How might we plan for the sustainability of steam powered heritage rail, while being friendly to the climate?

[Florence Locomotive Works]

This is something I have been giving great thought to over the past few years.

 

 

Will we see a return of steam locomotives with modern developments on railways, mostly motivated by the climate situation?

 

It has been estimated by the owners of the one locomotive running today with modern refinements pioneered by Livio Dante Porta and Andre Chapelon that when burning light oil the boiler produces 80% less emissions than the best of currently available diesel engines. That engine is the rebuilt german BR 52 2-10-0 rebuilt and owned by DLM AG, of Switzerland.

 

Of course they could go further with this engine in many respects, as at its heart it is a mass produced austerity design with its roots going back to the early 1920s. But what if we made something completely knew with the aid of CAD and such. Of course there is the 5AT project, but that seems to have fallen under a bit.

 

There is also much in the way of compounding to be explored.

 

 

I think that first someone would start off making a mathematical model of how the engine would perform and then proceed to run this in some sort of simulator, and then they would move onto a 15 inch gauge model, used for real world testing. Then they would more than likely have to appeal to a government to get money for the full size.

 

Opinions, thoughts and comments are welcome. No engineer bashing please.

 

 

Douglas

Edited September 15, 2021 by Florence Locomotive Works

[J. S. Bach]

NO!

[Florence Locomotive Works]

3 minutes ago, J. S. Bach said:

NO!

go on...

[DavidB-AU]

I doubt it. The next revolution in locomotives will be hydrogen. All the big manufacturers are working on it. 

 

Cheers

David

[DCB]

23 minutes ago, DavidB-AU said:

I doubt it. The next revolution in locomotives will be hydrogen. All the big manufacturers are working on it. 

 

Cheers

David

Locomotives and heavy plant and long haul HGVs will be going fuel cell and probably Hydrogen, though I understand they can also use oil fuels .  I reckon by 2035 hydrogen fuelled cars will be making big inroads into the sales of environmentally unfriendly battery powered vehicles, especially as Petrol companies can convert filling stations to Hydrogen much more easily than to provide electric charging stations.  An electric charging station has recently been approved near meat Bourton on the Water. but fast charging harms batteries.   Again Battery cars with their nightmare end life battery disposal problems and lousy range may well be seen as old hat.    Sadly I'll be, well, pretty old. by then, still my Rover will be tax exempt like my Ariel and Moto Guzzi so I guess I had better fill the bath with petrol before it runs out.

[Wickham Green too]

Of course you need some other SOURCE of energy to extract hydrogen from seawater - so what are you going to START with ?

[LMS2968]

15 minutes ago, Wickham Green too said:

Of course you need some other SOURCE of energy to extract hydrogen from seawater - so what are you going to START with ?

Electricity - again! The amount of electrical power which natural resources will need to generate, and the national grid's ability to carry it, are items generally glossed over by the environmental bodies.

[Wickham Green too]

Not to mention the OIL ( = fossil fuel ) needed to make plastic to insulate all those cables and for the blades & columns of wind turbines ......... then there are different ( silicon ? ) material needed to make solar panels - and I've no idea what the environmental impact of extracting them is !

[doilum]

Gravity worked inclines?

[Wickham Green too]

Not if you want to go up in this world !

[Michael Hodgson]

Couldn't you just do away with the firebox and replace the coal compartment of the tender with a pantograph to run a great big immersion heater?  You would not have to change engines every 100 miles or so as was necessary using dirty fuel, so you could use the same loco all day - so you'd have to bring back water troughs.

 

Why confine this brilliant idea to the third world?  Is it to promote their tourist industry?

[Boris]

I'm not sure the idea has much merit for most main line applications but if it's not obscenely expensive it could be what the preservation sector in the UK needs instead of coal.  Definitely a more constructive answer than just saying no!

 

 

[Flying Pig]

12 hours ago, Florence Locomotive Works said:

Will we see a return of steam locomotives with modern developments on railways, mostly motivated by the climate situation?

 

It has been estimated by the owners of the one locomotive running today with modern refinements pioneered by Livio Dante Porta and Andre Chapelon that when burning light oil the boiler produces 80% less emissions than the best of currently available diesel engines. That engine is the rebuilt german BR 52 2-10-0 rebuilt and owned by DLM AG, of Switzerland.

 

 

What emissions are they talking about?  I'd be astonished if the steamer emitted 80% less carbon dioxide per unit of work than a modern diesel.

[Florence Locomotive Works]

37 minutes ago, Flying Pig said:

 

 

What emissions are they talking about?  I'd be astonished if the steamer emitted 80% less carbon dioxide per unit of work than a modern diesel.

Agreed, I think it was either on their website or the engines Wikipedia.

[Wickham Green too]

1 hour ago, Flying Pig said:

What emissions are they talking about?  I'd be astonished if the steamer emitted 80% less carbon dioxide per unit of work than a modern diesel.

May be specifically talking about the minute particulates diesels are notorious for ...... good ol' steam clag is far less damaging to health !

[Nearholmer]

2 hours ago, Michael Hodgson said:

Couldn't you just do away with the firebox and replace the coal compartment of the tender with a pantograph to run a great big immersion heater?  

It was done to a few locos in Switzerland during WW2 as an emergency stopgap.

 

The “remote and undeveloped” countries in the question would,presumably, need something to burn in these locos, so if they have that they may well find it more efficient to burn it in power station and use the resulting electricity by one means or another, to power their trains, given that, within practical limits, the bigger the steam plant the more efficient it can be made. If they are sunny or windy places, better still use solar or wind generation. If they have hills, mountains and water, they are in paradise, because hydro-electric railways are about the least environmentally impacting form of transport on the planet.

 

I think if I was trying to devise a low-tech answer to low-emission rail traction, provided my “remote and undeveloped” place could grow plants, I’d probably look to ferment plants to create methane and/or alcohol, which I could then use as fuel in a “petrol” engine, and with even a fairly basic engineering workshop and materials, I could actually build such an engine - this approach was used quite happily in the early years of internal combustion rail traction, the 1890s - but, to get serious energy efficiency out of the system would really need more tech, to up the compression ratio, add turbo-charging, manage the engine firing angle and valve-events.

 

But, however hard I try, and by whatever route, if I used something carbon-based, I’m going to make some CO2, if not particulates.

 

I might just feed the plants to donkeys, and get them to pull the trains, maybe even trapping their emissions to fuel my home-made “petrol” engine, which could provide assistance on steep gradients - donkey f@rts must be a fairly green energy source.

 

What I probably wouldn’t do is build a Stephenson-type steam loco.

 

If you want a lot of calculations and graphs showing how far the Stephenson concept can be pushed, get hold of a copy of https://www.camdenmin.co.uk/products/the-red-devil-and-other-tales-from-the-age-of-steam But, I warn you: it’s hard going, and not for anyone without a decent grasp of maths and physics.

 

 

 

 

Edited September 15, 2021 by Nearholmer

[mdvle]

13 hours ago, Florence Locomotive Works said:

Will we see a return of steam locomotives with modern developments on railways, mostly motivated by the climate situation?

 

It has been estimated by the owners of the one locomotive running today with modern refinements pioneered by Livio Dante Porta and Andre Chapelon that when burning light oil the boiler produces 80% less emissions than the best of currently available diesel engines. That engine is the rebuilt german BR 52 2-10-0 rebuilt and owned by DLM AG, of Switzerland.

 

A look at the Wikipedia entries that you linked to indicate both of those people are 20+ years dead, and thus their comments about emissions are unlikely to be about CO2.

 

The bigger problem of course is that steam locos are far too labour intensive compared to the diesel loco, and finding a way for "clean" steaming doesn't solve that - and may in fact make things worse.

 

13 hours ago, Florence Locomotive Works said:

But what if we made something completely knew with the aid of CAD and such. Of course there is the 5AT project, but that seems to have fallen under a bit.

 

One of your linked people did try that back around 1980 - see the US ACE 3000 - https://locomotive.fandom.com/wiki/ACE_3000

 

 

[Wickham Green too]

Neither were the 'pre-plastic' versions required in anything like the quantities our 'modern' world demands ! ........ I'm not sure clearing the Amazon Jungle to plant rubber trees would be a very good idea. ( and I've no idea how you'd build an economically-viable off-shore wind farm out of 'traditional' materials )

[Florence Locomotive Works]

36 minutes ago, mdvle said:

A look at the Wikipedia entries that you linked to indicate both of those people are 20+ years dead, and thus their comments about emissions are unlikely to be about CO2.

I was referring to DLM AG.

[J. S. Bach]

13 hours ago, Florence Locomotive Works said:

go on...

It was already mentioned but I will add what I should have in the original post. Steam is way too labor intensive! One of the prime reasons that Diesels took over so rapidly.  Czech out the New York Central's Niagara (4-8-4) class. Built in the late 1940s (48, I think), gone by the mid 1950s; and they were just about the most efficient steamers built.

[Florence Locomotive Works]

This paper is also worth reading.

 

https://www.internationalsteam.co.uk/trains/newsteam/modern.htm

[Nearholmer]

29 minutes ago, Wickham Green too said:

and I've no idea how you'd build an economically-viable off-shore wind farm out of 'traditional' materials )

Ah, the economics change ……. I’m imagining large galleons with big old windmills on top.

 

Think of a cross between The Cutty Sark and these rather attractive traditional Majorcan pumping engines. A fleet of those would make the view from Brighton Beach a lot more interesting than it is now.

 

 

Edited September 15, 2021 by Nearholmer

[97406]

How about an nuclear powered steam locomotive?

[kevinlms]

6 minutes ago, 97406 said:

How about an nuclear powered steam locomotive?

Nothing nuclear, as it presents terrible problems with long term storage of waste.

[mdvle]

37 minutes ago, Florence Locomotive Works said:

I was referring to DLM AG.

 

Still doesn't change my reply.

 

Looking at their website their definition of clean is that it doesn't provide the "smoke" that coal does - there is nothing about it being better in terms of CO2 than diesel.

 

And burning oil isn't exactly new - it was common in the western parts of the US and Canada at the end of the steam era.  It didn't save steam locos then, it won't bring them back now.

 

Yes, they have other things that help with the reliability/labour issues - but nothing that will provide sufficient benefit to encourage railways to change.

 

So at best a solution for heritage operations - but in the grand scheme of things their CO2/other pollution are negligible to start with