The age of STEAM TRAINS is RETURNING
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- Опубликовано: 4 окт 2024
- Patrons GET THINGS: / terrier55stepney
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What are your thoughts on the future of steam trains? Let me know in the comments!
In 2024 a brand new steam engine experiment has been announced that aims to replace the diesel locomotives currently on mainline railways. In this Guide Rail special we discuss previous failed prototypes at making a modern day steam train and why this new technology could be different.
Having made the Complete History of Steam, covering everything that led up to the world's first railway, the announcement of this class 60 conversion concept was well timed to set up for a Complete Future of Steam. With the growing restrictions of heritage trains running, cuts of coal and push for eco-friendly designs, rail transport as we know it might be undergoing some big global changes.
Thank you all for your comments! I'm reading what you say and there are certainly a lot of good points raised regarding the effectiveness and practicality of this venture.
There will be a new Guide Rail episode on the first Friday of each month. Looking forward to talking about the 5AT project at some point!
The loco at minute 4 had at no point of its life anything to do with steam poower. The big boiler thing in the front is a set of electric converters that converted singlephase AC to tripplephase AC to DC. A loco really ahead of its time (BBÖ1082)
Really great video very concise and informative nice production and good audio mix..
If TV was still a thing then you would have a great career ahead of you.
what about a steam powered TRAINS but fuel type diesel
Daffy? Is that you? 🦆? Just kidding. Cool video, bro. 🫡
Would these conversion locos be right for passenger work, too?
Who's revolutionary now, Diesel?- Duck, 2024
Very rever-thing-gummy
Not so revolutionary now diesel ayyy?
"You might be revo-thingamy Diesel, but we've come full circle"
Electricity.
Diesel hasn't been revolutionary since the 40s 😭
We are so back
True
Hella
lol
Yeah we are
based and steampilled
If this succeeds then the class should be called the Phoenix class
The Phoenix rises from the ashes
It's funny that people want steam engines to return, yet don't want underground stations and tunnels are polluted.
@automation7295 you mean soot and ash there's an answer for that. You build the engine with a heat resivouire and hold the heat through the tunnel and fire out of it. Now the current systems not designed with that in mind. Neither is it built with the thinking of fireless engines which could be another answer.
@automation7295 I would care about your opinion. But you have also spammed it so for all I know you could be a bot
@@CalebJ6308 I'm not a bot, but you seem to want more pollution on underground stations and tunnels?
This smacks of distraction-tech. Hydrogen, in all its many guises (colors) still has to be made from something else, and therein lies the problem. It takes energy to make hydrogen, a lot of energy, and that must be factored into the overall equation. Just because the loco itself is efficient and "green" isn't helpful if its fuel-making process is inefficient and energy-intensive. When you look at the big picture, hydrogen is simply not a sensible alternative to existing technologies.
Britain should be electrifying all its lines, and doing so without any further delays. If India (with one of the world's largest rail networks that moves more than 9 billion people each year) has already electrified 95% of its broad-gauge lines and will electrify the remaining 5% very soon, then there's no excuse for Britain to not electrify its entire network. Even if the electricity is generated from fossil fuels, it's easier to control pollution at a few large power stations than at a vast plethora of individual locomotives and trains. This is the only efficient way to power trains: anything else is just a distraction.
Thank you. Yes wires wires wires wires wires wires and more wires please and no hydrogen on the side.
I agree, but what about lines with low clearence? Or an EMP? We should have these at least as spares.
@@Combes_ For those very occasional (I hope) needs, diesel traction would suffice. It wouldn't be wise to rely on an unproven experimental new technology for emergencies. I really don't see any insurmountable obstacles to 100% electrification: Switzerland has had it for decades, and there are many other countries with near-total electrification; political prevarication is the only reason to not do so. Tunnels and low bridges can be undercut to provide sufficient clearance for catenary. As for EMPs, if that were to happen then we're all toast anyway, and the only locos that would still work will be the few preserved old steam locos; anything else with any electronics will be fried!
The issue is that British Rail only wants to buy new locomotives instead of electrifying its rails so train companies are forced to make non electric locomotives to make money
@ericliu5491 Great, now we just need to figure out how to mine the Sun, because that's the nearest place you find natural hydrogen.
euh electric locomotives/ multiple units are indirect steam powered trains !
The majority of Power plants use steam turbines to produce electricity.
Exactly. And zero running emissions plants use Nuclear Fission as the heat source.
the only electric sources that don't use steam are wind and hydroelectric
@@d3str0i3rand solar, and RTG, and Hydrogen.
@@d3str0i3r Gas turbines do not use steam unless they are using heat recovery systems to run a steam turbine. The reason we have moved so far into gas turbine 3 on 1, 2 on 1, etc systems is because you get to use the waste heat from the gas turbine to generate steam that would ordinarily be exhausted into the air and wasted.
@@d3str0i3r Plenty of grid scale photovoltaic in Australia, and wave / tidal is steam free too.
“BOOM! I’m back, dummy!” -Steam
*[ Steam 🞋 is DOMINATING Diesel ]*
@@themistakeisintentional-dn5df PLS NEVER SAY THAT AGAIN, FOR THE SAKE OF MY PERVERTED ASS
It's funny that people want steam engines to return, yet don't want underground stations and tunnels are polluted.
@@automation7295 Condensing locomotives, which have worked on underground tunnels for years:
@@automation7295, if it burns no coal or disel or any smoking thing, there is no problam.
LONG LIVE THE ERA OF STEAM ENGINES
Yes. Engines, not Trains.
GOD SAVE THE ENGINES
via la steam engines!
And then you all would complain why the underground stations and tunnels are polluted. It's official, you all don't care about pollution.
@@ryleeculla5570 a few steam locomotiveshere and there on heritage railways is fine; I enjoy the occasional visit to the Severn Valley Railway, but god forbid coal-fired steam ever makes a comeback.
I just have to ask, WHY?! I'm a steam fan, but it just makes SO MUCH more sense to just electrify the railroad and use electric locomotives instead of going through the hassle of generating and storing hydrogen and then using that to generate steam to turn turbines. Esp. since to get hydrogen, you either get it from fossil fuels or electrolysis which takes tons of power when compared to the energy you get out. It's up there imo with battery locos.
Unless there are at least a few trains an hour, it isn't worth putting up the wires, and it makes the railway unreliable.
Also, I would argie, that for barely used routes Diesel is ok. If waste hydrogen is available, hydrogen powered trains already exist. I think this new steam loco will fail.
@henrybn14ar If people always opted out for the cheaper option, nothing would get done.
Good rail service isn't profitable, because it can't be. Privatization proved that you can't make a profit and provide a good service
@@mikeymikey4186 If transporting goods via rail is cheaper then by truck, it's not what You say it is... it's not some unwritten rule that rail trasportation is bad, rather that sounds more like "mismanagment"... and it IS exactly that, mismanagment, that causes this "industry" to fail.
All the info I seen, about US rail failure... was directly related to corpo lobby'd - barrier to entry, which in turn disabled competition and allowed for ridiculous failures to take place.
- Meanwhile, My own country allowed for rail ifrastucture to deteriorate, as the generation of lazy ol' fuchs, were so full of themselvs They didn't even once self reflect, so They kept voting for either side of the uni-party corruption... which both mirrored the same failure that took place in the states: cut funding for anything, report "profits" made from the cut spending, pocket insane promotions, let everything deteriorate and by an extent let the cost to fix it grow out of hand.
So no, You can do both, I mean it, it's do-able to provide a good product and also make a profit... but not with corpo/uni-party corrupt culture, where no one is held responsible... while also one has to remember "profit" doesn't mean a Golden egg laying Bird is involved, the profit may be small, but it is possible, saying that it is not, is a preemptive excuse for failure.
The answer is not, to maintain or form an even bigger organization, it already proved to be the wrong approach. The bigger the organisation, the more prone it is to corruption and harder it is to hold people responsible.
Stup¡d people in positions of power are a plague - one that has to be acknowledged, removed and prevented from coming back.
- Also, We all should stop going along with the lies, politicians pretend to be stup¡d, exploiting Our goodwill, They know We're more willing to forgive a mistake, rather then active hostility.
Greetings
We already have copper shortages. It's driving up prices 4 fold over the last couple of years. Trying to electrify everything isn't as simple as waving a wand.
"Different designs are very fussy on what fuel they use."
I think this was proven very well by the camelback locomotives of the US. *Giant* fireboxes to burn coals with extremely low BTUs. The Strasburg railroad had an 0-4-0 camelback that they tried to use high-BTU coal in and it went... poorly to say the least.
Dare I ask?
@@TallboyDave I believe he's referring to #1187 (which was renumbered as #4 back then) here. It was made to run on anthracite coal, but they used Bituminous coal instead, resulting in it having a poor performance on their excursion trains. They demoted it to switching duties soon after, and then put it outdoors on static display after it's flue time expired. It's currently being cosmetically restored at the Age of Steam Roundhouse last I checked.
@@basicallyarobloxian4533 Either the OP, has it backwards, or You...
A - OP's version would imply the fuel was too power ful and something went wrong.
B - Your version, implies, that the locomotive was given worse fuel then it should have.
Both sound logical, tho' it's 2 very different versions of the story... which in the end doesn't solve the question, what was actually wrong... 😅
Greetings
Another dead end. Not because of steam, but because of hydrogen. Creating, compressing (or even liquefying) hydrogen, then expanding and "burning" it is extremely wasteful. 80% of the energy is lost as heat to the environment. Storage of hydrogen is also a big issue. I bet on synthetic fuels, made from green hydrogen, without any storage or transportation of hydrogen itself. Synthetic fuels that can be distributed with the existing infrastructure and stored as easily and safely as fossil fuels will be the future. Costly, sure, but from a practical point of view much better. And certainly not worse than using hydrogen directly in terms of efficiency. Of course, the most efficient way will remain to install overhead wires and run directly on electricity. At least on main lines with frequent service.
I agree it would be better to produce some synthetic fuels from hydrogen and then use those in rest of the economy. On the other hand it should not be methane as that is also a greenhouse gas. So perhaps synthetic methanol or propane and butane should be produced.
I'm sure they can use the waste heat from compressing the hydrogen. Innovations like that have been around for a long time. I'm sure a lot of the naysaying around new technology comes from old technology leaders who know perfectly well that the problems they're describing are easily solved, but want to manipulate the public into taking their side.
@@eekee6034 The laws of thermodynamics are the limiting factor, not technology.
@@MrToradragon I agree, it would be far more feasible if it were to run off of bio-fuels or synthetic carbon-neutral fuels instead as there is plenty of research happening into similar fuels in other industries (especially in the aerospace sector where we have very little alternatives to jet engines for medium to long haul flights). Though incidentally diesel engines should be able to run off of bio diesel or synthetic fuels also, so maybe its a somewhat mute point? Though a furnace will burn fuel cleaner than the combustion chamber of any ICE engine, just due to the fact the fuel has more time to burn.
@@__-fm5qv There are some issues with, at least gen I, biodiesel, like very poor efficiency of production.
Another thing I would consider is that even thou there are some developments in field of synthetic fuels, i am not sure whether they will be able to cut down the costs to be at least on par with taxed diesel as 1 litre of diesel contains about 9 kWh of thermal energy, with price of about 1.6 € per litre, VAT included, it is some 0.17€ per kWh, thus about 170€ per MWh, I am really not sure that they will be able to get to this price even with latest development in field of CO2 harvesting, e.g. with it's extraction from seawater (tested quite recently in California) and hydrogen production (let's for now leave out discoveries of hydrogen rich natural gas and of pockets of pure hydrogen those now seem rather suitable for burning in small scale power plants, than for further processing and distribution).
Another issue I see with thee E-fuels is that they will compete for energy with other types of storage and use, for example pump-storage, load shifting and even, in case of countries in central and Northern Europe, thermal storage that can easily by added to existing heating systems and possibly can accumulate energy for weeks of operation.
So the e-fuels might not be an option in upcoming decades, if ever. As well the railway would be competing for the same fuels with aviation industry, military and other sectors of economy as well, and those seem to be less sensitive to the price of fuels, or are better at transferring those onto the customers. As well any liquid fuel on railway will soon face competition from battery hybrids.
The age of steam has never died. It merely calmed itself. Almost all electricity is generated by enormous coal fed boilers attached to massive steam turbines, turning huge alternatives and generators. Thus, if you have an electric car, that electricity was almost certainly produced by enormous steam turbines fed by huge coal burning boilers.
Nuclear energy is steam based as well.
@@marvinmurphy5523 And Oil and LNG fired power stations. Gas turbine could be done but that is rare, about the only ones that aren't are diesel generators (used for backups at hospitals and datacenters and the like), solar cells, wind turbines and hydroelectric dams (well this one is water, not steam).
The UK is down to 1.5% coal use! Keep up!
Looks like we're coming back full circle to the age of the steam Era, I'm so excited for where rail travel will go.
I just hope the OLD model's name locomotives are in the picture too and solutions for their problems as well 🙂🚂
Don’t hold your breath. Electric is the way forward, see class 99.
We’re going back to horse drawn carriages on rails in a few years
It's funny that people want steam engines to return, yet don't want underground stations and tunnels are polluted.
Over the cliff at the rate of accelerating green stupidity
I like steam locomotives and all but does no one else find it weird that the assumption is that after 220 years of development we've barely developed the steam locomotive but in half the time we've achieved all we can from diesel-electrics
the thing with steam is we never standardized the designs and a lot of improvements developed for it were never fully tested because either they were developed early in the life of steam when no one wanted to replace their expensive engines that were more or less working fine without the new features, or later in the life of steam when everyone was actively trying to get rid of steam instead of improve it
deisel on the other hand, has had the privilege of benefitting from multiple technologies that never touched a steam engine, but could still be applied even to new traditional steam engines, let alone a steam electric system, such as both the shift from mechanical control systems to analogue electric control systems, the shift from analogue electric control systems to digital electric control systems, modern materials quality, modern parts tolerances, radios for communications between crewmen
but the biggest benefit diesel had over steam is the engine didn't have to apply power directly, if we want to be more specific, steam was never competing against diesel, it was competing against electric, and until now there was no genuine attempt to use steam to produce that electric power
That's because diesel electrics use technologies used elsewhere so most of the development was already done when they came about. Steam locomotives had a lot of issues only related to them and so the development didn't have much outshoot elsewhere
No, steam engines did not have 220 years of development. Their development started 220 years ago, but in the last 70-ish years they saw no use (beyond heritage), and therefore no development at all. Meaning they were in use for 150-ish years. And I can't imagine in the last decades before their end (when it was clear that steam was on its way out) they had much development put into them.
It would kind of looking at diesel engines (first prototype 127 years ago) and assuming that the latest diesel engines we have available today are those from 40 years ago (assuming neither of them have reached their maximum possible potential and plateaued).
And even if you can't assume that, steam locomotives have only been developed for 2 decades longer than diesel engines have.
But the whole point is moot. If there is no water (15:22), then it's technically a hydrogen-fueled turbine engine. The name "steam engine" for something just because it exhausts steam is as silly as "steam and smoke" engine for a diesel engine.
@Pystro to be fair, the most advanced and powerful steam locomotives built came in the final decades of their operation. NYC Niagara, N&W class A, SNCF 242A1, BR 9F, etc. In more recent times there have been a few innovations, namely when it comes to fuel sources and exhausts, and valve gear too I think. The SAR 26 class and the design changes the A1 steam locomotive trust made to Tornado are both good examples
@@d3str0i3rDirect drive is an advantage
this is such a nice break from all this "hyperloop" and "pods" garbage. it's nice to see some *real* innovation in the places where it matters the most.
How do you mean? Smells like a gadgetbahn could well be a gadgetbahn?
Hydrogen is a red herring so why waste resources and thus have to retro fit this tech (huge cost installing storage). Just build more OLE
It's funny that people want steam engines to return, yet don't want underground stations and tunnels are polluted.
you vill sleep in ze pod
why not just electrify the whole rail system like in switzerland or most of austria?
@@DerZocker2000000 And use nuclear power to generate the electricity? Those are actually steam engines, just on a larger, more efficient scale. I mean, I live about an hour away from one of two of the largest nuclear generating stations on the planet: Bruce Nuclear Generating Station on Lake Huron, Ontario, Canada. It has eight CANDU reactors making a lot of power and supplies a good portion of Ontario with electric power with Pickering and Darlington Nuclear Plants and Sir Adam Beck Hydro Generating station and also supplies parts of the US with power as well.
I love that he used the song "fury the high pressure engine's theme" by S.A Music while talking about the leader's problems, lol
3:56 that locomotive deserves a video all to itself, looks futuristic, strong, awesome too. 😊
The Locomotive you mean is BBÖ 1082, which was only a Prototype and sadly dissapeared during WWII.
@@CM12youtube_official Still, it looks awesome.
It used a rotary converter to power its DC traction motors, had variable speed control and recuperation. There were two other prototypes fromt that era, but this was the only one that actually worked.
rightnow it's just a prototype.
if this project is done in America, the likes of EMD SD70 Mac or GE Evo series hull might be used instead :P
@@DiscothecaImperialis We spoke about the Train on 3:56, not the "Future" one.
Wait, what? Wow! I am happy that steam is returning from a while now! Steam Engines is always my passion and one of the reasons I created my channel! Thanks for the video! Keep up the good work Terrier55Stepney!
It'll crash and burn since hydrogen is stated as a fuel source. If you look at hydrogen's stats, you'll discover that hydrogen is just that horrid when used in any other reaction other than nuclear.
Instead of turning Hydrogen into Steam, why not use the Electricity we’d use to make the Hydrogen directly with electric locomotives? It’s much more efficient, you’d just need to build more overhead wires
Hmmm. And in theory should be easier to convert a former DE into a full electric, just replace the engine and generator with a transformer and add some batteries.
but... but... building infrastructure requires government spending and a degree of central planning? whereas a loco driven by bionic duckweed can be dreamed up and demonstrated by a couple of eccentrics in a shed as a private venture
@@RoamingAdhocrat and any decent human can tell that this isnt how things should work. We are in a global climate crysis and its the job of the government to do all it can to lessen the issues itll cause, to protect us and our children from droughts, tornados, forest fires, floods and so on. If a politician thinks "lets just wait and see what the private sector comes up with" or "just slap battery electric trains and busses on the rails and roads" then its a simple way out for them to pretend to care about climate instead of working on it
The reason for trying steam generators and turbines over fuel cells is because they will provide more power per unit weight, and that's important in a big loco.
Clearly if you could electrify the entire railway you wouldn't need diesels or hydrogen locos. But that'll take decades.
Electrification of a local network is fine, but would just not work for long distance travel. Would not work here in Australia due to the incredible distance involved and getting the lines to a useful height to cope with the heights of our freight trains! Running stacked containers to shorten train length is common. Also, when the major floods come through and wash the rails away, I don't think the wires would survive. Using hydrogen as a fuel to provide power to generators is much more practical.
Say Terrier, I was wondering if you heard of Sam Mackwell and his efforts to bring back steam in New Zealand. He doesn't have much on his RUclips channel but he does have a working boiler that utilitizes Advanced Steam principles as developed by L.D. Porta. He's planning on using the technology for farming, especially since he designed his boiler for biofuels, wood, and bagasse.
Steam engines: "haha, did you miss us bit-"
You missed out one of the major reasons why dieselisation was rushed, one that is always overlooked, the Clean Air Act of 1956 which imposed fines on anyone burning coal and releasing excessive smoke into the atmosphere in a clean air zone. This applied equally to British Rail steam locomotives as it did the owner of a factory. This meant any plans for phased withdrawal of steam were scrapped, and untested diesel locomotives were ordered.
That in and of itself was an absurd piece of legislation that should never have come to pass to begin with.
@@MrJoeyWheeler oh, so you're a fan of killer smogs and not being able to breathe clean air?
That explains quite a lot, and I've not seen this mentioned in the context of those who say "it would have been better to hold on to steam locomotives and electrify".
@fetchstixRHD in everything, there is a lot of context that gets ignored. Before being elected in October 1964, the Labour Party wanted to reverse many of the announced Beeching cuts but never did. One of the main reasons was the series of financial challenges crises between November 1964 and November 1967, which the Beeching was Illegitimate camp fail to take into account.
I used to know a Stratford guard who was a fireman on Leader locos. It was utter hell working on them with no ventilation.
We are indeed back on track
Would be funny to see a thomas the tank engine trainz thing where Diesel is still bragging about diesel being the future, and then finds out about steam being tried again.
Even better if the engine being converted was spam can
The ultimate irony…
@@shootyboi2206"I thought you said steam engines spoiled our image!"
"I did!"
@@AbbeyYard well said
@@shootyboi2206or, since there was a thing about a Class 08 being converted, it’s diesel himself getting converted to steam
@@connormclernon26that’s hydrogen fuel not a steam engine
Load of hot air. Just stick the wires up and say that as a steam fan.
These won’t be steam locomotives in any sense that steam fans want.
If going to call these steam locomotives then nuclear powered submarines and carriers should also be called steam as the nuclear power plants generate heat to boil water, which generates steam.
Pre WW2 then the big 4 were all looking at moving away from steam as they realised wasn’t the future.
UK stuck with new steam after WW2 as infrastructure intact and had a ready supply of coal, whereas diesel or electric would have cost a fortune to move too and would need to import oil etc.
Just go electric wires and be done with it and central electric generation.
Yep. Just build wires. Hot air indeed.
Maybe add generator cars where external power isn't available, trains are inherently modular. Motor per wheel (or even linear motors in the track...) and the whole concept of "locomotive" starts to look obsolete. Rail vehicles should be the easiest to make autonomous, so we don't need a place for the driver to sit.
someone from wyvern rail must of saw victor tanzig non-fictional steam-diesel conversion and thought
"let's give this ago"
@@RoderickEmanuel have seen
„All major advances in technology come down to new interesting ways to boil water.“
- I think someone smart said that once.
Just fucking electrify! It's not a complicated thing really and has been in successful use for 150 years
Yeah…as cool as steam locomotives are, and as much as I want them to continue to exist, it would be substantially easier and more efficient to just add the components necessary to turn a class 60 into an electric locomotive. I mean, it’s literally and consistently been done: look at the class 73, or the new class 92.
But if someone wants of build new steam locomotives for excursion, leisure work, then I’m all for it. In any case, a steam train is more efficient than all the people on the train using cars or buses.
@@TheNwr1 Oh by all means build some modern steam locos for excursions.
A few modern diesel or Hydrogen fired steam engines could run excursion trains even from London terminus stations.
Great as a tourist attraction, terrible for regular service.
You’ll need a massive upgrade to the electrical grid regardless.
@@TheNwr1 All main line locomotives are electric drive now. It's a matter of whether they use a hot shoe, pantograph or electric generator/alternator. This project offers an option to replace the diesel engine driving the generator. Bean counters will figure out the economics of whether to "go for it" or add overhead wires.
We Poles have been using electricity[alongside steam and diesel] on our railways for YEARS now, using the Brits' own design, the Class 83/84!
This man never heard of the ACE 3000 or the Big John, the PRR S2, or the yellow bellies...
SHUT UP-
Hiii, Germany here, maybe you can lift that mystery for me,..... why do the Brits not just power the mainlines and use Electric Locomotives, you can still use Diesel for the few lines that might not be worth the power lines, but I mean, E-Locos are a near perfect technology by now, they don't need onboard fuel, therefore save weight, maintenance and complexity, and yes, it costs money to put up all the lines, but spending a lot of money on research on how to work around that that seems a little weird to me. If you still want to power Trains with Hydrogen..... just do it off the track and use power stations to power the lines.
Because politicians, they keep canceling the electrification contract part way through claiming they can get it cheaper than the last lot, turns out more expensive and they pay the cancelation fees. Only good news, is the local rail around some of the cities can and does now use electric traction on those lines, but the long distance intercity routes some of those still have non-electrified parts.
Because overhead cables do not fit under existing bridges. Many bridges have been raised. But some are historic / have houses on them. Digging out below also can have problems. Plus te electricity grid has several times come close to collapse.
I remembered when people said we'd have hydrogen-powered cars by the 2020s. I guess this is close enough?
We had hydrogen powered cars in 2010 - they were horribly inefficient (hydrogen is just too expensive to make - batteries are much cheaper for ranges below 800km).
@@allangibson8494nah bro you arent telling me hydrogen is expensive it is 70 percent of all matter
@@Waskotorowy SEPARATION is expensive. Hydrogen is present as combustion ASH. It’s like turning carbon dioxide into coal and oxygen - you have to inject more energy than you could possibly extract. Charging batteries is a more efficient use of the power required (unless the power is free AND you don’t have any batteries).
@@allangibson8494 Hydrogen is also notoriously difficult to store long term (ask any rocket engineer who has worked on the Space Shuttle or even SLS) as a cryogenic material, and hideously explosive. A gasoline explosion is basically a flash fire that can easily be contained (assuming fire crews get there in a short timeframe). A hydrogen explosion would cost you an entire city block if it went up at a hydrogen refueling station.
@@allangibson8494 ahhh, k
THE AGE OF STEAM IS BACK
If you are burning hydrogen to make the steam, the temperature will be so high that this is effectively a gas turbine. This will have the same problem as other gas turbines of not operating efficiently when not at its optimal design speed and load, mitigated by the use of 4 of them so that you can start with 1 turbine, and then switch on others as requirements increase. It will also not be emission-free, because combustion of hydrogen makes a hot enough flame to produce nitrogen oxides unless you go to the trouble of separating the oxygen in the air away from the nitrogen, which would require much additional equipment, which would be heavy and consume some of the power, and would also make the combustion temperature even higher so that exotic materials would be needed to stay solid. If you are going to use hydrogen, it would be better to use it in fuel cells, which can operate with reasonable efficiency under varying load. However, the use of hydrogen is itself problematic: Although fuel cells themselves have efficiency that somewhat exceeds the best internal combustion engines, when you multiply this by the efficiency of generation of hydrogen by electrolysis of water, the overall efficiency becomes fairly low, meaning that even if you did convert hydrogen production to use renewable energy, you would need a lot more renewable energy than if you used the renewable energy as electricity. Also, hydrogen is hard to store and transport, because it has a very low boiling point and critical point, so that if you liquify it, you use about 1/3 of its energy content to run the refrigeration (and that is before considering the need for ongoing refrigeration to prevent boiloff. If you don't liquify it, you need extremely strong and heavy tanks to store it at high pressure, or to combine it with other substances which add a comparable amount of weight, and then consume some energy when you need to pry the hydrogen back out of them. Hydrogen is composed of molecules so small that they are even able to leak through some solid materials. So you would be better off building more railway electrification infrastructure and using the electricity directly, which is much more efficient and requires less renewable energy investment than what you would need with a hydrogen intermediate. So never mind steam locomotives -- the entire hydrogen economy concept is a pre-ordained fail, except for the subset of industrial processes that specifically need hydrogen.
Great post, but make sure you paragraph it!
Not so. Just because your hydrogen flame will be hotter than a coal flame does not make the steam hotter. It depends how much energy you are transferring from the burnt fuel to the water. All modern steam turbines are in effect gas turbines because the steam is not only completely dry but it is also superheated and therefore a gas.
Steam turbines offer flexibility over the way they deliver power compared to gas turbines which burn the fuel in the turbine itself, because in the latter, the efficiency of the burn is very much determined by the speed of the engine and the amount of compression given to the incoming air by the compression stages of the turbine. Steam turbines, of course, only have expansion stages, and the combustion is managed entirely separately to the moving parts of the turbine.
@@nickwinn7812 From the video, it sounded like the water vapor from combustion would be directly used in the turbine. But supposing it wasn't, then you lose efficiency, because the efficiency of a heat engine depends upon the difference between the hot part and the cold part.
@@Lucius_Chiaraviglio No, the efficiency of a heat engine depends upon the heat transfer between the hot part and the cooler part, both sensible and latent heat.
You get a very high rate of heat exchange at the change of phase from liquid to vapour, with no change in temperature for example.
Heat transfer depends on temperature difference, pressure, the properties of the fluid being heated and the properties of the boundary material (thermal resistance, surface area etc.). Not solely on the temperature difference.
The secondary heat exchanger of a condensing gas boiler for example, is very efficient because the vapour in the exhaust gases condense out onto the heat exchanger, transferring both sensible heat and (much more) latent heat, all at around 50 degrees C.
I like the molecular hydrogen paste compound technology idea.
You mentioned the Swiss electric steam locomotives, but did explain the context where they made sense: during WW2, Switzerland had shortages of coal (there are virtually no coal mines in Switzerland), but also metals, so it was more effective to retrofit these steam switchers with heating coils, which required way less copper than replacing them with actual electric switchers. Once the war ended, they were reconverted to coal operations, and quickly replaced by electric switchers.
It’s amazing to think that steam could be making a comeback. I’ll take a steam loco over a diesel/electric any day of the week. It’d blow me away if a concept akin to the Bulleid Leader ends up being a success.
i guess you could say steam never ended it just took a long vacation
why does everyone forget about the ACE-3000?
I was wondering the same.
Or the 19 1001 which was a steam motor loco from Germany.
15:18 You fell into the old schoolboy trap :“Which is heavier ? A pound of feathers or a pound of lead?”
Maybe what he means to say is that 140 pounds of hydrogen "fuel" does not seem like a lot, compared to a 140 pounds of diesel, but in reality it would take up the same amount of volume as a full load of diesel for this loco?
@@sandorrabe5745 The real question is, what is the energy density of the fuel. Fuel oil has more energy per kilogram than coal and both have a lot more energy density than hydrogen. Still true even if the hydrogen is a cryogenic liquid.
Also, what is the "energy density" of the overall system, including tanks and plumbing and valves? What does the weight add up to? I know something about rockets. Kerosene has been the favored fuel for the first stage of a rocket for decades. RP-1 is energy dense and the tanks and plumbing are dead simple. Hydrogen is a nightmare to work with, it leaks through every valve ever devised. Cryogenic tanks have to be covered in insulation. And it takes a MUCH larger tank to hold the amount of hydrogen needed, ergo a lot more mass. Hydrogen only makes sense for the upper stage, but that's a big digression.
For these locomotives the hydrogen will be stored in high pressure tanks, which require thick tank walls, walls a lot heavier than the ones of diesel tanks. The tanks will need heavy insulation, etc, etc.
Not mentioned: the vapors will combust by the slightest flame or spark. You can actually drop a match into diesel oil and it'll go out.
@@sandorrabe5745It would probably take up a larger area than a diesel tank, but the energy density would probably be higher than diesel
In addition to this engine, there's the company down in New Zealand who're trying to make a waste biomass-burning locomotive, that uses a new kind of boiler/steam generator that combines a bunch of efficiency technologies, developed during the dying days of steam. I think that particular project's big limitation is the piston-cylinder engine they're using for their bogies, but the boiler tech sounds somewhat promising. They claim it's carbon-neutral, in theory. I await that particular company's prototype, to see how it performs in reality.
Well this is an epic history for steam engines.
Can't wait to see where this turn out.
All though it's an intriguing idea, it wouldn't surprise me. It probably would end up not doing so good. It reminds me much of the cancelled ACE (American Coal Enterprise) 3000 Series Project where they attempted to bring steam locomotives back due to the fuel economy and the cold war. Coal ended up being reduced to cheap prices again and steam was considered to be phased out much too quickly at that time in America. The idea this group's attempt is so much different from that of the ACE project, as they wanted to create a steam locomotive that is featured with modern technology such as a boiler that is controlled by using a computer, and using diesel locomotive body designs to be the main body casing for both ends to lessen the need of a turntable for it. But it ended up being cancelled as no-one was interested in it, and that the oil pricing eventually dropped back down as the biggest nail in the coffin. Thus the prototype was never built, as a result.
All ready nitpicky issues with the cancelled project and its design started to unfold in today's age for how it wouldn't work out back then compared to now. Railfans are sure to complain about this conventional project as well. Even if it looks exciting to see being pulled off. We can't know for certain what the outcome would be if they eventually get by with solving the problems from the past or if this would be a success at all. We'll just have to wait and see what the outcome will be before we jump to any conclusions.
I don't think creating the infrastructure to produce and distribute hydrogen would be that much cheaper than just electrifying the whole network
How about the UK comes into the 21st century and finishes electrification?
We Poles would help, if our railway companies and the PKP weren't trying to be better than the other for 5 seconds by selling off useful stock and buying new stock from..*checks date* 2010.
@@ukaszwalczak1154ach, gdyby nie rzeź połączeń polska kolej byłaby w dużo innym miejscu niż teraz
gentle reminder that nuclear IS steam, just with an extra step, the nuclear fuel superheats pressurized water, the superheated water runs through a coil of tubes to heat more water that turns into steam, and the steam powers a turbine that generates electric power
if we want to be really clean, compressed air engine, pull a vacuum in one air tank, pressurize another air tank, let the pressurized air run through the engine to generate electric to power the train, we don't even necessarily need to stop pressurizing the high pressure tank after we've used everything from the vacuum tank, if we want to be really fancy, we can fill the high pressure tank with something like liquid nitrogen, and as it warms up the high pressure escaping nitrogen can run the train
pros: simple, clean, can theoretically run ANY engine that doesn't apply direct mechanical power, highlights the fact that anything that doesn't burn fossil fuels is technically a battery locomotive, as it is charged with electric, given a low voltage onboard compressor it can extend its own range and draw on the grid to "refuel" itself, saves weight versus batteries
cons: range and power, has probably been tried before but those were before modern materials, modern tolerances, and computers, ultimately has never been given a fair test but the fact there's been any testing is going to discourage investors from giving it an updated honest trial
1:37 "ahead of the 200th anniversary of railways" You do realise that two oldest surviving steam locos were built in 1813 & 1814 ie Puffing Billy & it's sister loco, Wylam Dilly? the oldest is 211 years old
we are back steam team
“Hey Diesel!”
“I’m a steam engine.”
“What?!”
Steamed Hams?
@@Trainskitsetc yessh
*_SEYMOUR!_*
@@Combes_ SUPERINTENDENT, i was just, uh, ju- just stretching my calves on the windowsill, isometric exercise! Care to join me?
All very interesting, but the best way forward is always going to be electrification. Nothing, short of rocket propulsion, will accelerate a vehicle like electric motors will. Instant, flat torque curve that no piston or turbine-based system can match, and with no need for gearing. Keep up the research though.
And where do we get that electricity our power grid is stretched beyond its limit as it is.
Madness. We have steam power at home, with stationary power stations. Deliver the power via overhead cables and have clean filtration at the stationary generator, or use nuclear.
We have thorium. It's an order of magnitude more abundant than uranium and it's a waste product of granite quarrying in Cornwall.
If I look at the needed added infrastruckture, and facilities, I cant imagine this going to be a sucses, the fact that diesel traction is even still a thing is actually mindbogling.. And no im not a hater here, I'm actually A steam engine Driver and enigineer.
If there is no water (15:22), then it's technically a hydrogen-fueled turbine engine. The name "steam engine" for something just because it exhausts steam is as silly as "steam and smoke" engine for a diesel engine. Or calling a steel mill a "slag mill" because it's waste is slag.
If the combustion heat is being used to generate steam in a separate vessel (i.e. a boiler) then the "steam engine" moniker is appropriate. (I see no obvious reasons besides added equipment/complexity that there couldn't be two sets of turbines: a closed-cycle boiler-fed one and an open-cycle burner-fed one.)
@@alexhajnal107yes but only if water is boiled is it a steam engine, otherwise a type of gas turbine
Yes. Following the convoluted logic of this video, if hydrogen is combusted internally in an ICE engine then that ICE engine can also be called a steam engine. The hydrogen and air turn into steam inside the cylinder, that doesn't make it a steam engine. Combusting hydrogen in a turbine isn't, in that sense, any different that combusting it in an ICE engine.
It's only a steam engine, in the long-accepted understanding of the term, if combustion heats water externally of the engine, be it cylinders or a turbine.
We're back baby! -bender the robot
It would be more efficient to power the locomotives with hydrogen fuel cells that to boil water with it.
Fuel cells are more efficient than rail steam engines to use the expensive hydrogen .
This is what they used on the Nuclear Power Plants. They used the heat from a nuclear reactor and water for steam and the steam would be injected into a turbine chamber to produce the spinning motion for the production of electricity. But what people generally miss is the sight and sound of the old steam locomotive. I rode on a steam locomotive in the Grand Canyon about 20 years ago. It was a lot of fun.
now this I did not expect
Thank you for mentioning the cutting off of fuel for heritage railways for the sake of greenwashing.
Big diesels are now over 50% fuel efficient. The laws of physics mean that steam can’t even get close to that.
In theory.
But that's not the point. No big diesel, however efficient, can ever be zero emission.
If you mean the really big diesels, then yes. But we're talking here about the gigantic "cathedral" diesels used in massive container ships and even more massive oil tankers, where the engine itself is the size of a 3 storey building and literally has big steel staircases bolted to the side of it so maintenance workers can climb up from the crankcase to the cylinder heads. These have displacements measured in cubic metres, power outputs measured in megawatts and turbochargers larger than the biggest jet engines.
They are essentially a working example of the economies of scale, proof that making a diesel engine larger is the most straightforward way to make it more efficient. In fact the only heat engine which achieves greater efficiency is a combined-cycle gas-fired power station, which runs big industrial gas turbines (usually burning natural gas, though they can run almost as well on LPG), which are themselves somewhere between 35% and 40% efficient on their own. The higher efficiency is gained by using the hot exhaust from the gas turbines to run thermal recovery boilers, which feed steam to an additional set of steam turbines. This can bring the overall efficiency up to approximately 55% - which is better than the enormous diesels, but not by all that much.
Smaller diesels generally don't achieve much greater than 40% - certainly the largest diesels you can fit into a train are unlikely to manage any more than that.
@@lloydevans2900 A large four stroke diesel that fits into a train gets about 40%, and a two stroke gets about 50%.
The laws of physics say that powerplants are rather ran on steam than on diesel.
Not only that they can achieve 60% efficiency, but the steam powered things can run on just about anything that burns.
Syngas? Coal? flammable garbage?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combined_cycle_power_plant#Efficiency
IMHO, quite a useful feat, though I guess these guys are just trying to make another CNG-powered thing.
Having worked on restored steam I can tell you why the railroads gave up on it, high maintenance costs. It just takes a lot more labor to keep a steam locomotive running; boiler washes, water tanks, thermal stresses in the boiler, boiler expansion and contraction putting a strain on the locomotives plumbing, wheels going out of round, cleaning the firebox, pounding of the rods, etc., etc.
And it's going to be less expensive to maintain 15 small power plants than one big one?
BOYS WAKE UP BRITISH RAIL IS BRINGING BACK STEAM
So basically it's a hydrogen fuel cell train under a fancy PR-name :P
Wow and I thought American railroads were bending over backwards and doing everything they could to not do the obvious next step in rail traction which is just putting up wires for electric trains.
Honestly I do see a future in steam power but honestly that's just in the context of what the 5AT was doing, expanding on the traditional stephensonian locomotive mainly to keep heritage steam going. Maybe also what the Mackwell company in New Zealand with energy sovereignty are doing but that's non-railway stuff. There are also a handful of modern steam locomotives around, mostly rebuilds like the red devil or DLMs Kreigslok but there are a few newbuilds, those all of course are still traditional steam engines though. Honestly I don't really see the point in New steam for revenue service, even if diesels have their flaws the answer isn't steam engines and honestly diesels were never the answer either. The future is electric and has been since the New York Central ran the first electric hauled train in 1899 the rail companies just don't wanna commit due to the large upfront cost of installing overhead wires or third rail.
several places had electric locos and emus before the nyc did. including liverpool and berlin and even hungarian railways.
If it succeeds, it would be a proof of the old adage "what's old is new again".
2:42 Space shuttles burn liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen and produce huge amount of heat and water in the form of steam. So they are steam powered. Change my mind.
I won't try to. Semantics can be convoluted. A standard automobile engine converted to run on hydrogen turns hydrogen and air into steam inside the cylinder - so that can be called a steam engine.
But before we cause societal collapse, there is such a thing as a common understanding of terminology...
Fossil fuels are dead remains of plants and animals. Animals get energy by eating plants. Plants all get energy by photosynthesis. So they get power from solar. So in the end fossil fuels are solar powered.
I've been thinking about a design like this for several years and unsure how to demonstrate it.
Though a major difference: Steamology seems to want to do series hybrid where turbines generate electricity and the main mover is electric motors.
My idea was basically to have driveshaft bogies, and two movers: a many-cylinder piston motor, a turbine, and a clutch to select between them for running in low and high speed.
I'd recommend the concept of the 5AT Advanced Technology Steam Locomotive for a futuristic Steam Locomotive idea. 😊
"hydrogen extraction can be non-ecofriendly" is a hell of an understatement. the only hydrogen production happening at scale, and the only production planned at scale in the foreseeable future, is all fossil fuel based. electrolysis is not economical primarily due to the energy cost, but also your electrodes and membranes and stuff are all consumable. but, lets imagine we pull off such a huge renewable transition that energy is cheap enough to make actual green hydrogen production practical. now your electrical energy is being converted into chemical energy through hydrolysis, plus a bunch more energy is thrown away to compress the hydrogen for transport, then you're burning the hydrogen to convert it into thermal energy, then you're using that thermal energy to spin a turbine, to generate electricity, to power an electric motor. the wildly optimistic end-to-end efficiency is gonna be what, 20%? 30%? and oops, at both ends of this convoluted chain of conversion, we have electricity. just put up some damn wires! overhead electrification solved this entire problem space, and it did so over a century ago. it's deployed, at scale, all over the world today. the only thing you need to deploy it is the political will to build environmentally friendly infrastructure, and defend it from sci-fi bullshit like this.
10:48 Is it really a matter of "appearing" eco friendly? Really? Certainly all the violent crack downs on the 80s miner's strikes were seemingly to appear "stability friendly"?
Here in the USA things evolved differently than in Britain. 1st we copied British designs. Our environment was very different. In the USA:
‐ longer distances
- higher altitudes
- steeper grades
- more expensive labor costs
This resulted in locomotives evolving differently. The classic being the 4-4-0 American which was mostly fueled on wood.
Wood was replaced by coal because it was more efficient, even though the coal was more expensive.
The next big step was augers to deliver the coal to the engine without humans. This was followed by oil which was even easier to handle and more efficient. Steam turbines or try but we're overtaken by electrified lines and Diesel electric locomotives. By 1960 the last steam locomotive was taken out of regular Mainline service. Since then it has been a battle between diesel electric and electrified lines .
British railway engineer H G Ivatt visited the States after WWII and was apparently impressed with some of the innovation that American engineers were applying to steam powered locomotives and may well have introduced them over here but the railways were nationalised around the same time and this inevitably led to government interference. Some locomotives were fitted with mechanical stokers but this was just before the decision was made to phase steam out in favour of diesel and electric traction so nothing much came of it.
“The BOYS are back in town, boys back in town.”
-The Boys-
Has anyone bothered to see how many things there are in life that are made from oil, and come up with how they are going to manage without it? There is a reason why it has worked for so long.
Insanity!!! It's an eco-lunatic driven folly!!!!
In Germany many steam engines were converted to actual oil steam engines; instead of coals raw oil was injected to fire it up. But there's another interesting option; at factories with high risk of explosion, which meant traditional steam engines as well as diesel nor electric engines were an option, they used steam storage locomotives; allthough only for low speed shunting. The steam would be stored in big tanks, and the engine used to have to refill once in a while; yet with no fire or heating involved. Just compressed steam. Maybe that's an idea.
*Never going to happen!*
*Pure clickbait!*
The loco shown at the 3.59 mark wasn't an attempt at improving steam at all. It was an Austrian prototype electric freight loco, the long boiler like barrel contained a rotary converter used to provide a controlable DC supply from a fixed frequency AC supply. The Swiss locos shown later came about due to wartime coal shortages and reverted to as built condition after the war.
I have drawings for a two piston steam locomotive using a gated piston, as I call it. For every stoke of the piston, two revolutions of the wheels are obtained greatly increasing efficiencies and speed.
loving the fact that new steam is becomming a thing
also loving the fact that i'm not the only one to think about turning electric kettle technology into usable steam traction, not quite how i envisioned it but then battery technology of the time wasn't quite as advanced as it is now, considering electric car batteries are getting better and better, whats stopping in the future having large kettle elements inside existing steam engines, swapping the coal for batteries of a usable voltage, yet keeping steam engines looking as they should be
The "Beyond 2000" TV program in the early 1990s had a segment on an Italian steam locomotive that ran on kerosene. It had 16 cylinders in a radial pattern
it was also mentioned in the Economist magazine. There was a prototype but the project was abandoned when the oil price collapsed in the 1990s.
You can also run steam locomotives on alcohol, a more convenient fuel than hydrogen, which is difficult to package and leaky.
Piston steam engines are actually widely used today to produce the steam used to sterilise equipment in hospitals. They either use a "dry" engine (like a locomotive) or a "wet" engine like the one mentioned, where the tubes are filled with water. The steam engine is usually in the hospital basement. Most electricity is produced using steam turbines of course.
I have a brilliant innovative idea for reviving the railways: make all railways have a slight downward inclination. Then you could just push your train a bit to go wherever you want to go.
15:52 . The only problem with so called clean hydrogen is that it takes about fifteen times as much energy to produce transport and store as any other fuel and about 99% of hydrogen comes from steam catalysis reformation of natural gas or coal gas. So about the only benefit is not releasing the alleged pollutants in the location of use but releasing many times more in another location.
Electrolysis of water is rarely used for bulk hydrogen production as it requires very pure water to prevent the precious metals in the reactor from being destroyed and even then they erode away fairly quickly.
I read about it when they mentioned it but it’s nice to finally see a video about it.
Has someone finally figured out the complimentary nature of battery power and regen in tandem with high pressure steam? Hell electric preheating seemed like an obvious solution that BR ignored.
I'm annoyed why it's happening now and not 15 years ago but I should be glad, right?
Hydrogen is a bad bet.
Difficult to stop leakages, low energy density and highly energy consumptive in manufacture. Either forcing water and gas to react at 700C, or use +50kWh and 9l of water for 1Kg of H2. It's not worth the effort compared to modern batteries.
6:21 Great Scotland Yard. It's LNER Gresley A4 Streamlined Pacific Sir Nigel Gresley A Bit Like Mallard From The National Railway Museum In York In Yorkshire. Thanks Mate. X❤
Are you familiar with an engineer from Australia, Sam Mackwell by name? He’s working to revolutionize steam technology, too, and recently, he’s been working on a project to build a prototype steam locomotive that could run on sugar cane, e-coal, and water. He’s got a RUclips channel to show his progress, as well as his own engineering company website, I highly recommend you look him up.
In Swizerland an ex german BR 52 steam loco got an upgrade with a high efficent diesel burner - and this historic beauty was as efficent as a similar powerfull diesel engine. Quite impressive.
But... : maintenance is very complicated, which makes the diesel much cheaper to run.
And use hydrogen makes sense, but only with hydrogen fuel cells - which makes it another electric train.
I am definitely looking forward to content on the 5AT and other improved designs (Red Devil, etc.)
Hydrogen isn't a fuel. It's a storage medium. Anyone who understands basic thermodynamics knows that you lose a significant portion of the energy you put into the hydrogen via the second law. Electric motors on the other hand are typically more than 80% efficient ( E out / E in ). Add to that all the infrastructure necessary to make and transport "green" hydrogen safely and efficiently and it becomes apparent that apart from a few niche applications, hydrogen is a poor choice for powering anything that moves.
As much as I like the idea - there are a few inherent problems with this design:
- Turbines rev high - but have little torque. A gearbox changing that to low rev - high torque is naturally very inefficient
- As mentioned - hydrogen is only green if generated by green sources. With today's tech, conversion losses are quite high
- Converting existing engines are little less effort (and cost) than building new ones from scratch
- As mentioned, rpms have to be changed a lot - turbines aren't ideal for that
It's a lot easier to use modern Diesels (see DARPA engine) or to upgrade the existing ones.
Keep the old block. Use new pistons, piston rods etc. with optimised geometry and made of modern alloys. Put on modern, flow-optimised cylinder heads with new valves, high-pressure injection, improve turbocharging with modern turbos, improve intercooling, add modern ECU. Optimize intake and exhaust system, add catalytic converters and particle filters.
Furthermore, power can be boosted (and emissions improved) by adding LPG (needs separate tank and refueling) to the combustion.
All in all, rail is naturally exponentially more efficient than trucks/lorries. The oldest and dirtiest train beats the most clean and efficient truck (even EV) hands down.
The sad thing is, there is no shortage of coal. We have plenty of relatively clean burning Welsh steam coal we just aren't digging it up.
Duck: who is revolutionary now?
Diesel: well fu-
Mrs Richards: "I paid for a room with a view !"
Basil: (pointing to the lovely view) "That is Torquay, Madam ."
Mrs Richards: "It's not good enough!"
Basil: "May I ask what you were expecting to see out of a Torquay hotel bedroom window ? Sydney Opera House, perhaps? the Hanging Gardens of Babylon? Herds of wildebeest sweeping majestically across the plains?..."
Mrs Richards: "Don't be silly! I expect to be able to see the sea!"
Basil: "You can see the sea, it's over there between the land and the sky."
Mrs Richards: "I'm not satisfied. But I shall stay. But I expect a reduction."
Basil: "Why?! Because Krakatoa's not erupting at the moment ?"
We need to start with Prof. Diesel's quest, thermal efficiency, getting the most work out of the fuel. The diesel engine has three to four times that of a steam locomotive. Might look back in history, the steam powered riverboat was invented about 1810 and by 1820 they were about everywhere, but ocean travel by steamers on a very large scale didn't happen until the 1870s, what happened? Well there were a fair number of steamers before then but their major cargo was the fuel to run them, by the end of the voyage this included the furniture in the Saloon. What did happen was the development of the multiple reduction steam engine with high pressure cylinders, middle pressure, and finally low pressure, the Titanic took this formula to its ultimate, adding a fourth stage steam turbine to catch the last breath of energy from the steam, some steam vessels condensed the steam using the vacuum generated to suck the piston down rather than pushing it with pressure. Other developments included condensing the steam and reusing it as feedwater and not running any salt water through the boiler. Railways in South Africa did this in desert zones where water was not available. Another big factor in efficiency was replacing iron with steel that allowed much higher pressure in the boiler and pipelines.
A French railway engineer named Mallet (silent T) developed a practical two reduction system that greatly increased steaming efficiency. Steam turbines can be very efficient but they like to operate at relatively constant speeds and power outputs. They work very well in ships as the power needs of the propellor match the output power of the turbine and ships generally cruise at steady speeds during the bulk of their voyage. The Pennsylvania RR experiment with a turbine engine showed its limitation in RR use. It could pull a heavy passenger train at high speed exceptionally well but was very weak at starting and low speed. It's other limitation was that it could easily use more steam than the boiler could deliver, stalling the train until steam could be raised again. Engineers overcame the reversing issue by having a second much smaller turbine with much more gearing handle that task, this also overcame the starting issue but it only worked in reverse. Another issue comes to mind the rod type steam engines even with well calculated wheel weighting (counterweights) still has a LOT of unbalanced forces when the speed gets very high. Geared engines have been successful in switching and logging operations but a very slow. This is also an issue with diesels, early attempts had driving systems much like trucks mechanically coupling the engine to the wheels, even to having the operator shift gears as speed changed, thank the Lord for the twin disc clutch, eh? The UK and Germany did a lot of work with diesel hydraulic but in the end it couldn't match the diesel electric idea. The next good feature of the diesel electric is that ALL of the weight is on the drivers including the fuel, some steamers used booster engines on the pilot and trailing trucks, some even on the tender, but the task of getting steam to these was a nightmare but when it worked it improved starting and low speed operation. Problem is you are adding another complexity to an already complex system.
An electrically fueled boiler would be very efficient since no heat comes out of the smokestack (there isn't one) but where did you get the juice in the first place, in most regions the electricity comes from steam engines powering generators. Fired boilers are relatively efficient, it is the engine in a steamer that is the problem. Let talk about the H word. There is absolutely no free hydrogen on planet earth, all of it is bound up with something else, say like oxygen (water) or carbon (hydrocarbons say like diesel fuel or natural gas). Most commercial H is produced by stripping the carbon off natural gas leaving us with H and CO2, lots of CO2, isn't that what we don't want? This significantly reduces the thermal output vs the input and is rather costly. Even more costly is the alternative, electrolysis, that junior high science demonstration where a little electricity makes hydrogen and oxygen in a pair of balloons generally ending with a pop as the H balloon is exploded, Ah yes! But my motorcycle uses 4000 of these pops every minute, ok, add more electricity, a lot more. It would take about 40kwh to make the equivalent of a gallon of diesel. Have you looked at electric rates recently?
Long run I'd expect most main line rails to be electrified but this is quite expensive, meanwhile diesel electric locomotives will pull the freight.
So did you know in the80s SLM in winterthur Switzerland built hyper modern steam engines ?
They also don't require any additional large scale infrastructure like overhead wires. I hope this will turn out to be a viable alternative
In an ideal world, we find an alternate, eco-friendly and sustainable way to run steam engines. But more than anything, I just want trains to look cool again!
Just use light oil as the fuel. Emissions from rail are insignificant.
What a superb video! Very informative and narrated by a human being with a personality and not AI. I, as a Freightliner driver look forward to the development of this new technology with great interest and enthusiasm.
Hydrogen will bankrupt anyone who tries to use it as fuel. On top of that it's highly expensive to maintain a steam engine. Actually diesel locos have saved railroaders from bankruptcy. The best way to go is to electrify all the railways.
I think that they should make a new "Copy" of the Leader. I would like to have seen it working, but that was scrapped before I was born. Brand new steam locomotives have been built, using the original design, and maybe this one could bring people in to see it.
It is not really a steam locomotive but turbine locomotive.
Also that Swiss steam shunter with pantograph was an emergency wartime measure. Switzerland was importing all its coal, which was very scarce during World War II. On the other hand it had plentiful electric energy from hydroelectric dams. So they converted the steam boiler into electric boiler.