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Showing results for 'turbomotive' in content posted in Imaginary Locomotives.
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Debatable. They both sound like good ideas, but have drawbacks in day-to-day railway use; remember, the idea isn't just to build things that work, enny fule can do that, but that work profitably. HP marine-type boilers are a little delicate for the rough'n'tumble of railway work, and therefore are only practicable on duties where the profitable income offsets the increased maintenance and down-time; the LNER could not find such a duty. Turbines work most efficiently at full chat, and are not suited to the constant throttle setting changes of railway work up hill and down dale, though Turbomotive successfully worked the 10.00 Liverpool Lime Street-Euston and return, one of the heaviest jobs in the country and often loading to 16 bogies, for many years. It was rebuilt into conventional form when the boiler needed replacing in 1952, suggesting that it was not worth continuing with in turbine form in post-war conditions. The problem with constantly changing throttle settings on turbines was mechanical, and not to do with steam-raising. By the late 30s, and certainly as built under Bullied, Ivatt, and Riddles' direction, boilers had become very efficient indeed as steam passages were improved, and there was probably little need to consider hp. Turbines had a place in railway work, but nowhere proved to be ideal for general duties. By the end of WW2, the need was for easily and quickly prepped locos with high availability that could be used with poor coal and limited shed staff, and the design problems were around hammer-blow and forward visibility. The obvious way forward was with diesel and electric traction, but in the UK the war-damaged economy prevented electrification and the lack of generators of suitable small size and high power restricted the development of diesel-electric traction for at least another decade. There might have been a case for turbines with hp boilers on the Tyne Dock-Consett, Port Glasgow-Motherwell, and Newport-Ebbw Vale iron ore trains, all consistently uphill loaded drags. In the event Riddles-designed 2-10-0s proved adequate.
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Funny, doesn't look like a Buick to me. (So many layers to that joke) Unrelated, a thought I've had recently that may have already been brokered here. Would have combining a high-pressure boiler, like the Yarrow on 'Hush-Hush,' with a turbine-drive arrangement as on Turbomotive have improved the performance of either?
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The M1 was described at the time as a locomotive that carried it's own power station with it, fundamentally correct. The most efficient way to power locomotives is probably to use relatively small wheels powered by electric traction motors (for the sake of the discussion we will discount hydraulic transmission as something else for now, though of course it is a perfectly cromulent method). Large driving wheels are used to reduce piston speed in view of the limitations of lubricants used in the open air while maintaining decent express train speeds; Bullied's leader was in part an attempt to overcome this problem by enclosing the motion in an oil bath, but was not a success, nor ultimately was his oilbath valve gear on the pacifics. The future, in the 40s and 50s, looked very much like keeping lubricants away from the open air, which was problematic with reciprocal steam or the Turbomotive setup. Turbomotive and similar machines are a step away from Stephensonian reciprocal steam power, which is alleged to be inefficient because of it's thermal inefficiency; too much of the heat you consumed expensive fuel to produce is wasted up the chimney, (though this discounts the advantages of steam's expansive capability and the ability to mortgage the boiler for short periods if needed. Once a diesel or electric loco is at full power, that's it there's no more and some will overload if you try it in some circumstances). The problem is that turbines do not perform efficiently if you constantly change the load and power setting for them, as you have to on a railway locomotive; they are fine in power stations or driving ships where the load and settings can be left for long periods. In railway locos, they burn excess fuel and present maintanence issues. It is significant that Turbomotive's regular duty was the 10.00 Liverpool-Euston, a heavily loaded non-stop run recognised as one of the toughest firing jobs in the country, where the turbine could be allowed to develop constant full power, and that it was rebuilt as a conventioal Princess Royal, suggesting that while it had been successful as a turbo in that it worked fine, the advantages were not economically worth pursuing. This is an important point; locomotives have to pay their way by pulling trains to time while using the least possible fuel, and what the designers and engineers can provide might be impressive and wonderful, and certainly worth trying out, economic viability is the bottom line. The next step is to isolate the driving wheels from the turbine, and replace the gears with a turbine driven generator that powers traction motors, these traction motors being fundamentally the same same as those on diesel-electric locos. By now your locomotive doesn't look like a steam loco any more, and work is being done on fundamentally similar gas turbine setups. The reason for inserting a generator is that your turbine, steam or gas driven, can run efficiently at a constant speed while the jenny acts as a dampening device for the power supplied to the traction motors, enabling the driver to alter the amperage to them without disturbing the even tenor of the turbine's efficiency. It works, but it's heavy, noisy and you are constantly worried about the amount of fuel you are burning without it directly leading to pulling the train, back to the reciprocating steam thermal efficiency problem. So, why not produce the electricity at power stations, which you are doing already in any case, and provide it to the traction motors from overhead wires fed from the National Grid? The tech for driving trains in this way is well-established, though in most previous cases the railway has provided it's own power generation; it's mostly a matter of switchgear and rectifiers. It's pricey in terms of initial capital investment, but if the traffic demands warrant it and you can get the money out of the Treasury (blood out of a stone), it ticks all the boxes. Where you can't prise the wonga out of the Treasury or political interference prevents it, but you want to get rid of reciprocal steam because the chattering classes tell you it's old fashioned, you can use diesel-electrics, in which the amps are provided to the traction motors by a diesel engine and main generator on board the loco performing the function of the National Grid and OLE. Such locos are heavy and not as cost effective as your pure electrics, and are a bit feeble above 100mph, but not everywhere has the traffic to justify the cost of OLE. There is an alternative, hydraulic transmission, which is a bit lighter on the axles, but you've overdone the power/weight ratio deal and can't shoehorn in airbrake equipment on any of them but the Westerns, and you can't put eth/airco on those. If you make them powerful enough (not easy in the early days) they can have enough surplus horses to manage eth and airco so long as you can limit the load to about 10 coaches, but don't worry, it's the 70s and traffic is down anyway. By the time motorway gridlock and petrol prices send it back up again, more powerful electrics and the HSTs are available This is pretty much the development history of UK railways since the 1955 decision to scrap reciprocating steam to the present situation.
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But for WW2 ... Should Turbomotive 2 have been built with more, smaller, driving wheels to improve route availability by bringing the axle loading down from 22.5 tons/axle to 18 tons (as a 4-8-2) with the same 15'3" rigid driving-wheelbase and 4' wheels? Or even to 16 tons as a 4-10-2 and 'tiny' 3' wheels? This assumes leaving a fixed 12" between wheelsets for flanges, brakes, sanding, etc. I'm thinking (based on discussions on the Midland Railway thread) that the reason for big driving wheels on expresses is mostly about how to get steam power efficiently out of reciprocating mechanisms. I can absolutely see only making very minor changes between 6202 and her conventional sisters, but once proof-of-concept was done, more creativity could have been unleashed. If Turbomotive 2 was also 15" lower (the difference between driving wheel radii), would it have fitted better under overhead power lines, and generally, into the LMS loading gauge?
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In parallel to @rodent279's comments, the benefits of turbines are mostly relevant to tasks that push the envelope for high speed or high-power. They: - Eliminate the reciprocating masses except the connecting rods (relevant if you want a heavier loco than your CCE will let you have) - Eliminate having to use steam valves that actuate several times a second and need to function without significant leakage for scores of millions of actuations (faster than Mallard, or that poppet valves allow, anyone?) - Fit better into the UK loading gauge (Maximum 21.5" for outside cylinders, according to Churchward) - Perform best at constant duty. No shunting! - Based on Turbomotive, only add a small amount of weight, don't save a large amount of fuel. So if your turbine was designed as two 4Fs (2 times 850 hp at 25 mph) and fitted to a 1700 hp boiler it could do the Toton- run in place of a Garratt as part of an 0-8-0 or 2-8-0; the run was probably steady enough for it, although divided up in several sections. I have often wondered what would have happened if Stanier had proposed Turbo-Black 5s in place of the last batch of 4Fs. Would he have been allowed to use them on the routes that were restricted to the 18 tons/axle of the 4Fs? Would the smaller trains have been compatible-enough with constant loads? Unlikely on branch-lines, I suspect.
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I had two thoughts recently. Would the high-pressure boiler from Fury have done well feeding a turbine? Would a Ljungström-style turbine locomotive (like Turbomotive) been a good fit for the Toton run?
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Quite, and the old turbomotive’s job, another situation where continuous high power could be exploited to advantage.
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It also cut out the weight and complexity of steam->electricity->drives. It left you with overcoming the point that @The Johnster makes, that turbines are not equally good at every speed, they have an optimum rpm, and thus, with fixed-gearing* steam locomotives, an optimum speed. I think we just don't know whether Turbomotive was put on the toughest duty in LMS because it could be trusted to do it, or because it couldn't be trusted to do more variable duties efficiently/effectively. I suspect the former, and regard the latter as somewhat unproven. But I've done an embarrassingly little amount of research before reaching this position. *I shudder at the thought of having the task of developing synchromesh in the 1930s to apply gearing to 2,000 hp steam engines driven by men more used to getting there on time than protecting the mechanisms.
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There had been steam turbine-electrics before the Turbomotive; the direct drive cut out the losses from making electricty before applying it to the wheels. The later Gas turbine GT3 was similar, again after they'd tried gas turbine-electrics. Neither were repeated, but no doubt added to the sum of knowledge.
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Well, yes, no, and maybe. There's massive infrastructure cost in choosing to go electric (hence some de-electrification of long-ish outes in the USA when asset renewal was needed), and there's still a lot of bu$$eration (and some efficiency losses) in wanting to have simple, efficient 3-phase AC motors supplied from a single-phase AC supply. There's also some risk that overhead power lines won't fit into tunnels in the UK loading gauge (as at the Woodhead tunnel), and you need new bores, and the extra cost and delay. So, unless the government is paying, in a competitive market where the required payback times are short, I think I agree with conventional wisdom that you electrify short-haul commuter and the shorter mainlines, and retain carry-their-own-fuel technologies for freight, branch-lines, and the longer mainlines. Nowadays, diesels, HSTs, and small DMUs. That's a big jump from the Turbomotive concept, because it went steam turbine->Electric Generator -> Electric drives->wheels, instead of steam turbine -> gear-reduction->wheels. I'm suggesting that LMS + their turbine designers were moving in baby steps, and had solved/abated the problem with turbines that they don't vary their power output as readily as reciprocating steam systems. So step 1: take a powerful express design and replace Stephenson thinking with Ljungström thinking. Step 2 (once Step 1 has worked!) go over the design saying "What other changes in thinking does this allow us - as the next baby step?". I'm suggesting smaller wheels to get better route availability as one possibility.
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Have a look at the Chesapeake and Ohio M1 Steam Turbine locomotive. This may have been the way Turbomotive 2 could have gone? Paul
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I am emotionally attached to the chuff-chuff-chuff. But I'm also attracted to the efficiency opportunities that steam turbines provide if you combine them with articulated designs. I accept that for standard designs there isn't much in the way of benefit: Turbomotive was probably the same efficiency as her sisters given a statistical analysis, not the 6% better claimed. So less hammer on the track against a drive train that was worn out in only 10-12 years. But: an articulated 0-4-4-0 (in this duty) that follows Turbomotive's lead and retains enough energy in the steam to operate the boiler draft just from the front drive, and condenses the steam from the rear drive to recover the latent heat of vaporisation might give a big efficiency gain. It takes a lot of heat to convert water from a liquid to a gas/vapour, and throwing away all that heat just to shift air through a bed of coal seems a waste. In a previous life I also used big centrifugal blowers where the angle of the vanes was adjustable to vary the output. I wonder (I'm not an engineer) whether this could now be applied to locomotive turbines to make them more flexible in output. Turbines seem more likely to have made design advances since 1940 than reciprocating steam mechanisms.
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I think a turbo-8F would be more likely to follow the pattern of the Turbomotive pacific and look pretty much like a standard 8F as far forward as where the cylinders would usually be. It might even be possible to retain the 2-8-0 layout at the front. The Turbomotive had a large bulbous casing over the bogie, but oddly the drawings and photos suggest it was mostly empty. If that was the case, then the pony wheel would fit below the turbine exhaust ducting in its usual location. Otherwise, or if weight was an issue, a bogie arranged as on the Turbomotive could be used. The smokebox would in either case need to be lengthened forwards to accommodate the exhaust pipes and the running plate would need to be raised over the turbine casings. I doubt the expense of such a loco would be worthwhile for most of the kind of work the 8Fs did, though.
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A question really ... Was Turbomotive (LMS 6202) not actually an attempt to save coal and water compared to a reciprocating engine, but really an under-the-radar step on the way to a 150 mph steam engine? Put into simplistic terms, 7' wheels = 22' per revolution, and 22'/sec is 15 mph. This then means 10 revolutions per second for 150 mph, which mean all the slidey bits all have to go forwards and backwards 10 times a second, the steam valves have to full-open and full-close much faster than 10 times a second so that the steam can pass easily, even the steam has to accelerate and stop in some pipes 10 times a second. Worse as the wheels get smaller. Maybe Stanier thought that this was all more than the reciprocating technology could be asked to achieve, and that 150 mph reliably meant turbines, warts and all. This would also help explain it being dropped after WW2: the targets for the then-foreseable future (say 10 years) did not include 150 mph steam trains. 6202, designed at 2000 hp at 75 mph, then makes sense as a proving ground for the ability to use turbines to go fast with appreciable loads - and possibly explore some energy efficiencies.
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Correct AFAIK. Princess Anne was a rebuild of the 'Turbomotive', and effectively a brand new loco less than 2 months old, and destroyed in the accident, though the remains spent some time at Crewe being assessed for repair. It was eventually decided that there was too much damage, and she was written off, leaving an 8P sized gap in the LMR's allocation for the WCML. Riddles had been arguing for an 8P and was therefore given the opportunity. A 2-cylinder loco was initially considered in line with the practice of the day and the intention that no new multi-cyldiner designs were to be to be introduced as part of the Standard range. It proved impossible to manage with 2 cylinders at the required power output within the loading gauge, and a 3 cylinder design emerged. British Caprotti camshaft valve gear was adopted in order to be able to operate the inside cylinder valve gear from an idler shaft, overcoming issues experienced with Gresley conjugated, Thompson, Peppercorn, and Bullied valve gear, and to reduce the reciprocating mass and thus hammer blow. It might have been easier, and in the event less unsuccessful, to build a Peppercorn A1 for the WCML, but Riddles had seen his chance and went for it. The failure of the Duke may or may not have had an effect on the coup that removed him from his position within a year of the loco's introduction; my view is that the prevailing realpolitik of the day had already numbered his days in the big seat anyway. It certainly didn't help his cause, though!
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The heavier/more powerful the locomotive, the more hammer. The Chief Civil Engineer starts to get crabby, and you have to go down the Turbomotive/3-cylinder/Compound /articulated route.
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Both of which were written off after it, Windward Islands having broken it's back, a very rare outcome, in even very severe collisions as the structural integrity of the boiler and frames is immense, and as good an indication as any of the awful forces unleashed. The Liverpool 8P jobs, loading to 15 or 16 bogies, were recognised as amongst the heaviest on the WCML, which is why the Turbomotive was used on them, and it continued in this role after it's rebuild as Princess Anne, but the train it hauled for such a tragically short distance out of Euston that day was not overloaded, or double headed for that reason; Windward Islands was working home and attached to the train to save a path, according to Rolt in 'Red For Danger'. It has some bearing on the outcome of the crash, as all factors in such instances do, in that one might (I wouldn't, but one might) argue that had Windward Islands not been present, the accelleration up Camden Bank and further out would have not been as rapid, and Princess Anne's driver might have had a little more time to pull his train up and reduce casualties or even manage to stop short of the wreckage. These sorts of outcomes are down to luck, good or bad, and as it happened the Liverpool train piled in at a good speed while the last movements of the original collision were probably still in progress; there was no chance that the further disaster could have been avoided.
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Instead of the DP1 1955 prototype perhaps? It would be capable of ECML work, as of course the production Deltics were in reality, but I'm not sure the concept fits in to what EE were doing in the mid to late 50s. The problem was still at that time the provision of generators of sufficient capacity, of low enough all-up weight, and small enough size to fit into the UK loading gauge and within the axle loading limit (25t). It was this that engendered the WR's affair with hydraulics, and that led to the Co-Bo arrangement of the Metrovicks, and the plethora of Type 2s capable of being driven in multiple. It was fairly easy to build a Type 2 in the late 50s and to believe it was powerful enough; it wasn't, for reasons I will come back to. If you look at it from the perspective of the 1955 Modernisation Plan, what was required was a fleet of diesel locomotives to replace steam by 1970. The information that the tenders to British industry were based on was the power ratings obtained from testing steam locomotives at the new Rugby Testing Plant, and these were, apparently, not a reflection of the actual power that those locos could put out. It had been determined that 8P steam power equated to about 2k bhp, and 7MT to about 1.8k bhp. So, the early Modernisation Plan diesels (I'm going to call them MP for brevity) were ordered in 4 'type' power bands. They were stipulated to be a) British or build in the UK under licence, b) based on proven equipment and practice, and c) capable of multiple control from one traincrew in the leading cab. Now, let us consider the diesel electrics that preceeded them, the Ivatt twins and the Bullied 1Co-Co1s (Fell was an interesting dead end). Ivatt had studied US diesel electric practice and sailed home with the view that a loco of about 1.6k bhp could equate the work of a Black 5 and 2 of them in mulitple that of a Coronation, and decided that the engine should put out 1.600hp. My view is that events proved him ultimately correct. EE, GEC originally, had produced a power plant with a 1.6k output to the generator, which Ivatt used successfully in the twins. Bullied wanted more from a single loco, and this engine was uprated to 1.8k bhp to be used in multiple on 10101/2, which could work in mulitple, and extended to 2k bhp for 10103, which couldn't. But they were monsters, 1Co-Co1s weighing 140 tons or so! 10103 was the basis of the MP's class 40, a loco intended to be capable of replacing 8P steam. They were very quickly shown to be incapable of replacing 7MT Britannias out of Liverpool Street. The basic framework was adapted for use with a Sulzer 2.5k bhp power unit in the Peak classes, equally monstrously heavy and long, and none of them could work in multiple. 1955 MP proved hopeless at replacing 8P steam power, but EE in the same year got it half right with the 3.3k bhp Deltic, ordered in production for the ECML to replace their pacifics. I say half right, because the Deltics broke 2 of the MP's stipulations, being unprovenly equipped and not capable of working in multiple. They were prima donnas, not owned for some time by BR and maintained at Doncaster by EE engineers. They were big beasts, and would have been beyond the loading gauge for general use, but eventually saw service on the trans pennine route as well as Leeds and ECML. Steam timings were not significantly bettered by them, any timetable reductions coming from track realignments and upgrading, and they were spectacularly noisy and dirty; we loved them for this, but it did not endear them to the non-enthusiast world. They were, in short, not an unqualified success. Real improvements to what steam could do had to wait until the HST, a pattern followed on other routes. A 'Superdeltic' was argualby not needed, and certainly I doubt that it would have taken the form of a 1Co-Co1. A twin Co-Co+Co-Co or an articulated twin unit might have been able to put out 6.6k, but there was no work for it. The Superdeltic Class 50 style loco was to be a 4.4k bhp+ loco based on an enlarged and uprated DP2. The Class 50 was a bit of an emergency stop gap for the WCML which had had it's Weaver Jc-Motherwell electrification postoponed in 1966 and needed a 5.4k power source for it's promised timetable improvements. There was no diesel loco over 1.75k bhp that could be driven in multiple in 1966, and the DP2 concept was modified to provide one, the control gear giving much trouble in service. I would also suggest that, had the MP been aware of the real horsepowerage needed to equal, never mind better, steam performance with a bit of reserve to improve reliability and avoid the thrashing that destroyed the Warships and Canton's Hymeks (replaced Kings on the Paddingtons, come on...), the smallest locos would have been the Class 33 BRCW pocket rocket, Type 3 in a Type 2 bodyshell, capable of multiple working, brilliant little thing, and, notably, the same bhp as a single Ivatt twin. Nothing smaller was much use to be honest; the trip and pickup/branch work they'd been designed for and were anyway underpowered for was no longer there within a decade on the MP. Of course, the MP did not have the benefit of our 20/20 hindsight and were working, as I said, from flawed and incorrect Rugby information. Had it been a 1962 MP, we might have seen steam lasting until the early 70s and a railway based more or less on on 37s and 47s and 25kv 86s, with the 47s being capable of multiple working with the 37s and each other, a combination which could have handled any job on the railway with the 47s derated to 2.3k bhp for reliability. RR engined Class 17s would have done everything else, including replacing 08s which were not capable of replacing steam on trip work without getting in the way; too slow! 37/47 double headed multiple power would have been 4.05k bhp for a weight of 222tons, very reliable, and performance comparable to a Deltic (700+bhp more power but more dead weight. If we can uprate the 47 without compromising reliability the situation improves. This would be a phenomenally reliable setup in service; better than double heading 42s on the West of England main line or 50s on the WCML. No primadonna Deltics, dead end hydraulics, underpowered 40s, overweight Peaks, or pointless Type 2s. The day was saved eventually by the completion of the ECML and WCML electrifications and, elsewhere, by the HST, which I rate as the best main line passenger train ever built in the UK. My time on the railway included it's introduction; we were all very proud of it. It was generally held that the MP diesels were underpowered and unreliable, and that the 'second generation' of supercharged locos with lightweight but powerful generators were much better but that the increasingly heavy freight work had yet to better the 9F's performance. Anything below Type 3 was really useless for the post Beeching railway's needs, though Class 20s hunting in pairs nose to nose on MGRs did all right. Hawker Siddley (Brush) came up with Kestrel, which looked like what we wanted; a 4k bhp 125mph loco that could be geared for heavy freight. We were a bit off target, and the 56s and 58s that followed were not as good as they should have been. We now have 125mph 67s and 68s, but nobody seems to quite know why.. DP1, the blue Deltic, was a pretty ground breaking beast in 1955. It was trialled on the Turbomotive's old job, the 10.00 LIverpool-Euston, known to be one of the heaviest and toughest in the country, and romped away with it. It's styling, already a bit retro even in those days, belied it's modernity. But the Deltics were only regarded as a success because they were alone among pre-HST diesels in being able to reliably and easily equal 8P steam power without double heading. There are other good reasons for adopting diesel over steam, of course, but the travelling public are unaware of them and unconcerned with them; they want cheap fares and reliable timetables. HSTs gave them that and got them there quicker than driving on increasingly gridlocked motorways, and gave them comfier than Pullman seats, soundproofing, air suspension, airco, electric heating and microwaved BLT toasties at no extra fare. Run rings around any Deltic, and more reliable as well.
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Duke of Gloucester was built for a very clear economic and traffic related reason; following the destruction and writing off of the back broken 46202 Princess Anne at Harrow and Wealdsone, practically a brand new loco though to a 1932 design, after it’s rebuild from the Turbomotive only a few months previously, the WCML was short of it’s quota of 8P power by one loco and a replacement was needed. I think there would have been a certain amount of adverse comment if a new Princess Royal had been ordered! I do not agree at all that the standards were built to satisfy anyone’s ego. They were certainly controversial, and with the benefit of hindsight short-lived and not worth the bother, but when the decisions were taken it was reckoned that the country had 30 years’ of cheaply winnable coal, recent history fresh in everyone's minds showed the risks of relying on imported oil (nobody knew what lay beneath the North Sea for another decade and a half), and the BTC’s policy, which Riddles was following, was that steam locos to last until 1980 when the bulk of the system would be electrified were needed asap to replace stock that was life expired, difficult to prep or dispose in the post war world of labour shortages, and generally unsuitable and costly. This is pretty much what happened in most European mainland countries. The transport world in the UK changed radically in the next few years, and BR was re-organised in 1954 under the new BRB, effectively an internal coup d’etat; the word ‘modernisation’ entered the railway lexicon, and resulted in the ‘modernisation plan’ in 1955. Riddles and his ilk were winkled out, and the ‘steam ‘til 1980’ policy abandoned. We could discuss the wisdom of this and the effectiveness of the locos that replaced it or the effect of the race to eliminate steam, but it’s been done to death and more. The BTC concept of an integrated rail, road, and waterway transport system had never got off the ground, and was another baby thrown away with the bathwater; not sure why this happened when the concept had worked well in mainland Europe. Electrification by 1980 was still planned, but of course the Treasury bottled at the cost and progress has been piecemeal and is still pending in many areas. None of this can be laid at the door of Riddles, his alleged ego, or the Transport Commission, nor can the money drain that BR became prior to the introduction of the HST. The idea that Riddles oversaw the building of locos to satisfy his ego is ludicrous and, unless it has the excuse of being ill informed, frankly scurrilous and offensive. His policy may be justifiably criticised as shortsighted and insufficiently innovative, but it was a pragmatic child of it’s time, and of austerity economic government policy, and of a general acceptance that imported oil was A Bad Thing despite our colonial control of it’s production in the Middle East, because of the adverse effect on our desperate balance of payments problem, and because of it’s strategic vulnerability. There may have been less imperfect alternatives available, but here were plenty worse, such as Swindon wanting more Castles! The cold war was getting under way and it was not long previously that the U boats had nearly defeated us. 30 years of cheap coal, remember! If you want egotistical CMEs, you need to go back about to Victorian times.
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In addition to the points set out by Northmoor regarding the loss of capacity, you have to consider the other costs. Maintaining a unique steam locomotive operating an intense service (operating a 'real' branch line requires much more frequent services and higher speeds than trundling along a heritage line at 25mph) would be incredibly expensive - partly due to the difficulty in finding the parts and people required. The costs of maintaining a steam locomotive can be justified by preservationists as the objective for them is to see the locomotive running. The objective of TOCs is to make money and the objective of government (should be) to deliver the highest quality rail service possible. Using unreliable locomotives with high running and maintenance costs does not help to acheive either of these. Remember that there is a good reason that the early diesels have mostly been withdrawn - it is because modern diesel and electric locomotives (and MUs) do the same job far better and at a lower cost. I should also point out that my remarks about coal are not only inspired by the relative lack of domestic supplies. While the environmental impact of railway preservation is miniscule due to the tiny size of the sector, we should not under any circumstances be expanding the use of coal. This includes running regular service trains using a traditional steam locomotive (note that I'm not talking about markinng special occasions or acting as a Thunderbird - both roles previously performed by Tornado - but day-to-day opertations for a sustained period). Doing so when more environmentally friendly options also have a lower cost is unforgiveable. If somebody were to develop a steam locomotive which offered an advantage over electric or diesel-electric designs, it would most likely have a turbine-based transmission (fundamentally similar to the LMS turbomotive, but most likely with significant developments). This would be turned by steam produced by heating water - either by burning diesel or using electricity from OHLE/third rail sources. However, I am not aware of any locomotive which operates in this way, and I would imagine that by the time the technology was made as efficient as current electric and diesel-electric designs, electric tracition in particular will have been developed much further, and diesel traction will hopefully be the exception rather than the rule. That said, I wouldn't be averse to a generous application of rule one if somebody wanted to go ahead and create a model railway featuring advanced steam traction.
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Twenty minutes of hot brake-pump action, with bonus man-getting-out-of-Volvo. Cracking stuff Most of theirs were turbo-electrics though and they have a long history of looking unusual (Reid-Ramsay anyone?). Their turbo-mechanical looked Stephensonian too, a form mostly dIctated by the boiler. One great advantage of the turbine is no hammer-blow and the LMS Turbomotive seems to have had a frame suspended transmission as well. Better than an AL6 in that respect.
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Compared to most of the turbine locos, not least that Beyer-Ljunstrom contraption, it looks quite handsome - at least, as though it was designed that way, rather than assembled from anything lying around in the works. Not as stylish as Turbomotive, but definitely a step in the right direction. The LMS Beyer-Ljunstrom seems to have ultimately been like the rest, though - worked well enough, but not worth the extra cost and complexity. The Americans got it right, though - there’s no reason why a locomotive of this sort, needs to look like a Stephenson steam loco at all; and ultimately, if you are going to have a turbine, the best place for it, is in a power station.
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Hi Corbs, Why not put the turbine under the smoke box and drive the leading axle directly rather than trough a jack-shaft. That way you could leave the coupled wheels where they are and dispense with the trailing truck, also only the front truck would likely need altering. After all that is all that was done to the Princess Royal class to end up with Turbomotive. Gibbo,
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Earlier on in the thread, there was some discussion about turbine locos, and I suggested that some turbine driven 8F's might have been useful. I was surprised to read in Tim Hillier-Graves book "The Turbomotive, Stanier's Advanced Pacific", that Stanier himself considered exactly that. Shame it didn't come about, I think an impressive machine would have been the result.
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Aerolite was designed and built specifically to haul the NER director's saloon, and did so successfully for many years. The Turbomotive was used on a specific diagram for most of it's life, a heavy Liverpool express and return, presumably because this would suit the requirement for continuous steady high output that a turbine needs to be at it's most efficient and because that would limit the number of staff that you needed to train up to be able to maintain and work the thing. The loco was rebuilt as a conventional Princess when the boiler wore out, but this does not mean that it was unsuccessful in service, merely that it was not considered worth following up in post war operating conditions
