Turbine Garratt Locomotive at Sheffield & DSMEE

Clip of the late Peter Southworth driving his experimental steam turbine powered Garratt locomotive at Sheffield & District SMEE on 4/07/2009. I'm delighted to be the custodian of this interesting machine now.

[@69woodburner]

Here is another quite long video of the loco taken when i first became the custodian. There is quite a lot of footage of the engine ruclips.net/video/XZWRAK9H4c4/видео.html

[@exveefan]

is there anymore information about this loco?

[@69woodburner]

Hi, thanks for the interest. This is a 5" gauge turbine powered Garratt type loco, built by the late Peter Southworth who is driving in the video clip. This is the 3rd version he built and has a single stage Stumpf turbine with 3 nozzles for forward. There is a more simple reverse turbine on the same shaft with a single nozzle. The boiler has a working pressure of 100psi, there is a main stop valve where you would normally find a regulator. The front bogie has a dog clutch to disengage the turbine for warming up and clearing condensate. During normal operation it is in permanent engagement. The power is controlled by choosing how many nozzles are fed with steam from 1 to 3. The turbine runs at around 30k rpm and develops 250W of power. To stop you have to close those and open the reverse nozzle. There are 2 boiler feed pumps to keep the water level up.You have to drive with the steam blower on slightly as the exhaust from the turbine has insufficient energy to draw the fire hard enough. She murders coal and water but is very unusual to see and hear. I'm lucky to be the custodian of this unique loco, which of course is full size and not a model of anything larger. There is a Mk4 turbine bogie which has a 2 stage Curtis turbine, but this is not as effective, I suspect the boiler pressure isn't high enough for the second stage to cause more than drag. Happy to answer any questions you have.

[@69woodburner]

Here is a link to me having a go before I became the owner. m.ruclips.net/video/UjIQ95uAkW0/видео.html

[@jamespowell7302]

@@69woodburner What is this madness? We (dad and I) did some serious looking at the various turbine driven model loco's in the late 80's (before the French 7.25" one was in Model Engineer), but never progressed beyond eying up the concepts. I'm the custodian of a Darjeeling D class in 5", that needs finishing (so 0-4-0-0-4-0, at ~3 3/4" scale), and are working on an at home railway (Canadian Puget Sound II). Our ideas mostly revolved around something like a NYC Hudson Boiler supplying steam.
When we had custody of a loco with a bit of a hunger problem, we said it belonged to the "New River Coal Company", because it needed a River AND a coal mine ! (as do Armstrong rollers in full size...). It turns out, that the rebuilt (not by us) chassis had a few little problems. Like the piston valves were short. 0.125 or so short... Mostly, it's amazing how inefficient a steam engine can be and still drag me around.

[@69woodburner]

@@jamespowell7302 HA ha. Yes it is unusual to say the least and causes a lot of interest wherever I take it. This engine is certainly one from the New River Coal Co. fleet, it murders coal and water. There is a reasonable description above. Peter started by building an 0-6-0 and went through 2 different Sweet Pea boilers before switching to the Garratt layout. It causes a stir when I take it visiting.
I also have a Darjeeling class D based loco in 3.5" gauge and a friend has a 5" one to complete. My baby one has a boiler 5" longer than scale and is 5 feet 2 inches long in working order. It is essentially based on two 0-4-0 Simplex motion sets. In British terms it has the boiler of a 5" gauge pacific and the cylinders the size of a %" GWR King.