company. I was supposed to be there, just a fluke it wasnt me. One guy died, the other guy was trapped with his body for almost a day before they could rescue him. Another time there was a HV electrical panel that was tagged out as safe, deenergized, but was actually still live. Another time was by my "manager", who's only related "experience" was working at Home Depot.... But he was the GM's best buddy. He dropped a bunch of gas bottles on a conveyor belt we were using to unload our gear from the Kennedy. One end was on the pier, the other end on the lowered elevator. Which still made it 30 feet or so above the pier. He sent full oxygen and map gas bottles skipping across the concrete pier. Those conveyors are the Navy's, they were being nice letting us use them to unload after a job. It saved us about a day of humping gear up and down ladders. But they are a metal slide on each side if you dont strap things down, he did it twice, those bottle are heavy even when they're empty. They hit the concrete pier at a high rate of speed where I was standing. Literally had to dive behind the truck. Then he did it again while laughing. I was...... unhappy, the Navy was unhappy. I tried to chase the guy down and murder him but I was on the pier and he was on the ship. He hid and those ship are enormous. The Navy banned him from coming aboard after that but he still didnt get fired. GM's best buddy after all.... I saw a lot of crazy things working those jobs. A lot of crazy people. I would imagine things have changed somewhat since 9/11, hope so anyway. God I'm getting old. The last job I worked I actually really liked. It was a small private shipyard off base. I'd worked with a guy at another job who worked there so he knew I worked. He became my boss and his Dad was the GM for the company. I survived several layoffs. They liked me because I'd try any stupid thing at least once. I wasnt fearless. I was just more scared of being calles a pussy than being squished or falling or any of the many ways to get killed in those jobs. And I actually worked, did what I said I'd do, didnt hide mistakes, basically just normal competent employee stuff. People not doing that is not a new generational thing. We've always been like that as far as I can tell. There's just a lot of us now and every idiot has internet access. Then my Dad was badly injured when he was T boned on a Harley by a Ford Excursion. Lost a leg among other injuries. When he got out of the hospital he called the GM of my company, who he also knew. And resigned for me so I could take care of him through his recovery. I would have done it anyway but it would've been nice to be asked first. But that was my Dad and he knew I was good at taking care of people so he never even thought about what I thought about it. I still dropped him once while we were learning how to walk again on a prosthetic leg lol. He was fine, he landed on me, we laughed. He still deserved it. Who quits their kids job for them? Who quits their kids job for them without asking their kid first!? Grhhh, still have feelings about that. I think most cargo ships still run on oil burning steam. They have large boilers and steam turbines that power the screws. Some ships are electrically propulsed but they still use steam to make electricity. Our phones even run on steam if you think about it. Doesn't matter how you make heat. You make electricity with steam. Until we invent some kind of high efficiency and durable solid state thermocouple we'll be using steam to make electricity. Even nuclear power reactors designed for use in space heat water to spin a turbine and generator in a closed loop. I'm not talking about Nuclear Thermal propulsion or those small reactors with the umbrella radiators for the Moon or Mars. Or RTG's, those are essentially nuclear batteries. With the exception of renewables and hydro power steam still runs the world. I got out of that business after that last company. Couldnt handle working on commercial fishing boats even occasionally. They're disgusting, you can smell them miles away when they're drydocked. And I figured there would still be plenty of chances to almost get squished in commercial construction. I wasn't wrong, but it paid better.
The carriers and subs are steam ships/boats. They use their nuclear reactors to create the steam to power turbines that drive the propeller shafts. I didn't feel like typing out all of the steps, but you get the idea. Edit: I read more of your post. If you are referring to ships that were like the conventionally-powered super carriers or the Iowa-class, I think the answer is no. I believe all of the conventionally powered ships today are either diesel, gas turbine, or a diesel/turbine hybrid system. However, the nuclear powered ships are still true steam ships, they just heat their water differently.
@@lonnyyoung4285 Yeah that comment kind of got away from me. I think that was the point I started out trying to make before it turned into my life story. Nuclear Powered ships still run on steam. They just get their heat from a reactor instead of oil burning boilers. Oil Burning boilers are what I meant by pure steam. Also I think commercial cargo ships are almost all diesel now. Some cruise ships are diesel electric. I've worked on other ships in the carrier group. FFG's are diesel and gas turbine powered if I remember correctly. They need the gas turbines to keep up with the carriers when they are in a hurry. Cant remember if it was a combined system like those littoral combat ships have had issues with. Or if they were completely seperate propulsion systems. Seems like they were seperate but I could be misremembering. But steam isn't going anywhere. It's still the most efficient way we have to turn heat into work at large scales. It will take some crazy new materials science to change that.
@allineedis1mike81 Don't worry about it. I have done that plenty of times. I've had a few that I couldn't remember what I wrote about in the beginning by the time I got to the end.
I would imagine the largest amphibious ships still do (LHA's). They did when I was in the Navy. Diesel and gas turbine probably aren't going to be able to propel a ship that large. It's basically an escort carrier at about half the displacement.
Actually This was what they were worried about in the episode where Thomas gets water from the river The fish then blocks the feed pipes for the the injector, so the boiler couldn't be filled with water This would make there be too little water and there could be an overproduction of steam So they took Thomas to a siding and put signs on the front and back and (although I think they excluded this) extinguished the fire Then the Fat Controller and an inspector came and fished the fish out of Thonas' tanks
@@SotraEngine4Thomas even says in that episode “I’m going to burst! I’m going to burst!” Didn’t realise he was referring to a boiler explosion tho lmao
There is a rail line in Peru that goes over a 15,000 foot pass. When they converted to diesel they had to use 3 locomotives to get up that high when only one steamer did the job before. The air is so thin up that high that an internal combustion engine struggles to perform.
@@77gravity Naturally aspirated internal combustion engine is hopelessly inefficient at altitude. See huge development with all sorts of forced induction that took place during WW II.
I'm a former welder-fabricator that built pressure vessels. We often did hydrostatic and pneumatic pressure testing in house. My boss had a mangled thumb because a small vessel he was testing had a bit of leftover grinding grit in it and he accidentally unbolted a flange before all the pressure was relieved, blasting that grit out of a tiny hole towards his hand like birdshot from a shotgun. At the time it was only under about 12psi, iirc. We once tested a vessel up to 1,500psi... that was a bit of a tense day in the shop working around that thing haha.
@@perstaffanlundgren In the UK, valves were developed that could note tampered with by drivers/firemen. Later, in one case also in the UK, a fitter reassembled a pressure valve wrongly and it would not open, causing an explosion.
One advantage of ships, though, is that they usually remain level. Even in rougher see, the water only sloshes back and forth, not stay in an odd place.
The first steam paddler to cross the Atlantic took 18 days, which was breathtakingly fast, as up until then it had taken months. Pretty soon the screw replaced paddles, and suddenly even the most powerful warships became obsolete. Considering that the phone I'm watching this with gets its power from steam turbines. It really demonstrates how powerful the damn thing is.
And there were also some very spectacular explosion of steam boats. Which, with the boiler being in the center of the ship rather than all the way at the front of a train, would often kill many, many more people.
All too common? I don’t think you’re using that correctly. Anyway, there are still steamboats crossing lakes here in Switzerland, though many were converted over to diesel
The water heater in you home is a marvel of engineering, these too used to devastate homes and neighborhoods until all of the safety features were invented. Mythbusters have a classic video of one intentionally set to fail, and wow did it ever. I think they call them BLEVE's I cannot imagine a steam locomotive going off, it's like understanding the size of the universe
I remember that one, launched the heater like a missile up and through the floor and roof - which was all built to code, iirc, so the power wasn't faked at all.
Boiling liquid expanding vapor explosion. That's when a liquefied gas suddenly becomes a vapor and explodes. Example is a propane tank being heated until the tank fails and the liquid propane suddenly becomes vapor gas.
@@JoshuaTootell In some cases, lava coming up the ground can hit ground water. The craters caused by those steam explosions can be kilometers across. The Krakatoa explosion might have been caused by sea water flowing into the lava channel of the active volcano.
This is great, the first thought I had that came to my mind when you talked about boiler explosions and high pressure was the Chillicothe Ohio incident. Interestingly enough the train station from where that train departed is a property that I owned and showcased on my RUclips channel more than once. Chillicothe Ohio has a pretty great train culture due to being such a major hub for the coal and iron areas of the Midwest and West Virginia
My first year in the Navy I learned about boilers back in 87. I remember them being extremely dangerous and very well controlled by some amazing boiler techs.
Mark Felton did a recent video on 5 Kriegslok locomotives from WW2 still in operation in Bosnia. They are used to ship coal from a mine. Apparently the mining company is barely functional and cannot even afford diesel to run their operations. So using the coal they mine to power the trains is the logical outcome. Their engineers have also learned to make the replacement parts for these German trains to keep them in operational. They were originally designed to last only 10 years!
Another interesting topic would be the short-lived revival of interest in steam cars in the late 1960s and early 1970s as a way to reduce smog. The EPA funded multiple studies and prototypes, but government interest waned when the first gas crisis shifted the focus to fuel efficiency.
Great video, and good length too. Not that I don’t love hearing all the details you always bring, but sometimes those videos start to feel long. This was perfect 👍
3:58 As someone who started on the path to becoming a 4th class power engineer about 10 years ago (then dropped that idea since no one was hiring at the time)(thanks Red Deer Polytechnic for sending me on a wild goose chase), steam was a major part of the whole course. Modern boilers are used for many industrial processes but with infinitely safer guidelines and standards. And often at WAYYYYY higher pressures. WAY higher. Like, compared with the pressure in this train explosion? Adorable. lol.
Just a small technnical note. Beta did have better image quality than VHS, but it never competed with VHS. Beta (or Betacam) was used at studios and TV stations. VHS competed with Betamax which was almost identical in image quality.
The thing about a steam engine is it will never, ever, ever run out of torque. The problem is you're working with such high pressures in such high temperatures that they essentially become bombs.
On the aviation front the number of deaths is so high because: 1. As you alluded to, there are just a lot more planes. My ADS-b receiver at my house right now is seeing something like 65 aircraft. 2. The disasters are just so much different in scale. An airplane crash is more likely to kill everyone on board (150-200 on a fully packed 737 or a320, over double that on most widebodies). But with a boiler explosion the passenger cars are protected by the cab area, the tender, and probably a mail and/or luggage car, and as evidenced by the photos of most disasters the energy of a boiler explosion is directed mostly up and/or forward.
After World War II, the big three automobile makers went around and purchased many of the small, local train Systems. Including trolleys and “between city” services; for instance there was a train that went between Point Richmond, El Cerrito, Berkely and Oakland. I don’t recall exactly which car company purchase the railroad but they bought it. Dismantled it paved over the tracks and then ”donated” the new thoroughfares to their respective cities. Well, I don’t like the result you have to admire their willingness to play the long game. And that leaves and gentlemen is why we don’t have anywhere near the passenger wheel services that Europe has.
That was primarily General Motors, the incidents are known as the General Motors streetcar conspiracy, and it had started before WWII. Oddly enough, it was spoofed as a major plot point in "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?"
Public transport, including passenger rail, got into decline in most Western cities for a simple reason: the fares had to be set low enough to compete with cars. In many countries the railways were government owned, and still got out of most passenger services because of the losses caused by the motor car. GM was and still is a major manufacturer of diesel locomotives n their EMD division, which puts the lie to the urban myth that they pursued an evil plot against rail. They were a major manufacturer of prime mover engines in their 71 series used by other manufacturers. Europe has some special circumstances that count against the car: many of their cities and towns were town-planned hundreds of years ago and their residential streets are narrow and there's nowhere to park.
@@keithammleter3824 The older cities and towns in Europe weren't exactly planned as town-planning is something that came along much later. However, most cities and towns in the USA and Canada had the same sort of "planning" until after WW2. With the advance of the automobile, whole city centers where bulldozed flat and rebuilt to make way for the car.
@@apveening Europe is more complicated than that. The Romans, who conquered much of Europe including England, were very good town planners, very keen on orthogonal street alignments, with highways adequate for fast military deployment. But in the dark ages, after the Roman empire had collapsed, local rulers allowed cities and towns to develop chaotically. Then in the 17th and 18th century, European kings attempted to make things orderly, with greater or lesser interest and greater or lesser success. Town planning as a modern occupation of administrators in major European countries such as France and Italy dates back to the 15th century. Rich folk, with their royal connections, have always been keen to keep the slums out of their palace grounds and make their areas easy to administer by easy access. (A young prince: "Sire! The peasants are revolting!" The King: "Oh, aren't they always?" ) However, people then moved by walking and goods were moved by small horse-drawn carts, so streets could be very narrow. People tended to sleep and eat at their place of employment (eg a bootmaker would live above his shop), so traffic was low and more even - no peak period congestion as we see today. Town planning in the USA goes back to the earliest days. Savannah Georgia was founded in 1733 as a planned city with Roman-style orthogonal streets and public squares. Cities such as Washington (1791), Philladephia (1682), were planned cities dating from well before the car. New York is the way it is because of the Commissioner's Pan of 1811. The USA is famous for its wide straight grid pattern streets and public squares and parks for these reasons. Planning of industrial estates in USA dates back to Lowell Massachusetts - planned in 1820. The introduction of town planning for residential / small business areas and industrial estates in the USA from before the car is an important reason why the USA became an industrial might and adapted to the car more easily than other countries. However, the Great Depression in the 1930's led to employment-creating schemes such as freeway construction and land reallocation.
I became fascinated with a book of train wrecks back in the 70's when I was a youngster. There was plenty of boiler explosions, derailments, and collisions with cars telescoping each other. A couple of the pictures included casualties trapped in the wreckage. This video brings back memories. It showed almost exclusively steam driven locomotive accidents starting in the 19th century. I don't recall the name of the book, but think it was simply "Train Wrecks".
Power is why they use stem for power stations. Still burn coal and nuclear rods are just used to boil water to create steam. Steam spins turbines instead of pushing pistons. Steam engines aren't going away anytime soon.
Technically a steam engine and a steam turbine are two different kinds of heat engines. PS: Modern power stations which uses coal, oil or gas a fuel in boiler, works at up to 22 megapascals (3200 psi) and temperatures up close to 600 deg C (more than a 1000 deg F). Nuclear are running at much lower pressures and temperatures, as the fuel is so cheap, that the efficiency is not very important. Also dual cycle runs at lower temperatures. So by today standards, the trains were running at very low pressure :-)
Large steam locomotives will always be more powerful than their Diesel Electric counterparts, but one big advantage of diesel engines was the ability to couple them together and run them as 1 large unit. You can use multiple steam locomotives to "double head" a train, but its two independently operated locomotives tethered together. Diesels multiple unit cable which can tie the controls of multipe diesels together with 1 crew. While 1 Diesel couldn't pull what something like a Allegheny, AC-12, or even a Big Boy can, you can just keep tying on more until it meets the job. All with 1 three man crew.
Dawson, the largest steam locos have about the same power as the largest diesels. This is because the limit is not set by engine technology, it is set by wheel-to-track adhesion. Both steam and diesel is limited to about 500 to 600 kN tractive effort depending on track gauge and construction for this reason.
Some notes from my memory banks: I read that back in the mid-late 19th century, about the time Mark Twain was bopping about on them, they would race steamboats on the rivers with reckless abandon. The engines would be pushed well past their operational limits and explosions were quite common apparently, killing many on board. I also remember reading about a steam powered car someone built and was reported on in Popular Mechanics. I'd be interested to know what became of it.
YEah. What about the explosion which happened in Cuba once while a man by the name of Ernesto Che Guevara was nearby. The rumors about what he said to people soon after keep on being spun to this day after his photograph for the longest time was being used by Fidel Castro to inspire people concerning his cause. Historians say he allegedlly believed in communism. Or was he just another person who worked as an engineer for awhile and then had been conscripted into the military at one point too who happened to be good looking before he died at age 38?
These riveted boilers were notoriously dangerous in 'normal' operation. The engineers had SOP that included tapping the rivets holding the boiler together with a hammer. A broken rivet has a distinct sound, and some number of broken rivets was considered acceptable to operate the boiler. Explosions like these are the reason the ASME Boiler and Pressure Vessel Code exists.
Cold water going into a hot partially dry boiler definitely has an effect. . . Thermal shock and mechanical stresses. . . A picture is worth a thousand words.
There were other steam boiler explosions that were not from railroad locomotives, too. There was one such boiler explosion that happened on March 2, 1854, in Hartford, Connecticut. It was a steam system for powering a factory, and it had been running at higher than rated pressures. It was found, after hearings were conducted into the cause of the explosion, that the boiler had not been properly attended to, including letting the water go low and operating it at pressures exceeding what it was rated for. 16 workers died and many others were injured.
I've seen videos of huge snow blowing equipment on the front of a steam engine. They used steam for two reasons; 1) It's very powerful and 2) the steam was used to keep the snow blowing machine warm to prevent snow and ice building up on it. These machines were used in the Rockies where there is massive snowfall. Don't know if they still use them today, but the videos were something to watch.
Enjoyed. Lots of power plants use steam-powered turbines to rotate generators. Boilers are still used today to make the steam. Thermal dynamics is a wonderful thing. Great video.
@@Sithhy its just the same as a steam explosion, except it also spreads nuclear isotopes everywhere if you are stupid and create a reactor without a containment vessel, like Chernobyl . But you can use a double-vessel system, you have a nuclear reactor with a low pressure gas, that gas will circulate inside the boiler and heat water so it becomes super heated steam, there you go. The actual reactor core is impossible to explode by misuse, and it is a closed system, if you misuse it, the xeon poison just kills the reaction. Steam is steam, always dangerous if misused.
"Carbon free, excellent efficiency, makes you glow in the dark." I had the same thought, unfortunately the shielding for the nuclear material just makes it impractical.
Another thing that did in Steam, was the maintenance costs compared to diesel as well. The New York Central’s Niagara class was more efficient than the diesels it ran up against digging the evaluations by the NYC; but it didn’t outweigh the per trip, and monthly maintenance costs and mechanical reliability
There's a steam event in the Wallamette Valley in Oregon. One year, one of the steam tractors exploded due to the water sloshing back a forth, exposing the pipes. The fly wheel landed about 1/4 of a mile away.
Coincidence! Only yesterday, I chatted with 95 year old Adolphus Himmel who told me the story of working on a steam engine around the time diesel engines supplanted them.
I was intrigued when I found out that [Amtrak] diesel trains are diesel electric. It’s more practical and economical to run a diesel generator to power the electric motors than any other source.
That's because diesel generators have a rotation speed they're most efficient, but electrical engines don't care about that, they're efficient at any speed or load. Thus you save weight on highly complex drive-train to transfer and match the rotation speed to the load by just using the diesel engine to power a generator to power the electric engine, its like an electronic gearbox. Very cool design.
It’s not just Amtrak. Nearly all “diesel” locomotives are diesel-electric. Very few diesel locomotives’ engines supply traction to the locomotive’s wheels, either directly or through a gearbox.
I was an insurance agent in my working yeas. One company my agency was the Hartford Steam Boiler Insurance & Inspection Company. Not only did they insure steam boilers; they also inspected them for safety. They prevented many boiler explosions through this inspection function.
I think one of the best innovations no one mentions is the use of oil or gas burners instead of shoveling coal to heat the boiler. This can allow more consistency without ash and soot associated with the burning coal.
And, because locomotives don't have a constant output, you have a buildup of unburned oil and soot building up on the inside of the tubes. This necessitates the sanding of the flies, which provides the same structural damage as the ash being pulled through them by the draft.
To push the discussion even further, the Swiss have invented electrically heated steam locomotives for shunting operations. Yes, they had a pantograph for connecting with an overhead line. Once fully heated, the steam would be enough for 20 minutes of shunting operation without any further external power delivery. The reason for making these was to save on coal during WW2.
In the UK we are currently testing a Hydrogen Steam locomotive. They have converted a class 60 diesel locomotive and added a Hydrogen boiler its a start up by Arup and Eversholt Rail, We are also building and recreating steam locomotives in the uk Most recently Tornado and the P2 locomotive which is currently half way through production
@@fredericapanon207 I have no clue. That's something for the experts to deal with. I can link you the article if you want. But it's just an outline of what they are intending to do.
Hey Joe, I work for the Railroad. Something that may have gone unnoticed in your video was the fact that the farmer knew another train was due to come by soon. This is because even freight trains back in the day used to run on schedules and they stuck to them pretty close hence the reason only certain pocket watches were RR approved (Your life depended on it, literally). This isn’t the case anymore where trains will sometimes run weeks behind for a multitude of reasons despite having signals and radios now.
Cool video, I have a mechanical minded....mind 😅 so enjoyed it. That picture on the boiler explosion looks unreal. There's something even more unsettling seeing all those pipes. I didn't know those existed inside. I always thought it was just a huge water tank only.
You missed a key point, Joe! When you mentioned that, due to the pressure in the boiler (300psi) the water temp could reach 400F, you should have gone on to say that if the boiler ever ruptured, the entirety of water in the boiler would flash to steam, thereby amplifying the explosion many times over. Wow!!! ;-)
I love traveling by train but there's always intrusive thoughts in my head on a train like are the tracks damaged, is there a malfunction of some sort, will tusken raiders attack, will I get stuck in the middle of an Agatha Christie plotline, will it explode into a ball of flame and twisted steel... I just wanna enjoy train life but I'm not geared to fully enjoy train life 😢
One of my uncles worked for the Burlington RR, starting in the engine shops around 1930 when steam was still king. He retired as the VP of their western operations. One main reason for the conversion from steam to diesel electric was cost, not just fuel and crew savings, but the manpower reduction in maintenance of a steam engine vs a diesel engine. There are thousands of moving parts on a steam locomotive, from driving rods, pistons, valves, and such. Boilers had to be inspected regularly and the pipes removed and cleaned. Several days of work to accomplish this. Diesel could be done in a day. Was this explosion the 'end' of steam, it may certainly have moved their end date up, but steam was already on the way out. Several railroads were already experimenting with diesel for their passenger service in the 1930's. In May 1934 the Burlington Zephyr went non-stop from Denver to Frisco in just over 13 hours. World War II slowed the transition as production of war material took priority. After the war, the end of steam was pretty much forgone, but not without its followers. It was just too costly.
0:35 What a weird way to illustrate this fact??!? The British Empire was established long before the invention of the steam engine as a mode of travel, and the steam engine itself had relatively little impact on the evolution of the empire. The biggest impact was probably seen in the United States where the building of the railroads allowed for unlimited expropriation of Native American land. Indeed, had it not been for railroads the Native American nations probably would have not suffered the same level of genocide which they did.
The damage had already been done before the invention of the steam engine. Not to excuse or condone the many very horribly fucked up things Europeans did to the remnant, which as you rightly point out was aided and abetted by the adoption of railroads, but by far the largest contributor to Native American depopulation wasn't deliberate violence, it was biological happenstance. In some parts of the Americas, including much of what is now New England, as much as 90% of the pre-Columbian population were wiped out by Old World diseases (mainly smallpox) against which they had no resistance, before any of the English colonies which went on to become the United States were even chartered. Some tribes disappeared completely, some lost so many elders and so much generational knowledge that they were basically forced to rebuild their whole societies from scratch, and all of this just as Europeans were starting to arrive in real numbers. The Massachusetts Pilgrims found so much unoccupied arable land abandoned by the collapsing population of Native Americans that some thought God had prepared for them a new Eden. Try to imagine what it was like being a part of that generation that lived through the deaths of 9 out of every 10 people they had ever known due to the sudden appearance of disfiguring diseases they didn't have the science to treat or even begin to understand.
I have to disagree with your analysis of why the boiler exploded - the flues and superheater tubes are located in the middle of the boiler structure, and it is very unlikely that they would ever be uncovered with water. The main culprit in boiler explosions was the crown (upper) sheet of the firebox - the highest part of the whole assembly, which was much easier to become exposed if there was a water supply problem, broken water sight glasses in the cab`, or a careless fireman who wasn't paying sufficient attention. When the crown sheet becomes exposed, it melts under the tremendous heat being produced in the firebox, thus compromising the structural integrity of the pressure vessel. Modern steam locomotives operate at a working pressure of 200 - 300 PSI, so when the crown sheet melts it releases all of that potential energy instantly, which leads to the RUD as seen in the photograph. God help anyone within 100 yards or so. I'm not sure where you got your information, but I am almost 100% sure I am correct, having spent the past 45 years trackside, and devouring every book and video/dvd on railroading I could get my hands on. I don't mean to step on your toes or insult you, I'm just trying to convey accurate information.
Most steam locomotive fireboxes are fitted with fusible plugs, which melt if the heat becomes excessive due to low water levels, releasing steam and water into the firebox, extinguishing the fire and alerting the crew. Wikipedia has an interesting article under "Firebox (steam engine)" with details about fireboxes.
I mean, by 1948 the world had been through a second massive war and the trains were knackered anyway. Plus there had been a switch to diesel and petroleum for other vehicles at the time too. It's also worth pointing out that the diesel was used to power _electric_ engines. The world was getting electrified throughout the early 1900s, and trains were following suit with the earliest diesel electric trains coming along in the 1930s. For context, the first parents for magnetic levitation and linear motors were awarded in 1902 and 1905. Almost half a century before this boiler explosion. Also it's misconception that Beta had better picture quality over VHS. Both were very similar standard definition magnetic tape. The difference was that VHS's loading mechanism was superior, putting less stress on the tape, and meaning machines could be smaller, including cameras. They also, crucially, held more tape. Plus we got S-VHS in 1987 which blew both of the original versions away anyway. There's also Betacam, but that's an unrelated format used in studios.
Hey Joe, I'm a boiler operator. One thing you touched on that makes steam boilers so dangerous is that the water super heats under pressure like you said. But if there's a sudden pressure drop, like a small rupture in the pressure vessel, the ENTIRE volume of water instantly flashes to steam at a volumetric ratio of 1600:1. You read that right. 1 liter of superheated water will instantly flash into 1600 liters of steam. Big bada boom.
Reminder that the most powerful explosion in recorded history (Krakatoa volcano) was a steam explosion. Not thermonuclear explosion but steam mind you
i just learned something interesting and potentially life saving, see? the internets are not so broken 😊😍
@@mihan2dThe Krakatoa explosions were Plinian explosions. But the principle is similar. Gas-saturated magma is under high pressure and then the pressure suddenly drops when the mountain can't contain the magma anymore. Suddenly all the gasses are released and sputter the magma into a humongous dust cloud.
And the vessel breaks if the water level is low because some heat exchanger pipes are not being cooled and get glowing hot. If the hot water is then slushing around and hitting these pipes it immediately evaporates and the pressure jumps, breaking the vessel. Boom.
Not all of the water would be converted to steam. In order to flash boil every bit of it, it would have to be superheated to around 700 C or more. The highest temperature I can find for a steam engine is a little under 500 C while most are well under that. I could see it making a few hundred liters of steam for every liter of water with the higher pressure boilers.
My grandfather, born in 1879, lost all the fingers on one hand and had his lungs scalded in an industrial steam engine explosion. Even years later he was not able to get life insurance because of these injuries.
He died at 87 years old, peacefully in his bed, outliving all his doctors and the insurance company.
File a wrongful death complaint id say they’re liable for that with no life insurance
'With' what???
@@JBrd79 THE SUSPENSE IS KILLING ME T_T
@@JBrd79 I was going to say something about how he was an immigrant from Eastern Europe who worked at a series of low paid jobs after the accident. He wasn’t able to get work as a steam engineer again.
My father did his boilermaker apprenticeship in the 1940's on steam loco's. Kept all of his fingers. Maybe a little deaf from the rivet guns. Now he's 93 and doing fine. Still driving everywhere.
I worked for 14 years as Maintenance Supervisor for a Tourist & Heritage Steam Railway, & I used that photo as my phone screensaver so that I would see it 50+ times a day, to remind me to never ever let that happen.
...I succeeded.
That sounds like an awesome gig tho
Good job
I hope your habits of "safety first" influenced many. Probably a great leader. IMHO🌞
The heritage rail here put their steam enging aside to be restored. They kept a diesel on hand to run the trains as backup on days when they didn't think it safe to run it... then it became their primary source of running the train.
Oversaturation? 😉
My great-great-grandfather, James Stephen McDonald, was a fireman on the MKT line around 1900. There was a boiler explosion. He ended up so horrifically burned, that his family moved from Dennison, TX to Ft. Worth where a new sanitarium had been built that specialized in burn treatment. His wife, Ida, took a secretarial job for the hospital's president of the Board of Directors to support her family and cover her husband's hospital bills, until he succumbed to his injuries. After that, all of the women in our family began attending college and developing professional skills. Because, even in pre-WW1 Texas, my family adamantly believed all of our women needed to learn to be self-sustaining.
And ofc, nobody ever worked on a steam engine again. Over 124 years later, the horror of my great-great-granddaddy's massive burns still resonates loudly in my family.
I've had a hard time digging up details about that specific train accident. So your video provided me with a lot of contextual info that I hadn't previously understood. (I'm no engineer, lol.). Thank you very much!
Thanks for sharing
That’s a fascinating piece of history, and I hope your past family members found strength and comfort in each other. I am definitely inspired by their grit.
Hey Joe, I am a locomotive fireman. I did not read through your previous comments, so someone may have already said this, but your research is lacking. The explosion of this locomotive did not end the steam era; the end of WWII and the refinement of diesel technology did. Steam engines were not affected by running uphill, causing their internal pipes (called "flues"} to become exposed. Not only were they built to account for that, they never ran on tracks with grades that steep because they simply could not climb them { the standard grade was 2.5 %, though some were steeper. Not in Ohio, though.} The most likely cause of the explosion was crown sheet failure which is too complex to detail here. Finally, the engine crews never, NEVER deliberately ran with engine water too low. It would be more efficient to just play Russian Roulette. When I was being trained I was required to memorize the order of importance for firing a steam engine: water, fire, pressure. In other words, water level was priority. There were other problems in your video but again - space. I can be found and contacted if you would like to hear more.
The problem with your information is you didn’t get it off of wikipedia like our host here did! 😁 I’m a Diesel mech but I love old steamers!
@@JR-sf6ws I had to laugh when I read your comment. I have watched videos and then gone to Wikipedia for more info and discovered the video was just a copy and paste job from Wiki. 😄
Well, you may technically be right, but the guys from the 1977 in Bitterfeld, Germany deliberatly run without enough feedwater, because it would have been a shame to take the fire from the engine on open track! "Proper people don't run into such problems, only idiots do, so if we don't shut off the fire, we are proper people!" End result was a proper disbang (yes, that the most best translation of the german word for it) in a railway station. Luckily only 9 people died, because the boiler made a perfect salto and landed on the track again.
You mention diesel, but you forget to mention electricity.
Yes the US are lagging behind in that field, but many countries, especially in Eurasia are mostly working with electric trains, and have been for a while now !
The diesel part is very specific to very low population density regions.
If the water level in the boiler gets to low the "low temperature metal fillings "in melt plugs, in the fire box roof
Liquefie and fail ,and the whole steam content in the boiler dumps in to the fire box. Probably very bad for the crew ,especially if the "fuel hatch" is open when it happens. I have worked in stationary steam generator waggon( fire tube type) on a wodden ship building site.
It's very stressful when you get low water levels and the steam driven injection pump is acting up . If you dont get water into the boiler you have to extinguish the fire and let the boiler cool down to below 100 degrees. When the boiler is pressureless you can fill water with a hose into it ,and fire it up again.
We did not have powered pumps for feed water when steaming, the only pumps where two ejektor pumps driven by steam pressure alone. If they got to hot you had to cool them of with wet rags to make them suck water.
Another traps not to fall into was wanting the boiler in the afternoon ( they can implode due to vacum buildup when the steam goes into water fase)
Or over filling the boiler in preparation for the next days burn .
Hydraulic pressure build up when the water expands in sub steam temperatures, can explode the boiler, the safety valve may not work properly when it's to high water pressure , I
Only for steam ,with is more like pneumatic pressure.
Did not melt any melt plugs doe...... a fue times the over pressure valve opened ... laud but not dangerous.
Fun fact: Boiler explosions were very common early on and especially on ships. Boiler manufacturers would eventually stamp a warning on the plates of the firebox stating that the manufacturer was not responsible for any death or injury from the use of the boiler.
This is where the term "boiler plate warning" comes from.
And red lining, from going into the red zone on the pressure gauge. And they were not inherently unsafe, the captains racing each other was 😂
Not according to Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boilerplate_text
Untill intelligent people realised what caused boiler explosions - Unfortunately US Intelligence is an oxymoron... 😜🤣🤣
And to add to this…I work in the insurance industry and there is a type of commercial property coverage that is still called “Boiler and Machinery” harking back to the days of steam power and its risks.
True on river boats, too! Mark Twain's brother was horribly killed in a river boat boiler explosion.
The biggest reason steam was put to pasture is that steam is very, very labor intensive to maintain and takes a lot of hours to keep running properly and safely. It is much simpler and cheaper to run diesels and multiple locomotives can be ganged together and operated by 1 crew. Diesel also does not need a huge infrastructure to resupply water and fuel. When the UP takes their steam on tour it takes a big staff to service it in many planned stops.
This. Much could be improved and automated with a clean sheet design, but it still doesn't make sense from a safety standpoint to have a small bomb being carried through populated areas, especially when a loss of working fluid can trigger it. With a diesel, your worst case with a loss of coolant is that the engine seizes or a piston gets tossed through the side - but with no where near the energy. The lower energies involved just make it safer.
@@kstriclrunaways can explode catastrophic on diesels
Would that be true today considering we have digital control ?
I bet not.
@@HoboProphet Still less energy in the individual components than with a steam explosion. Plus with a runaway you have lots of warning that it's happening so you can get clear.
That is true, excluding external conditions, it would be a smaller explosion. Look into the Texas City explosion for example.
the other big difference from steam to diesel was the convenience of startup, steam engines must start fire like 5 hours before they can move, oldest diesel like 30 min before, its a huge difference in operational change
My favorite difference is the fact that some steam engines out pull diesel because they have more tractive effort.
One of the destroyers I sailed on was steamed powered and the stokers could crash start the boilers in under 2 hours. Yielding enough power to sail out of harbor with additional power becoming available later. This approach was reserved for emergencies only since it would add significant stress to the system.
Steam locomotives, especially the boilers, also needed quite a bit of regular maintenance.
Wash and brush up - British Transport Films - British Rail steam loco maintenance: ruclips.net/video/LC1BEc04i-0/видео.html
LMS - General Repair: ruclips.net/video/nZ3AN-kd66g/видео.html
My last ship could be put in 5 minute standby, but normal "cold' was 1 hour. Though in practice we could be ready to get underway in 20 minutes (we had a tsunami warning once) @@cidercreekranch
@@tortoisetortellini228Electric motors have a lot of torque as well. Steam locomotives became huge and powerful because each locomotive required a crew of 2 to operate. Diesel-electric locomotives are smaller because multiple locomotives can be coupled together and all controlled by one operator.
Steam is CRAZY powerful and I got a first-hand demonstration of this when I was a kid at the local county fair back in the late 70s/early 80s. I always hopped the fence to watch the tractor pulls. This year a monster showed up called the Blue Flame, a jet powered tractor! I had never seen a tractor pull the skid as far as that jet powered monster did. Just after that pull a local steam enthusiast that was well known in the area came putt-putt-putting up in his giant steam tractor. He hooked his steam tractor up to the sled and proceeded to pull that sled around the entire race track! My guess is he never went faster than 10MPH during the entire thing, he didn't need to because it had so much power. I later heard that old JP, the steam tractor owner, said he didn't even have the tractor passed half throttle. Steam power is awesome!
Yep. Steam engines have been mostly replaced because they are less convenient, less economical and more labor intensive than diesel or electric alternatives.
But, if all you care about is pure, raw power and nothing else, the steam engine has been waiting for worthy competition for 200 years, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.
Even nuclear power plants are basically steam machines, just with radioactive materials making heat instead of coal.
@@Chico_Julio And run at much higher pressures than these steam locomotives. The primary side is almost 2200 psi and the secondary side, which turns the turbine generator, at 900 psi with about 60 degrees of superheat. Edit: Varies by design of course.
@@chryssalidbait8765That's simply not true. One of the most powerful steam locomotives was the "Big Boy", who had around 5000 kW. Compare that to the Siemens Vectron (an up to date Locomotive for freight trains), which has up to 6200 kW, or an ICE 3 (high speed passenger train), which has 8000 kW. Or an ICE 4, which can have up to 11550 kW if it is made of 13 cars. All of them are electric and have more "raw power" than any steam engine.
They're strong, but they stand absolutely no chance against modern technology.
Thanks for another great video, Joe. This one triggered some fond childhood memories for me. I was born in 1947 and grew up during the transition from steam locomotives to diesel. As soon as I got my first bike I would ride it down to the nearest railroad tracks, about two blocks from our house, hoping to see one of those big black iron horses roaring through. When one showed up, the ground shook as it rumbled through the railroad crossing. The black smoke, the white steam clouds, the clanging of the brass bell, the loud shriek of the steam whistle, the "chuff-chuff-chuff-chuff" of the pistons, the sounds from the coupling rods and steam valve gear, and the enormous size of the great dark beast made it such a thrilling experience. So thanks for reminding me!
Dick Vincent, hero, did something not a lot of people today will do: saw a problem, made it his problem, solved it and saved many lives. I'm glad he's being remembered.
Many people might sit back and record a video of the train wreck to get views on TicTok or whatever.
Not a lot of people will do that in any time period, it has nothing to do with the when - but more of the human psyche assuming that someone else will take care of it, if more than one person is witnessing the event.
@@quillaja Nope. People will hit the emergency call button at the train station, or use their mobile phone to call the emergency services. Don't be daft. Once that's done, obviously people take pictures, but that's not a thing limited to the modern world. Hell, people literally crashed steam trains as entertainment, at the risk of the people in the audience, back in the day.
Y’all spend too much time on the internet and underestimate what a lot of people would do.
@@crazydrummer181 No I said that because I spend a lot of time OFF the internet and see what people do. I worked at a trauma one hospital for years and I cannot tell you how many times I saw someone walk right past someone collapsed on the ground or many other situations to that effect. A few years ago I was in a horrific car accident with tons of cars around and no one stopped to see if we were okay. There are so many instances I could find the character limit of the YT comments section.
No, when I made that comment I made it out of my own 38 years of experience watching apathy infect nearly everyone around me, a whole society of narcissistic people completely consumed with only their own lives. Just look at what people are willing to excuse in modern politics when a politician's ideology aligns with their own.
Steam engines weren't replaced because of boiler explosions. That had been solved in Victorian times with tamper-proof safety valves and a better inspection regime. They were replaced because they are incredibly labour-intensive and the thermal efficiency is typically only 5-10%.
Actually late generation superheated steam engines were well above 30% efficiency. It was the hours required to get them started and safely shutdown compared to just hitting the start button on a diesel or electric locomotive.
It was not just the engineer and fireman who made a steam loco run. It was the army of machinists, boiler workers, water service workers who kept the large volume of water at the ready to be boiled in the many water tanks along the routes, and the many other workers who provided the maintenance of the loco to be cleaned, oiled, fueled, watered, and whatever else had to be done. Yes, there are maintenance workers who tend the diesels, and what few electrics there are for the motive power of trains but, for safety, there needs only to be an engineer and conductor or 2 engineers on a train of multiple-unit diesels on a modern train. The actual demise of steam locos was the total labor force dedicated to the care and well-being of the steam loco fleet that did them in.
yes thats what he said in the video. thanks for the synopsis though
Not to mentioned the pollution, the routes they ran along were literally turned black from the soot, not ideal in cities and towns especially and one of the reasons that outside big cities railway stations, goods yards and routes tended to be built on the absolute peripheries of towns, again not ideal as a practical method of commuting.
@@darthwiizius Train stations were built on the peripheries of EXISTING cities because that’s where land was cheap.
Train stations wound up in the centre of newer cities because the cities were built around the tracks.
London legally banned railway stations in the 1850’s from the city of London.
Railway shunter for V/Line in Victoria, Australia for 23 years.
As part of the Bicentennial celebrations in 1988, Britain shipped over The Flying Scotsman steam loco to run around the country with our carriages. As the new(ish) guy, I was "volunteered" to attach it to the set of cars for the Melbourne-Sydney run.
I thought it was kinda cool, to work with such a famous beast for a change.
Afterwards, I realised why they shoved me at it.
Dirty, dirty bugger of a thing it was. 😂 I was covered head to toe in soot.
On the other hand, how many people have such an experience? ;-)
As an asthmatic kid in the 1960, who liked machines, I really wanted to ride on the steam powered cog railway up Mount Washington, NH. My late parents wouldn't do it until I was in my mid-teens. (Even I didn't question not taking our personal auto up there.) And my
dad made sure we sat at the front of the carriage closest to the engine. Born in the late 1920s, he had seen steam locomotives as a boy. The things Dads do for their families. 🥰
@@mortisCZ It was, yes.
I tried to convince myself that the hordes of people standing on the platform were there to witness my shunting prowess...but probably not. 😁
Damn I remember that! We'd put coins on the tracks to create souvenirs of the visit. There was a great pub in Perth called the Flying Scotsman, unfortunately shitty landlords during Covid killed it. :(
That burning coal doesn't smell like anything else - thank goodness
10:30 you kinda hit the nail on the head. Steam WAS more powerful, but deisel and then electric were just more fuel economical and cheaper to run/maintain/upgrade.
5:38 see how that locomotives boiler is ENTIRELY GONE? That's a german class 01 express locomotive that ran out of water. The boiler is 40m (130ft) down range on the rails. This accident, killing 7 people happened when the 01 1516 came to a stop in Bitterfeld station. Hard braking upon entering the station and coming to a stop uncovered the firebox. The locomotive stopping made the remaining water in the boiler rush forward, leaving the firebox uncooled. With the coal below rapidly heating the steel to 740°C, its tensile strength drops from 510 N/mm² to only 88 N/mm² - it loses over 80% of its strength. As the locomotive comes to a stop, the water now rushes back, smashing into the firebox. The pressure in the boiler can now drop, all the remaining, superheated water flashes to steam, expanding 1600:1. The boiler was ripped off the locomotive, racing forward on a jet of steam.
Underrated comment
"Why is there smoke coming out of your engine, Seymour?"
"Oooh that isn't smoke, that's steam, steam from the steam engine. Mmm steam engine!"
Mmmmh yes.
Actually it is water vapor. Actual steam is invisible like air or oxygen or carbon dioxide.
@@iowa_donunderrated yet accurate scientific comment
@@mrrj44 Not underrated as it has only been 30 mins, plus it is common knowledge, but most people still call water vapour steam and that is fine 😎
@@HalfdeadRider well as much as it “should be” common knowledge, it’s not, I had to recently understand that most people aren’t as smart as any of us. And for that fact alone, it’s underrated💪💪💪
I"m an old mechanical engineer and my first job was in designing water pressure vessels.
The first thing they taught us was to watch out for steam. It is a compressed gas which expands (explodes) quickly. Water is almost incompressible and very little expansion occurs when the pressure is released.
I would imagine the pipes would burn through eventually.
Back in the 70's during the oil crisis, our University offered a bonus to employees who came up with energy saving ways to heat. This guy won, he routed through hot water pipes through the burner, so when the trash was burned on Tuesday, we got tempid hot water and a boost in building steam temperature. The pipes burned through on the coldest day of the year. The pipes froze and burst, so we had a winter wonderland of ice and steam. I was on the University Bio department newsletter and got a great photo of a professor barely visible in his office. A misty ice cave and a grinning bearded guy. I wish I had that newsletter!
Hahahaha wow ! XD
Cleaning and replacing the boiler tubers were regular jobs on steam locomotives.
Sounds like they ran with the design without properly engineering it to limit the heat transfer rate and scaling potential of the water. The failure could be turned into a great lesson program for both your Mechanical and Chemical Engineering departments.
@@jameskanuth4274also fluency and fatigue probably had an effect. I agree this would be a nice case-study though, you learn more through failure than successes
@jameskanuth4274 LOL. The person who came up with the idea, as I recall, was one of the Physical Plant workers. In what division, I have no idea. The award and implementation of the concept was by committee and bureaucrats, and that is typical.
My old professor said:"God so loved the world He didn't send a Committee."
So, the boiler design you mention is specifically a firetube boiler. The first boilers just put the firebox beneath them. The really high performance steam plants are water tube boilers. They're essentially the reverse of firetube boilers where water pipes run through a large firebox. This maximizes the surface area for a given volume of water meaning more efficient transfer of heat to the water.
The most powerful steam engines forgo the use of pistons for steam turbines. These pump the steam through what look a lot like jet engine blades to turn a drive shaft. These turbines are large, too large to put on a steam locomotive. They were used in ships to produce sustained speeds for extended periods. By World War II most warships used steam turbines, although the adoption of diesel had already started.
For fuel, wood was the first type used, before widespread adoption of coal. A ship engine room or coal power plan used to need several people to stoke the flames of one boiler. This job was labor intensive, and temperatures were dependent on the speed at which they could shovel coal by hand. Sometimes larger ships had multiple boilers with multiple fireboxes each, and this could mean over a hundred boiler technicians. Unlike now, this process couldn't be automated.
Oil fuel was a game changer for steam. It eliminated the dozens of stokers with a simple valve. Want more steam? Just increase the flow rate of fuel from the tanks. It was cleaner and easier to transport too. Anyone who has used a coal grill knows how dirty moving coal is. Imagine tons of the stuff.
But the ultimate fuel for the steam engine is nuclear. That's right. Nuclear fission power plants use the heat of radioactive decay to heat water into steam. Chernobyl, the most famous reactor incident in history was a steam explosion. While steam locomotives might be dead, steam engines are alive and in widespread use.
Chernobyl included a steam explosion but was mostly an uncontrolled increase in reactor power while doing unusual things with it.
Steam turbines were used on locomotives, the Pennsy 6-8-6 for example. However, it was towards the end of the steam era, so...
You're too focused on America, as you Americans always tend to. Neither wood nor oil was really a thing in Europe, where we used mostly coal throughout the entire steam age. Wood doesn't burn well enough, and while the advantages of oil were acknowledged, most engines were designed for coal consumption and test with oil conversion didn't go that well.
Mostly, it's a question of availability: in Europe, coal was what was always the cheapest. We have no oil wells, you know.
The titanic also had one of these steam turbines.... Sadly it also meant the third middle propeller couldn't be used for reverse....
"Seriously. I'm surprised anyone ever leaves home."
Yeah... I stay home as much as possible these days - but we live on 8 acres of thick woods and have a pool, so there's ALWAYS something to do or be fixed around here. It's a very high-maintenance place, and I have a To-Do list as long as my arm of stuff that really NEEDS to be done. But thankfully, there are ZERO steam boilers on the premises! 😵💫
I am a rabid railfan and I knew about this incident in detail, but it's always good to hear your take on things, Joe! 💥🚂
The thing that really did traditional steam locomotives in was the maintenance and man power. They were hyper labor intensive, requiring full boiler clean outs and de scaling essentially every month during full revenue service. It has been said that at any time, 50% of a railroads steam fleet would be down for regular required maintenance on a normal day. You needed twice as many locomotives just to cover your bases. Diesel engines had far fewer and far less complex moving parts, with longer intervals between regular maintenance cycles. Steam engines were all hand built with very little parts interchangeability between models in opposition to diesel locomotives which were built like modern autos have been built, so spare parts could be mass produced and regularly stocked with no machining or modifications required to install. And many diesel locomotives from the same manufacturer shared many of the same basic maintenance parts, vs each model requiring specific replacement parts. Also, steam engines were designed to specific railroad's preferences and terrain as well --- the nature of steam locomotive design in terms of wheel diameter, cylinder and piston sizing, and how many driving wheels the engines made freight service or passenger service engines for the most part mutually exclusive. There were a few "dual service" designs, but not till fairly late in the era. And while some diesel engines are purpose built for passenger service, it has been FAR more common now for basic freight designs to be slightly adapted for passenger service (basically, add an extra generator for the electric power supplies to the coaches).
Yes the diesel engine offered interchangeable parts, and also standardised wear parts, so you could simply replace the part, and be off again soon, only needing a yard period every 3 years. Also the oil bath meant little wear, and enclosed all of the oil path so you just reused the same oil, filtering it in a bypass or full flow filter, and then changed it all out on a running hour schedule, which is fast, and can be done during idle time as well. Drain oil, change filters, put new in, fill the fuel, and away you are in 3 hours, not a week for the steam loco, plus the need to lubricate all those parts exposed every day before operating, and again at end of day.
remember also the boiler is considered a consumable part, it will need to be pressure tested every so often (depended on the operator and local regulations, generally annually), and when it is found to be failed, too thin in the fire tubes, excessive number of plugged tubes, scale build up in the base, pitting in the steel. Then you have to remove it, and replace it with a rebuilt or new one. As it is under all the rest, you strip to the chassis, and then build it back up.
Tremendous machines but, yes, it was the maintenance and running cost that did for them. Combine oil with super-heated steam, and they basically ate themselves - and all those steel parts needed a LOT of lubrication. Plus you had a choice: either keep them outdoors, which meant taking hours to get up to steam as all the different parts need to heat up and expand together until reaching working temperature; or keep them warm in a heated engine shed, using enough coal for a small town.
Here in the UK, the remaining engine sheds are iconic buildings, but are never going to be revived to original purpose.
@@unclenogbad1509 great points, I never really thought about the indoor storage vs outdoor storage factor before
@@charliebenoit8181 Britain's weather was probably a factor.
@@unclenogbad1509 The train shed by me got moved 30m, as a historical monument, and is a mall in the city centre now.
You brought up BetaMax so im going to chime in.
People always talk about how Porn was on VHS and thats what killed Betamax, but it really wasn't, Sony wouldn't license Betamax out, all Betamax players and tapes were Sony they did the same thing with minidisk. VHS meanwhile was owned by JVC, they licensed it out to dozens of companies to produce tapes and players, so they were WAY cheaper, like half the cost, and the tapes were easier to buy and rent. The nail in the coffin though was a Standard VHS tape ran 2 hours they even had 3 hour ones a Betamax tape was 60 minutes, meaning even for short romcoms, you had to change the Betamax tape to watch a movie, which got around as annoying they took more space to shelve so video rental stores didn't carry BetaMax, so people didnt buy the players.
There's a great video by Technology Connections about VHS/Betamax!
All about the playing time. Most movies fit inside the 2 hours VHS had at SP speed on a standard tape. (Later, the 2:40-at-SP tapes appeared.) Beta provided only 1 at B1. Later, with the slower LP and B2 speeds, most sporting events fit inside 4 hours. (LP provided 4 hours, B2 only 2.) EP provided 8 hours with the longer tapes, 6 hours with the standard tapes. By then, it was all over for Beta in the consumer market.
All of that sounds like Betamax never really was a contender.
@@Yora21 That is correct, Betamax never had a chance.
@@samjbergstrom I was going to mention that video since I just watched it last week.
Working with stills and having one pop I can tell you a small one was catastrophic with medium pressure. the shed was just gone. I cannot imagine a steam locomotive going.
No emergency relief valves?
given that water expands nearly 1600 times! when it turns to steam(which is invisible, what we see as white is condensation), a quantity of liquid water under pressure will ALL AT ONCE evaporate turning to steam when the pressure reduces below its transformation point creating a HUGE blast effect. The higher the water temperature, the higher it's boiling/evaporation point.
@@lotan9398 I'm sure it did have reliefs, but the stuff inside stills is well known for being splashed up & plugging up the relief port. At times the contents can be basically the consistency of hot oatmeal, and it'll stick to everything.
Chernobyl was a steam explosion too.
@TeemarkConvair you mean the higher the pressure, the higher the boiling point, right?
One other thing to consider is that at this time, diesel engines had one other advantage over steam engines: the ability to play well together. If you had a typical freight operation you needed several types of engines depending on the freight requirements of the day, and you had a round house to turn them around for the return trip. But you could attach multiple diesel units together. You could set them up in a "push-me-pull-you" arrangement so that all you needed to do was move the engine to the main line, go to the other end of the train and your train now can go in the other direction. Sure, they all had to be in the front, but you could link as many as necessary, even ones where the second unit was just an engine with no cabin (a "B" unit). Later radio control allowed the "distributed" power units that would allow engines to be in the front, back, and even middle, putting less stress on the couplers that connected each car in the train.
I was an engineer in a boiler house for a number of years. Superheater pipes are always run dry on the outside not wet. In fact getting them wet can be hazardous. If they were covered in the boiler water they couldn't heat steam beyond the saturation temperature of the water. That would prevent any superheating. The big hazard with locomotive boilers is letting the top of the firebox known as the crown sheet get dry. If the crown sheet is dry the steel heats to a temperature greater than 800F and loses strength. It is well documented that this is what happened with C&O 1642. You are correct that the shift in the water was important. Engineers have to keep the water level in the boiler high when approaching the top of a grade. When the engine levels out water moves from the back of the boiler to the front as you described and the crown sheet can become exposed if there was not enough water in the boiler. For any boiler operator whether a steam locomotive or stationary boiler the most important thing is to keep the water level up.
Joined! I don't recall how I found your channel but what a treat. Keep doing this, Joe!
It's amazing a steam train could reach over 88 miles per hour while pushing a Delorean back to the future, great Scott!! xD
This is all I could think about the whole video.
Yep.. this is heavy.
So it's highly unlikely the train shown in the movie could hit 88mph. Given the timeframe of when the movie took place, I would say a more realistic top speed would be around 50, maybe 60mph.
However by the time railroads stopped using steam power, 88 mph was nothing. High speed passenger trains would routinely top 100mph. The official record for the fastest steam engine is held by Mallard, a British Class A4 Pacific locomotive which reached a recorded speed of 126mph. However, it is speculated that there were other locomotives that may have reached a higher speed but were never officially recorded. Particularly the Pennsylvania Railroad class S1 and T1 locomotives were rumored to have hit up to 140mph.
That sounds like some serious shit!
@@Kboyer36 More precisely, the locomotive in question is Sierra Railway 3. She's been in over 100 different movies and TV shows. And no, she could never reach 88 mph. Even 50 would really be beyond her.
The Age of Steam Roundhouse Museum in Sugarcreek Ohio is a really nice place to check out. A guided tour includes an 18-stall, accurately reconstructed brick roundhouse and the largest private collection of steam locomotives in the world.
Another great option is the B&O Railroad Museum in Baltimore.
Been there as a kid, growing up in Ohio. Another place, Scranton PA. Also, Strasburg PA. This was only a couple miles from where my mother grew up.
This wasn’t the reason steam engines were replaced. Diesels had already started catching on in the 1930s but the thing is, steam locomotives as a technology still had so much potential to improve and advance even in the decades following World War 2.
Maybe there was some things that could be done but the diesel was much better from the getgo, no steam engine of any kind has half the thermal efficiency of the just average diesel. The only place in the world that still builds steamships is the US because we're so far behind in our diesel technology. Both India and China built steam locos thru the '90s, they both have coal and lots of cheap labor. Both are now all diesel or electric.
@@henryostman5740 Diesel being more thermally efficient means nothing - a diesel engine and its electric transmission are complex beasts that took time to develop to the point of being able to compete with steam, at the same time as steam was reaching its ultimate form.
As for ships, again efficiency isn't that important - bunker oil and natural gas are extremely cheap in the US. India and China have different considerations as importers of oil(China especially so, given how easily it can be cut off).
There was also a labour shortage in the railway industry post WW2, at least in the UK, due to poor wages and lousy working conditions (think of firing a locomotive over Shap on the West Coast main line, or on the long drag up to Ais Gill on the Settle & Carlisle, in winter weather) and steam is very labour intensive.
I'm an Operating Engineer, our craft started with boiler operations mainly. Cool story to share with my apprentices.
I had to check the fact about 1.9 million people being killed by automobiles. The fact is true but more than 90% of road traffic deaths occur in low- and middle-income countries. Road traffic death rates are highest in the WHO African Region and lowest in the European Region. Even within high-income countries, people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds are more likely to be involved in road traffic crashes. Another 50 million people are injured from car accidents without undergoing death.
** Correction: 1.19 million, as stated by the WHO. So the annual automobile death toll is actually closer to 1.2M, not ~2M.
I had to double-check it too :)
@@procrustez In the video he said 1.19 and I read that too but mistyped it. Sorry about the miss on my part.
Interesting…what category are you in?
@@jerseywalcott6408 I have never been in a crash in my life. The whole passage is from the WHO not my thoughts on the matter.
Ok? And? Do their deaths and cause matter less?
I remember my grandpa telling me the old steam donkeys used for cable logging on the west coast were a 4lb system. 4 psi, pulling 10,000+ pounds of trees up a slope. I’ve come across a few out in the mountains that blew up 100 ish years ago and they left one hell of a crater. That really puts the 300psi locomotive explosion into perspective for me. Not just the pressure difference but the volume of water/steam there is crazy
I travelled from France to England on a steamboat. Nothing exploded, no bad things happened. But I did get to be stoker / oiler on a freaking STEAMBOAT for a couple of days :)
What part of France?
@@DavidSmith-vr1nb We left from Douarnenez, stopped off on Ushant for a while and got back to Cornwall after ( I think ) 2 days.
@@andyyyz9114 That makes sense. Sounded a bit long for a channel crossing.
The reason why steam traction was abolished is not the immanent risk of boiler explosions, but steam engines are inefficient, require a lot of maintenance and are limited in their range of operation. So you got it all wrong. Mister!
Ugh your upload schedule is more reliable than the why files and I love it
"A wave of Nopes as far as the eye could see" 😂
I don't know if the US Navy still has any active duty pure steam ships but they did in the late 90's early 2000's when I worked for Naval Shipyards. My Dad worked for the department of the Navy and steam propulsion was kind of his thing. He'd also worked on nuclear power but we didn't have any nuclear ships at our Naval base at that time. I once spent 12 hours a day, 7 days a week for 7 months straight working inside the Fire Box of one boiler on the USS Kennedy Aircraft carrier with one other guy. We were cleaning boiler tube joints for inspection by someone like my Dad. I was around 19, thought I was rich lol. My shift was 5pm to 5am so it's not like I could spend much money besides bills. Those ships had this periodic long inspection period every so many years that itself lasted at least a year. Maybe longer, can't really remember the details now. That ship has since been retired and I think all the operating Carriers are nuclear now. But they still run on steam, steam produced by the heat of fission reactors. My Dad got a lot of job offers to export his expertise to other ally countries Navies that still ran oil burning steam ships. Even some in the private sector. Back then it was, if not a dying then a rapidly shrinking art/science. But we could never get the family to agree on moving to wherever it was that time. Even if he'd make 2 or 3 tines his normal salary and have living expenses covered. The way politics has changed here kinda makes me wish we had. Might be nice to have a familiar back up country somewhere. Love my country but people be loosing their shit over weird things now. And ignoring all the actual problems, anyway. Companies would hire hundreds of guys for a particular contract, then lay them off when the contract was done. My Dad had worked with all those companies so long we'd been to barbecues and stuff with the GM's and CEO's since I was a little kid. So I got the cushy jobs, like getting covered in toxic red dust for 12 hrs a day, over night, for 7 months without a day off. Dad didn't believe in nepotism so it kinda screwed me working for people he knew. It might have got me the interviews but it made my jobs at least twice as hard. Had to prove everything until I'd estaished my own reputation.
And those are already hard jobs. I was nearly killed 3 times I remember by some of the idiots I worked with. Usually the kids, nephews or incompetent friends of the GM who absolutely did believe in nepotism. Almost got crushed in a basket lift by an aircraft elevator at one company. I was supposed to be there, just a fluke it wasnt me. One guy died, the other guy was trapped with his body for almost a day before they could rescue him. Another time there was a HV electrical panel that was tagged out as safe, deenergized, but was actually still live. Another time was by my "manager", who's only related "experience" was working at Home Depot.... But he was the GM's best buddy. He dropped a bunch of gas bottles on a conveyor belt we were using to unload our gear from the Kennedy. One end was on the pier, the other end on the lowered elevator. Which still made it 30 feet or so above the pier. He sent full oxygen and map gas bottles skipping across the concrete pier. Those conveyors are the Navy's, they were being nice letting us use them to unload after a job. It saved us about a day of humping gear up and down ladders. But they are a metal slide on each side if you dont strap things down, he did it twice, those bottle are heavy even when they're empty. They hit the concrete pier at a high rate of speed where I was standing. Literally had to dive behind the truck. Then he did it again while laughing. I was...... unhappy, the Navy was unhappy. I tried to chase the guy down and murder him but I was on the pier and he was on the ship. He hid and those ship are enormous. The Navy banned him from coming aboard after that but he still didnt get fired. GM's best buddy after all.... I saw a lot of crazy things working those jobs. A lot of crazy people. I would imagine things have changed somewhat since 9/11, hope so anyway. God I'm getting old.
The last job I worked I actually really liked. It was a small private shipyard off base. I'd worked with a guy at another job who worked there so he knew I worked. He became my boss and his Dad was the GM for the company. I survived several layoffs. They liked me because I'd try any stupid thing at least once. I wasnt fearless. I was just more scared of being calles a pussy than being squished or falling or any of the many ways to get killed in those jobs. And I actually worked, did what I said I'd do, didnt hide mistakes, basically just normal competent employee stuff. People not doing that is not a new generational thing. We've always been like that as far as I can tell. There's just a lot of us now and every idiot has internet access.
Then my Dad was badly injured when he was T boned on a Harley by a Ford Excursion. Lost a leg among other injuries. When he got out of the hospital he called the GM of my company, who he also knew. And resigned for me so I could take care of him through his recovery. I would have done it anyway but it would've been nice to be asked first. But that was my Dad and he knew I was good at taking care of people so he never even thought about what I thought about it.
I still dropped him once while we were learning how to walk again on a prosthetic leg lol. He was fine, he landed on me, we laughed. He still deserved it. Who quits their kids job for them? Who quits their kids job for them without asking their kid first!? Grhhh, still have feelings about that.
I think most cargo ships still run on oil burning steam. They have large boilers and steam turbines that power the screws. Some ships are electrically propulsed but they still use steam to make electricity. Our phones even run on steam if you think about it. Doesn't matter how you make heat. You make electricity with steam. Until we invent some kind of high efficiency and durable solid state thermocouple we'll be using steam to make electricity. Even nuclear power reactors designed for use in space heat water to spin a turbine and generator in a closed loop. I'm not talking about Nuclear Thermal propulsion or those small reactors with the umbrella radiators for the Moon or Mars. Or RTG's, those are essentially nuclear batteries. With the exception of renewables and hydro power steam still runs the world. I got out of that business after that last company. Couldnt handle working on commercial fishing boats even occasionally. They're disgusting, you can smell them miles away when they're drydocked. And I figured there would still be plenty of chances to almost get squished in commercial construction. I wasn't wrong, but it paid better.
The carriers and subs are steam ships/boats. They use their nuclear reactors to create the steam to power turbines that drive the propeller shafts. I didn't feel like typing out all of the steps, but you get the idea.
Edit: I read more of your post. If you are referring to ships that were like the conventionally-powered super carriers or the Iowa-class, I think the answer is no. I believe all of the conventionally powered ships today are either diesel, gas turbine, or a diesel/turbine hybrid system. However, the nuclear powered ships are still true steam ships, they just heat their water differently.
@@lonnyyoung4285 Yeah that comment kind of got away from me. I think that was the point I started out trying to make before it turned into my life story. Nuclear Powered ships still run on steam. They just get their heat from a reactor instead of oil burning boilers. Oil Burning boilers are what I meant by pure steam. Also I think commercial cargo ships are almost all diesel now. Some cruise ships are diesel electric. I've worked on other ships in the carrier group. FFG's are diesel and gas turbine powered if I remember correctly. They need the gas turbines to keep up with the carriers when they are in a hurry. Cant remember if it was a combined system like those littoral combat ships have had issues with. Or if they were completely seperate propulsion systems. Seems like they were seperate but I could be misremembering. But steam isn't going anywhere. It's still the most efficient way we have to turn heat into work at large scales. It will take some crazy new materials science to change that.
@allineedis1mike81 Don't worry about it. I have done that plenty of times. I've had a few that I couldn't remember what I wrote about in the beginning by the time I got to the end.
I would imagine the largest amphibious ships still do (LHA's). They did when I was in the Navy. Diesel and gas turbine probably aren't going to be able to propel a ship that large. It's basically an escort carrier at about half the displacement.
Wow
They didn't talk about this in Thomas the tank engine
Actually
This was what they were worried about in the episode where Thomas gets water from the river
The fish then blocks the feed pipes for the the injector, so the boiler couldn't be filled with water
This would make there be too little water and there could be an overproduction of steam
So they took Thomas to a siding and put signs on the front and back and (although I think they excluded this) extinguished the fire
Then the Fat Controller and an inspector came and fished the fish out of Thonas' tanks
@@SotraEngine4Thomas even says in that episode “I’m going to burst! I’m going to burst!” Didn’t realise he was referring to a boiler explosion tho lmao
There is a rail line in Peru that goes over a 15,000 foot pass. When they converted to diesel they had to use 3 locomotives to get up that high when only one steamer did the job before. The air is so thin up that high that an internal combustion engine struggles to perform.
They ended up having to turbocharge the diesels to make it economic.
@@77gravity Naturally aspirated internal combustion engine is hopelessly inefficient at altitude. See huge development with all sorts of forced induction that took place during WW II.
@@MrEqtube Well yeah, I never said otherwise. Why tag me?
I'm a former welder-fabricator that built pressure vessels. We often did hydrostatic and pneumatic pressure testing in house. My boss had a mangled thumb because a small vessel he was testing had a bit of leftover grinding grit in it and he accidentally unbolted a flange before all the pressure was relieved, blasting that grit out of a tiny hole towards his hand like birdshot from a shotgun. At the time it was only under about 12psi, iirc.
We once tested a vessel up to 1,500psi... that was a bit of a tense day in the shop working around that thing haha.
Early in the steam era, boiler explosions led to the development of the safety valve, which no doubt has saved many lives over the years.
And sometimes the train crews weited the valves down to run at higher steam pressure
, to go faster , that lead to some explosions sadly.
@@perstaffanlundgren In the UK, valves were developed that could note tampered with by drivers/firemen. Later, in one case also in the UK, a fitter reassembled a pressure valve wrongly and it would not open, causing an explosion.
Steam boilers in river boats and ships were also all to common.
One advantage of ships, though, is that they usually remain level. Even in rougher see, the water only sloshes back and forth, not stay in an odd place.
The first steam paddler to cross the Atlantic took 18 days, which was breathtakingly fast, as up until then it had taken months.
Pretty soon the screw replaced paddles, and suddenly even the most powerful warships became obsolete.
Considering that the phone I'm watching this with gets its power from steam turbines. It really demonstrates how powerful the damn thing is.
And there were also some very spectacular explosion of steam boats.
Which, with the boiler being in the center of the ship rather than all the way at the front of a train, would often kill many, many more people.
I took a cruise up the Mississippi on a paddle boat a few years ago. It was steam powered.
All too common? I don’t think you’re using that correctly. Anyway, there are still steamboats crossing lakes here in Switzerland, though many were converted over to diesel
The water heater in you home is a marvel of engineering, these too used to devastate homes and neighborhoods until all of the safety features were invented.
Mythbusters have a classic video of one intentionally set to fail, and wow did it ever. I think they call them BLEVE's
I cannot imagine a steam locomotive going off, it's like understanding the size of the universe
I remember that one, launched the heater like a missile up and through the floor and roof - which was all built to code, iirc, so the power wasn't faked at all.
We still have the same water heater from 1984, works quite well.
@@Thelango99 The safety features came about well before the 80's. Also home boilers don't need to run at extreme pressures like steam engines.
Boiling liquid expanding vapor explosion. That's when a liquefied gas suddenly becomes a vapor and explodes. Example is a propane tank being heated until the tank fails and the liquid propane suddenly becomes vapor gas.
@@JoshuaTootell In some cases, lava coming up the ground can hit ground water. The craters caused by those steam explosions can be kilometers across. The Krakatoa explosion might have been caused by sea water flowing into the lava channel of the active volcano.
I love that you brought up the video tape war of the early 80s.😅
VHS won because you could record up to 8 hours of programming on one tape and you could only record 2 hours on a Beta tape, simple as that.
This is great, the first thought I had that came to my mind when you talked about boiler explosions and high pressure was the Chillicothe Ohio incident. Interestingly enough the train station from where that train departed is a property that I owned and showcased on my RUclips channel more than once. Chillicothe Ohio has a pretty great train culture due to being such a major hub for the coal and iron areas of the Midwest and West Virginia
My first year in the Navy I learned about boilers back in 87. I remember them being extremely dangerous and very well controlled by some amazing boiler techs.
Mark Felton did a recent video on 5 Kriegslok locomotives from WW2 still in operation in Bosnia. They are used to ship coal from a mine. Apparently the mining company is barely functional and cannot even afford diesel to run their operations. So using the coal they mine to power the trains is the logical outcome. Their engineers have also learned to make the replacement parts for these German trains to keep them in operational. They were originally designed to last only 10 years!
Another interesting topic would be the short-lived revival of interest in steam cars in the late 1960s and early 1970s as a way to reduce smog. The EPA funded multiple studies and prototypes, but government interest waned when the first gas crisis shifted the focus to fuel efficiency.
Oh, thank you. I am old enough to have made many steam train journeys, and must now add this to the list of things I just missed by ‘that much’!
Great video, and good length too. Not that I don’t love hearing all the details you always bring, but sometimes those videos start to feel long. This was perfect 👍
I'm so proud of you pronouncing Chilicothe correctly
There’s a Chilicothe in Texas!
3:58 As someone who started on the path to becoming a 4th class power engineer about 10 years ago (then dropped that idea since no one was hiring at the time)(thanks Red Deer Polytechnic for sending me on a wild goose chase), steam was a major part of the whole course. Modern boilers are used for many industrial processes but with infinitely safer guidelines and standards. And often at WAYYYYY higher pressures. WAY higher. Like, compared with the pressure in this train explosion? Adorable. lol.
Joe, at about 07:11 in this video:
*_"Seriously, I'm surprised anybody ever leaves home."_*
Personally, I try to avoid it whenever possible.
makes sense
I tried it a few months ago. It was terrifying.
The number is closer to 440,000 per year with 140,000 in India alone. 16,000 in the US. 1.9 million isn’t correct.
Then again, if you stay in one spot, how do you know that a sinkhole won't suddenly envelop you?
Just a small technnical note. Beta did have better image quality than VHS, but it never competed with VHS. Beta (or Betacam) was used at studios and TV stations. VHS competed with Betamax which was almost identical in image quality.
The thing about a steam engine is it will never, ever, ever run out of torque. The problem is you're working with such high pressures in such high temperatures that they essentially become bombs.
4:18 hey, we are missing Celsius screen info here 😃
On the aviation front the number of deaths is so high because:
1. As you alluded to, there are just a lot more planes. My ADS-b receiver at my house right now is seeing something like 65 aircraft.
2. The disasters are just so much different in scale. An airplane crash is more likely to kill everyone on board (150-200 on a fully packed 737 or a320, over double that on most widebodies). But with a boiler explosion the passenger cars are protected by the cab area, the tender, and probably a mail and/or luggage car, and as evidenced by the photos of most disasters the energy of a boiler explosion is directed mostly up and/or forward.
After World War II, the big three automobile makers went around and purchased many of the small, local train Systems. Including trolleys and “between city” services; for instance there was a train that went between Point Richmond, El Cerrito, Berkely and Oakland. I don’t recall exactly which car company purchase the railroad but they bought it. Dismantled it paved over the tracks and then ”donated” the new thoroughfares to their respective cities. Well, I don’t like the result you have to admire their willingness to play the long game. And that leaves and gentlemen is why we don’t have anywhere near the passenger wheel services that Europe has.
That was primarily General Motors, the incidents are known as the General Motors streetcar conspiracy, and it had started before WWII. Oddly enough, it was spoofed as a major plot point in "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?"
Public transport, including passenger rail, got into decline in most Western cities for a simple reason: the fares had to be set low enough to compete with cars. In many countries the railways were government owned, and still got out of most passenger services because of the losses caused by the motor car.
GM was and still is a major manufacturer of diesel locomotives n their EMD division, which puts the lie to the urban myth that they pursued an evil plot against rail. They were a major manufacturer of prime mover engines in their 71 series used by other manufacturers.
Europe has some special circumstances that count against the car: many of their cities and towns were town-planned hundreds of years ago and their residential streets are narrow and there's nowhere to park.
@@keithammleter3824 The older cities and towns in Europe weren't exactly planned as town-planning is something that came along much later. However, most cities and towns in the USA and Canada had the same sort of "planning" until after WW2. With the advance of the automobile, whole city centers where bulldozed flat and rebuilt to make way for the car.
@@apveening Europe is more complicated than that. The Romans, who conquered much of Europe including England, were very good town planners, very keen on orthogonal street alignments, with highways adequate for fast military deployment. But in the dark ages, after the Roman empire had collapsed, local rulers allowed cities and towns to develop chaotically. Then in the 17th and 18th century, European kings attempted to make things orderly, with greater or lesser interest and greater or lesser success.
Town planning as a modern occupation of administrators in major European countries such as France and Italy dates back to the 15th century. Rich folk, with their royal connections, have always been keen to keep the slums out of their palace grounds and make their areas easy to administer by easy access.
(A young prince: "Sire! The peasants are revolting!"
The King: "Oh, aren't they always?" )
However, people then moved by walking and goods were moved by small horse-drawn carts, so streets could be very narrow. People tended to sleep and eat at their place of employment (eg a bootmaker would live above his shop), so traffic was low and more even - no peak period congestion as we see today.
Town planning in the USA goes back to the earliest days. Savannah Georgia was founded in 1733 as a planned city with Roman-style orthogonal streets and public squares. Cities such as Washington (1791), Philladephia (1682), were planned cities dating from well before the car. New York is the way it is because of the Commissioner's Pan of 1811. The USA is famous for its wide straight grid pattern streets and public squares and parks for these reasons.
Planning of industrial estates in USA dates back to Lowell Massachusetts - planned in 1820.
The introduction of town planning for residential / small business areas and industrial estates in the USA from before the car is an important reason why the USA became an industrial might and adapted to the car more easily than other countries. However, the Great Depression in the 1930's led to employment-creating schemes such as freeway construction and land reallocation.
Steam power is widely used for electrical power generation. The heat coming from coal, petroleum, natural gas, and nuclear reactors.
I became fascinated with a book of train wrecks back in the 70's when I was a youngster. There was plenty of boiler explosions, derailments, and collisions with cars telescoping each other. A couple of the pictures included casualties trapped in the wreckage. This video brings back memories. It showed almost exclusively steam driven locomotive accidents starting in the 19th century. I don't recall the name of the book, but think it was simply "Train Wrecks".
Power is why they use stem for power stations. Still burn coal and nuclear rods are just used to boil water to create steam. Steam spins turbines instead of pushing pistons. Steam engines aren't going away anytime soon.
Technically a steam engine and a steam turbine are two different kinds of heat engines. PS: Modern power stations which uses coal, oil or gas a fuel in boiler, works at up to 22 megapascals (3200 psi) and temperatures up close to 600 deg C (more than a 1000 deg F). Nuclear are running at much lower pressures and temperatures, as the fuel is so cheap, that the efficiency is not very important. Also dual cycle runs at lower temperatures.
So by today standards, the trains were running at very low pressure :-)
@@larsoleruben "efficiency is not very important" lol... where did you hear that from? every 0.1% of efficiency means a lot of money
Radioactive steampunk 😂
We'll surely figure out how to run a spacecraft on steam eventually.
Large steam locomotives will always be more powerful than their Diesel Electric counterparts, but one big advantage of diesel engines was the ability to couple them together and run them as 1 large unit. You can use multiple steam locomotives to "double head" a train, but its two independently operated locomotives tethered together. Diesels multiple unit cable which can tie the controls of multipe diesels together with 1 crew. While 1 Diesel couldn't pull what something like a Allegheny, AC-12, or even a Big Boy can, you can just keep tying on more until it meets the job. All with 1 three man crew.
Dawson, the largest steam locos have about the same power as the largest diesels. This is because the limit is not set by engine technology, it is set by wheel-to-track adhesion. Both steam and diesel is limited to about 500 to 600 kN tractive effort depending on track gauge and construction for this reason.
Some notes from my memory banks:
I read that back in the mid-late 19th century, about the time Mark Twain was bopping about on them, they would race steamboats on the rivers with reckless abandon. The engines would be pushed well past their operational limits and explosions were quite common apparently, killing many on board.
I also remember reading about a steam powered car someone built and was reported on in Popular Mechanics. I'd be interested to know what became of it.
Bill Lear, of Learjet fame constructed a few steam cars around 1971 or so, as I recall. They had started life as 1971 Chevrolet Impalas.
YEah. What about the explosion which happened in Cuba once while a man by the name of Ernesto Che Guevara was nearby. The rumors about what he said to people soon after keep on being spun to this day after his photograph for the longest time was being used by Fidel Castro to inspire people concerning his cause. Historians say he allegedlly believed in communism. Or was he just another person who worked as an engineer for awhile and then had been conscripted into the military at one point too who happened to be good looking before he died at age 38?
Stanley Automobiles started out as steam cars. There is a really good video of one by Jay Leno's Garage on RUclips.
Hey Joe, really enjoyed this video - big well done!
These riveted boilers were notoriously dangerous in 'normal' operation. The engineers had SOP that included tapping the rivets holding the boiler together with a hammer. A broken rivet has a distinct sound, and some number of broken rivets was considered acceptable to operate the boiler. Explosions like these are the reason the ASME Boiler and Pressure Vessel Code exists.
Cold water going into a hot partially dry boiler definitely has an effect. . . Thermal shock and mechanical stresses. . . A picture is worth a thousand words.
There were other steam boiler explosions that were not from railroad locomotives, too.
There was one such boiler explosion that happened on March 2, 1854, in Hartford, Connecticut.
It was a steam system for powering a factory, and it had been running at higher than rated pressures.
It was found, after hearings were conducted into the cause of the explosion, that the boiler had not been properly attended to, including letting the water go low and operating it at pressures exceeding what it was rated for.
16 workers died and many others were injured.
Ah, the days before the dayum regalators took away our freedom. /s
That Locomotive Boiler Explosion photo always reminds me of why I pluck my nose hair.😊
I've seen videos of huge snow blowing equipment on the front of a steam engine. They used steam for two reasons; 1) It's very powerful and 2) the steam was used to keep the snow blowing machine warm to prevent snow and ice building up on it. These machines were used in the Rockies where there is massive snowfall. Don't know if they still use them today, but the videos were something to watch.
Enjoyed. Lots of power plants use steam-powered turbines to rotate generators. Boilers are still used today to make the steam. Thermal dynamics is a wonderful thing. Great video.
This is simplistic! There were MANY factors behind the changeover in engine power.
So basically the Chillicothe accident happened the same way as the Sultana?
I hear "Next Gen Steam Engine" and my mind immediately jumps to nuclear options xD
Imagine that exploding...
@@Sithhy its just the same as a steam explosion, except it also spreads nuclear isotopes everywhere if you are stupid and create a reactor without a containment vessel, like Chernobyl .
But you can use a double-vessel system, you have a nuclear reactor with a low pressure gas, that gas will circulate inside the boiler and heat water so it becomes super heated steam, there you go. The actual reactor core is impossible to explode by misuse, and it is a closed system, if you misuse it, the xeon poison just kills the reaction.
Steam is steam, always dangerous if misused.
"Carbon free, excellent efficiency, makes you glow in the dark." I had the same thought, unfortunately the shielding for the nuclear material just makes it impractical.
People live near nuclear power plants all around the world @@Sithhy
@@Sithhy Hmmm...Chernobyl...
Elvix Presley was a train enthusiast; he even composed a song about trains: "Love me *tender* "
Another thing that did in Steam, was the maintenance costs compared to diesel as well. The New York Central’s Niagara class was more efficient than the diesels it ran up against digging the evaluations by the NYC; but it didn’t outweigh the per trip, and monthly maintenance costs and mechanical reliability
There's a steam event in the Wallamette Valley in Oregon. One year, one of the steam tractors exploded due to the water sloshing back a forth, exposing the pipes. The fly wheel landed about 1/4 of a mile away.
Willamette.
Oregon also exploded a whale with a 50 pound chunk of blubber caving in the roof of a car a quarter mile away. Oregon, where stuff blows up.
Coincidence! Only yesterday, I chatted with 95 year old Adolphus Himmel who told me the story of working on a steam engine around the time diesel engines supplanted them.
I was intrigued when I found out that [Amtrak] diesel trains are diesel electric. It’s more practical and economical to run a diesel generator to power the electric motors than any other source.
That's because diesel generators have a rotation speed they're most efficient, but electrical engines don't care about that, they're efficient at any speed or load. Thus you save weight on highly complex drive-train to transfer and match the rotation speed to the load by just using the diesel engine to power a generator to power the electric engine, its like an electronic gearbox.
Very cool design.
Yes, its speed difference but also the locomotive has many powered wheels linking up 4 or more axles would be complex.
The first ship I was stationed on was diesel electric.
It’s not just Amtrak. Nearly all “diesel” locomotives are diesel-electric. Very few diesel locomotives’ engines supply traction to the locomotive’s wheels, either directly or through a gearbox.
@@MaxPower-11 -- I didn't know if freight trains operated the same way. I just knew about AMTRAK, so I put that in there. Thanks!
I was an insurance agent in my working yeas. One company my agency was the Hartford Steam Boiler Insurance & Inspection
Company. Not only did they insure steam boilers; they also inspected them for safety. They prevented many boiler explosions through this inspection function.
Thanks for the video Joe!
I think one of the best innovations no one mentions is the use of oil or gas burners instead of shoveling coal to heat the boiler. This can allow more consistency without ash and soot associated with the burning coal.
Once you start burning oil you might as well switch to diesel engines. They are much more fuel efficient.
And, because locomotives don't have a constant output, you have a buildup of unburned oil and soot building up on the inside of the tubes. This necessitates the sanding of the flies, which provides the same structural damage as the ash being pulled through them by the draft.
To push the discussion even further, the Swiss have invented electrically heated steam locomotives for shunting operations. Yes, they had a pantograph for connecting with an overhead line. Once fully heated, the steam would be enough for 20 minutes of shunting operation without any further external power delivery. The reason for making these was to save on coal during WW2.
You could have a chairturn outro, for the lols
"Still, steam hasn't gone away completely." No joke. Most power plants use it to generate electricity.
True, even gas turbine power plants make use of the exhaust gas heat by generating steam and running it through a steam turbine-generator.
Very accurate and concise narration. I am subscribed now.
Most informative and eloquent.
In the UK we are currently testing a Hydrogen Steam locomotive. They have converted a class 60 diesel locomotive and added a Hydrogen boiler its a start up by Arup and Eversholt Rail,
We are also building and recreating steam locomotives in the uk Most recently Tornado and the P2 locomotive which is currently half way through production
How are they dealing with hydrogen embrittlement of metals?
@@fredericapanon207 I have no clue. That's something for the experts to deal with. I can link you the article if you want. But it's just an outline of what they are intending to do.
@damianhockey8890 some key words to find the article would be great. YT does not allow external, non-YT links.
@@fredericapanon207 rail advent class 60 hydrogen steam
@@fredericapanon207 article 11th July
Hindenburg. Here you have your engagement for the youtube algorithm.
Hey Joe, I work for the Railroad. Something that may have gone unnoticed in your video was the fact that the farmer knew another train was due to come by soon. This is because even freight trains back in the day used to run on schedules and they stuck to them pretty close hence the reason only certain pocket watches were RR approved (Your life depended on it, literally). This isn’t the case anymore where trains will sometimes run weeks behind for a multitude of reasons despite having signals and radios now.
Cool video, I have a mechanical minded....mind 😅 so enjoyed it. That picture on the boiler explosion looks unreal. There's something even more unsettling seeing all those pipes. I didn't know those existed inside. I always thought it was just a huge water tank only.
You missed a key point, Joe! When you mentioned that, due to the pressure in the boiler (300psi) the water temp could reach 400F, you should have gone on to say that if the boiler ever ruptured, the entirety of water in the boiler would flash to steam, thereby amplifying the explosion many times over. Wow!!! ;-)
1:58 steaming hot tentacles can mean SOMETHING ELSE mr joe. Just saying
I love traveling by train but there's always intrusive thoughts in my head on a train like are the tracks damaged, is there a malfunction of some sort, will tusken raiders attack, will I get stuck in the middle of an Agatha Christie plotline, will it explode into a ball of flame and twisted steel...
I just wanna enjoy train life but I'm not geared to fully enjoy train life 😢
I don’t worry about any of those things - except the Tusken Raiders
The only concern I have with trains is how much trust do we have that the railroad switch is correctly set when we go through them at top speed.
Yeah, I have tickets for a train ride in a couple of weeks. Probably should have delayed this until afterwards
@@sunshine3914 just sit in the back and you’ll be fine
@@Shepard_AUNEW WORRY UNLOCKED
"Finally ended the steam engine".
Yes, and the rest of us are still operating our steam engines, decades after you said the end... with no issues...
wow a hyce comment with no likes or replies
One of my uncles worked for the Burlington RR, starting in the engine shops around 1930 when steam was still king. He retired as the VP of their western operations. One main reason for the conversion from steam to diesel electric was cost, not just fuel and crew savings, but the manpower reduction in maintenance of a steam engine vs a diesel engine. There are thousands of moving parts on a steam locomotive, from driving rods, pistons, valves, and such. Boilers had to be inspected regularly and the pipes removed and cleaned. Several days of work to accomplish this. Diesel could be done in a day.
Was this explosion the 'end' of steam, it may certainly have moved their end date up, but steam was already on the way out. Several railroads were already experimenting with diesel for their passenger service in the 1930's. In May 1934 the Burlington Zephyr went non-stop from Denver to Frisco in just over 13 hours.
World War II slowed the transition as production of war material took priority. After the war, the end of steam was pretty much forgone, but not without its followers. It was just too costly.
Turns out Beta did NOT have better video quality than VHS. @TechnologyConnections did a great explainer on this.
Nuclear power is a steam engine.
Just about every form of electricity generation aside from solar and wind involve making steam
YOU ARE correct randalalansmith9883 about Nuclear powered steam trains
0:35 What a weird way to illustrate this fact??!? The British Empire was established long before the invention of the steam engine as a mode of travel, and the steam engine itself had relatively little impact on the evolution of the empire. The biggest impact was probably seen in the United States where the building of the railroads allowed for unlimited expropriation of Native American land. Indeed, had it not been for railroads the Native American nations probably would have not suffered the same level of genocide which they did.
The damage had already been done before the invention of the steam engine. Not to excuse or condone the many very horribly fucked up things Europeans did to the remnant, which as you rightly point out was aided and abetted by the adoption of railroads, but by far the largest contributor to Native American depopulation wasn't deliberate violence, it was biological happenstance. In some parts of the Americas, including much of what is now New England, as much as 90% of the pre-Columbian population were wiped out by Old World diseases (mainly smallpox) against which they had no resistance, before any of the English colonies which went on to become the United States were even chartered. Some tribes disappeared completely, some lost so many elders and so much generational knowledge that they were basically forced to rebuild their whole societies from scratch, and all of this just as Europeans were starting to arrive in real numbers. The Massachusetts Pilgrims found so much unoccupied arable land abandoned by the collapsing population of Native Americans that some thought God had prepared for them a new Eden. Try to imagine what it was like being a part of that generation that lived through the deaths of 9 out of every 10 people they had ever known due to the sudden appearance of disfiguring diseases they didn't have the science to treat or even begin to understand.
I have to disagree with your analysis of why the boiler exploded - the flues and superheater tubes are located in the middle of the boiler structure, and it is very unlikely that they would ever be uncovered with water. The main culprit in boiler explosions was the crown (upper) sheet of the firebox - the highest part of the whole assembly, which was much easier to become exposed if there was a water supply problem, broken water sight glasses in the cab`, or a careless fireman who wasn't paying sufficient attention. When the crown sheet becomes exposed, it melts under the tremendous heat being produced in the firebox, thus compromising the structural integrity of the pressure vessel. Modern steam locomotives operate at a working pressure of 200 - 300 PSI, so when the crown sheet melts it releases all of that potential energy instantly, which leads to the RUD as seen in the photograph. God help anyone within 100 yards or so. I'm not sure where you got your information, but I am almost 100% sure I am correct, having spent the past 45 years trackside, and devouring every book and video/dvd on railroading I could get my hands on. I don't mean to step on your toes or insult you, I'm just trying to convey accurate information.
interesting,not trolling but maybe you could make a lil video explainer that complements this one?
Most steam locomotive fireboxes are fitted with fusible plugs, which melt if the heat becomes excessive due to low water levels, releasing steam and water into the firebox, extinguishing the fire and alerting the crew.
Wikipedia has an interesting article under "Firebox (steam engine)" with details about fireboxes.
I mean, by 1948 the world had been through a second massive war and the trains were knackered anyway. Plus there had been a switch to diesel and petroleum for other vehicles at the time too.
It's also worth pointing out that the diesel was used to power _electric_ engines. The world was getting electrified throughout the early 1900s, and trains were following suit with the earliest diesel electric trains coming along in the 1930s. For context, the first parents for magnetic levitation and linear motors were awarded in 1902 and 1905. Almost half a century before this boiler explosion.
Also it's misconception that Beta had better picture quality over VHS. Both were very similar standard definition magnetic tape. The difference was that VHS's loading mechanism was superior, putting less stress on the tape, and meaning machines could be smaller, including cameras. They also, crucially, held more tape. Plus we got S-VHS in 1987 which blew both of the original versions away anyway. There's also Betacam, but that's an unrelated format used in studios.
imagine having the presence of mind to see/hear something so shocking, and to run off and save lives stopping the oncoming train. what a lad.