All things old are new again; A call for new steam locomotive development

[benburch]

OK, I'll confess; I've been a steam locomotive fan since I was a small child. Odd, I know, to be so interested in a technology that had all but disappeared by the year I was born, but they have always had a peculiar appeal to me.

Given my bias, I will try very hard to be objective in what I am about to say;

America needs to develop a totally modern steam locomotive if we are to deal with peak oil and still have a modern transportation network.

The recent rise in the price of oil, and especially jet fuel and diesel fuel, and the acute shortages caused by hurricane Katrina have shown just how vulnerable our transportation network is to problems with the supply of this single resource. Literally everthing that you buy comes to your door only through transportation systems based on diesel fuel or jet fuel. Trains require diesel. Trucks require diesel. Ships require diesel (very few burn bunker oil any more). And though there are some short haul trucks that burn gasoline, the same shortages apply to them as well.

There are fuels available in the USA in great quantity that cannot be burned in an internal combustion engine; Coal, Peat, Scrapwood, Recycled wood fiber, Dessicated sewage, Farm waste, etc. These could be burned in domestic thermal power plants, and all of them excepting peat are so used, but electric power from a fixed site thermal power plant does not lend itself to vehicle power other than short-haul delivery and personal transport vehicles (which we need!) True. fixed site power could be used in rail transport with overhead catenary wires or with third-rails, but almost none of the nations track miles are so-equipped and the cost of an electrification effort on existing rights-of-way is staggering. Often it is close to the cost of simply building a new right-of-way.

The solution, as I see it, is to develop a thoroughly modern steam locomotive using all of the technical innovations that have appeared since steam locomotives were last built in this country; Welded boilers, modern alloys, amazingly reliable and frictionless bearings, efficient ejectors, superheaters, microprocessors, multiple unit controls, etc.

A steam locomotive built using computer simulation and CAD systems, with an additional fifty years of technology to draw upon, would not only rival diesel locomotives in efficiency, but would also be able to be designed to burn almost anything that will burn as fuel.

The additional infrastructure a steam locomotive requires; Fueling towers, Water standpipes, and Ash pits only need to be built at intervals along the right-of-way, and do not require the re-engineering of tens of thousands of miles of trackage as would electrification. To my mind this is a compelling economic argument.

If you want to read some more about modern steam locomotive efforts, especially the ACE locomotive which was proposed when last we thought about out energy future in the early 1980s, please visit The Ultimate Steam Page

Taken from my blog at; http://www.livejournal.com/users/ben93/7484.html

[Lydia Leftcoast]

1. A revitalized train system is DEFINITELY needed

both for freight transport and for inter-city passenger service. It's absurd that people are flying on trips of a couple hundred miles.

I hadn't thought of using updated steam locomotives, but you're right, they can be adapted to burn anything as fuel.

[firefox]

2. Steam engines are not efficient

They release to much heat. There could be applications that use the released steam to cut down on inefficiency and there is a need to develop technology to maximize energy efficiency.

The technologically advanced Sterling engine is what I am waiting to see.

[achtung_circus]

4. Don't buy it.

External combustion with energy recovery is intrinsically more efficient that internal combustion.

With diesel the excess heat is flushed with the exhaust stroke of the engine. I have, at home, the links pertaining to the twisted sales job that diesel elecrtic manufacturers used to justify the death of the steam locomotive.

[firefox]

8. Where are steam engines used anywhere

Some electrical plants still use oil and we know how expensive that is. Now if the steam engine were more efficient do you not think that we would see it in application in order to boost that bottom line?

Look, I agreed that technology needs to continue on the steam engine.

[benburch]

9. Every nuclear power plant in the world is a steam engine.

And virtually ALL electrical plants are steam engines; The exception being those that are diesel plants and those that are gas turbines.

[benburch]

10. Oh yes...

And thermal power plants (steam engines) rarely burn oil! Coal is King in US Domestic electricity production.

[firefox]

11. Well, uranium is not burned in internal engines. So?

Yes, and the coal-powered plant near me is called Marshall Steam Plant. I have been there and seen the turbines. But then again, the internal engine does not compete when coal is the fuel.

I talked about oil because that is what is used in transportation. There are two key facts needed. What is the efficiency of the internal combusition engine in the new cars and what is the efficiency of the best steam engine. Now if anyone knows of an internal combustion engine that uses petroleum being replaced by a steam engine, then I would take that as evidence that technology has produced an efficient steam engine.

Believe me, I would like to see technology that gives us practical uses of steam engines. The Segway HT is being developed that uses external combustion and distills water with the excess heat. What I saw on television on it was that it was to use a Serling engine. That would be an advancement in the development of the Serling engine and that gives cause for optimism.

[benburch]

12. An internal combustion engine is about 32% efficient.

However, in a diesel-electric locomotive the energy of the IC engine is first used to drive a generator set and then through control circuitry to the electric traction motors in the wheel sets. This is more than a 5% loss of efficiency. It is even worse when the generators first must charge a lead-acid storage battery. Direct-drive mechanical and diesel-hydraulic engines have been tried, and of course have much lower losses than the diesel-electric hybrid locomotive, but at those power levels, mechanical systems are very heavy and are maintenance nightmares, and diesel-hydraulic systems, though used in other countries, have never proved acceptable in American railroad conditions.

A classical steam engine is only about 25% efficient, which can be greatly improved by the modern innovations I mentioned above. By the end of the steam era, superheating, feedwater heaters, and steam reheat systems made the steam locomotive competitive with diesel power in almost all applications.

Where steam lost out was in the ability of diesel-electric locomotives to be connected together under multiple-unit control, and in maintenance issues. The labor costs of having multiple engine crews in double-headed and pusher service were what drove the steam locomotive to the gargantuan sizes we associate with the Challenger, Yellowstone and Bigboy Mallet articulated locomotives. Today, however, it is totally practical to have a crewless MU-capable steam locomotive unit, moreover, one which could actually MU with existing diesel road power.

[muriel_volestrangler]

26. 'classical steam engine is only about 25% efficient'?

Where do you get that from? For instance, this page thinks they were about 7% efficient. And the ACE page you directed us to says it was aiming for 18%.

[benburch]

28. From powerplant practice with uniflow engines/reheaters, etc.

LD Porta was aiming for what he could practically get done on his budget with the ACE 3000. It was not the most efficient steam engine you could have built even then.

[muriel_volestrangler]

32. So 'classical' means 'acheivable in theory in the 1980s'

not 'actually built when steam engines were common'. ;-)

[benburch]

33. No...

Uniflow engines and reheat, etc, goes back to the 20s or earlier. In fact there were uniflow locomotives experimented with in the UK.

[benburch]

41. A little more reading says...

that 30% is more like the achievable efficiency for an IC engine.

[achtung_circus]

5. Don't buy it.

External combustion with energy recovery is intrinsically more efficient that internal combustion.

With diesel the excess heat is flushed with the exhaust stroke of the engine. I have, at home, the links pertaining to the twisted sales job that diesel elecrtic manufacturers used to justify the death of the steam locomotive.

[benburch]

6. In fact, a really modern steam engine will use Sterling auxillaries.

For things like flue blowers, APU generators, pumps.

But the problem with a Sterling locomotive is that there is not enough horsepower for starting.

A steam locomotive has a lot of starting traction because there is a store of already generated energy in the steam which conceptually is a wound up spring.

A diesel-electric locomotive throttles up to start and then throttles down after getting underway - A sufficiently large Sterling-electric locomotive could do just that as well, except that a modern Sterling engine that had the kind of horsepower that a modern diesel has would be so large and so heavy that you could not consider it for locomotive service.

Don't get me wrong, I am a huge fan of the Sterling-cycle engine. Have one right here on my desk in fact, but Sterling is most suitable for fixed site power and as the trickle-charger in applications like primary-electric automobiles and primary-electric switching locomotives where the duty cycle is low enough that a low-ourput but very efficient powerplant would be able to keep the batteries topped and extend range.

But a road engine needs to be able to develop high horsepower for long continuous periods on grades and when pulling large loads even in water-level country.

[achtung_circus]

3. I'm at work and can't check out links here or I'll get caught

but the steam engine, as an external combustion engine is intrinsically more efficient that the internal combustio diesel engines currently used on locomotives. Trains are, with the exception of ships, the most cost-efficient way of transporting goods and people. They do not fit into hurried schedules and just in time deliveries.

The final generation of steam locomotives used oil. They used it more efficiently than the diesel-electrics that replaced them. They did not require ash pits.

As far as ship traffic is concerned- the same arguments apply. Google triple expansion steam engines and see the role that this, at the time new, technology played in building and maintaining the British Empire.

Trains will come back, ships will come back, steam will come back.

[benburch]

7. Don't surf at work if it is a problem!

Last thing anybody wants is to have another DUer fired for surfing!!!

[NNadir]

13. Many rail lines today have what they didn't in the steam times:

Electric rails.

Most diesel locomotives generally are simply generators, and power electric motors in the cars.

I think that the simplest solution, post oil, in first world countries anyway (that leaves us out) would be to complete electricification of the rail lines where appropriate.

The last thing we need in a reason to burn more coal.

[benburch]

14. The number of electrified miles in the USA has been DROPPING.

To add that infrastructure would, as I previously posted, cost FAR more than you imagine.

Plus, where do you think the electricity comes from? COAL. Essentially all of it comes from coal with the exception of places like Northern Illinois where we have ten nuclear power plants. So, in reality all electric locomotives are steam-electric locomotives where the steam engine is fixed site and the electricity is "wheeled" to the mobile consumer.

And electrified rail lines, either catenary overhead electrification or third-rail electrification have really large transmission losses, causing even MORE coal to be burned than would the equivalent tonnage hauled by a primary steam locomotive.

And though there are places where hydroelectric plants could drive a electric rail line, the places most suitable for hydroelectricity are generally remote from population centers and are also ecologically fragile.

In addition, a steam locomotive can burn renewable solid fuels in essentially their unprocessed state. I haven't computed it (yet) but I would wager that a steam locomotive burning ground hemp waste (what is left over after fiber has been removed for other commercial use) would make quite an economical showing of itself, with a net CO2 addition to the atmosphere of zero. Such a locomotive would, however require a large fuel storage tender owing to the low energy density of the fuel. This could possibly be increased by processing the waste material into compressed pellets, but that would require some research not done yet.

[NNadir]

16. I am long on record opposing the generation of electricity from coal.

I am a nuclear guy, through and through. It is the only form of greenhouse gas free energy that both works and is affordable.

In France, very few electric trains are powered by coal. Almost zero in fact.

[benburch]

17. Have you ever worked in the nuclear power industry?

I have.

Before I did I was very much pro-nuclear.

Now I am very much in favor of low-processing bio-fuels, solar-photovoltaic, solar-thermal, and wind power.

And I am in favor of keeping people alive when the oil runs out, and if we have to burn some coal in locomotives and tractors to do that, I support that until we can make the transition to bio-fuel.

BTW, I would be interested to hear what your alternative to the steam tractor would be? You can go to low-tillage agriculture and fertilize only with crop rotation with the yield losses that means, but you still need to make at least a three mechanized passes over each field each year.

[jpak]

18. Don't such silly questions of Molten Salt Guys

They will only call you an Ignorant Greenpeace Twit...

:)

[benburch]

21. I saw the power utility I was at repeatedly "mis-inform" the NRC.

It was not pretty.

Things like inventing technical reasons why safety systems could not be developed that were total fabrications... The real reason was that they did not want to spend the money. This was 1988, and the systems we are talking about were supposed to have been in place three years after the "Three-Mile Island" incident, in other words, 1982. They had made up lies right along and gotten waivers. And I assure you there was NO technical reason why these systems could not be developed.

I found a sensor mis-wired, and when I pointed this out, it was like I had just pointed out a closet full of dead babies. In order to fix the sensor, they would have to admit to the NRC that they were installed wrong in the first place, that they had been signed off on fraudulently, and that the plant had been running for years without that sensor working. It would have meant a huge fine. The problem got rectified when somebody snuck into the area when the cameras were being "repaired" and fixed the wiring totally without any documentation of any sort that the job had been done. And this was an important sensor from the standpoint of safety in a radionuclide gas release; It was the Stack Flow Rate sensor!

[NNadir]

30. No. I have not worked in the nuclear power industry. I worked with I-125

quite a bit for about three years, generally in 100's of millicurie amounts in a typical month.

So what?

It was nothing special. Some people knew what they were doing and some didn't, but during my tenure, although we all had elevated thyroid counts, none of us had remarkable health problems. (Well, I did have hemorrhoids, but getting a different job didn't cure it.)

My next job involved phosgene, and the job after that involved hydrofluoric acid, the latter being in my opinion, the most dangerous substance I ever worked with.

Have you worked in the biofuels industry? You know perhaps about the toxicity of methanol? Do you know that air pollution from biomass burning kills more people on earth than any other energy source?

If you have worked in the nuclear industry, please describe your experience. Please describe all the people you know who have been killed in normal nuclear operations, and please compare these people to people who are killed in refinery operations, etc. Next inform me how much biofuel there is to run locomotives. Following that please inform me of one country on earth that produces more than 5% of its transportation energy from low-processing bio-fuels, solar-photovoltaic, solar-thermal, and wind power. (And don't give me some 10% figure for "renewables" in which 9.9% is represented by hydroelectric plants, we all know that although they destroy rivers and ecosystems, they do generate a lot of electricity.)

I can, of course, be in favor of producing power by magic but unless I can produce power by magic, there isn't really much point to my argument.

I am in favor of the wind power industry, but I have no illusions that wind represents a real alternative for energy production on a constant load basis. If capacity needs to be put in place to replace it when it is off line, and that capacity puts out greenhouse gases, there's still a hole in our hope. Right now, when the wind stop blowing in Denmark (where 20% of electricity) is generated by wind, they don't turn off the lights. They buy nuclear power from France and (coal/nuclear) power from Germany. Forty years of positive press has failed to produce a so called renewable fuels industry anywhere on the planet that is capable of producing more than a tiny (as in nearly invisible) industry anywhere. People often announce - without paying attention to existence of electrical resistance, that there is enough wind in North Dakota to supply all of the US electrical power demand. And the point is?

Bio-fuels, solar-photovoltaic, solar-thermal, and wind power...the constant refrain year after year after year.


Here for instance here is the statement of the Federal Republic of Germany which is ruled partially by the http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,1564,1646210,00.html">German Twit Party which came to power in 1998 demanding an immediate end to and the promotion of clean nuclear energy in favor of DirtyDirtierDiriest.

http://www.germany-info.org/relaunch/info/publications/infocus/environment/renew.html

And let's get real. The German Twit (Green) Party joined the government in 1998. Looking at the last link we see that 7 years later they still hope to produce 10% of Germany's power by renewable means in 2010. Of course, like normal "renewable" energy twits they have grand promises for 2050 (50%) when Bangladesh and all of its people will be submerged, but it's very easy to promise things that will happen after you're dead. People may point to the fact that you were full of shit, but you aren't effected much by criticism when you're dead. (Many people who were promising in the 1970's solar nirvana by 2000 are also dead.)

Some people know that the German Twit Party, which couldn't decide whether bombing Iraq was a good idea is full of shit already, but of course these people aren't listened to because they happen to embrace the unhappy concept known as reality: http://www.ecs.umass.edu/ece/ece_power_systems/SpectrumSolarPowerBust_jan05.pdf">A Soaking in a Dreary Cloudy Land

I quote:

And I quote: "If building a central station PV plant in Bavaria— a region that records on average 180 days with rain and 179 days with fog per year—strikes you as a costly indulgence, you’re not alone. “Bavaria is about the maddest place you could put
a photovoltaic power plant,” says Vaclav Smil, distinguished professor at the University of Manitoba, in Canada, and author of Energy at the Crossroads: Global Perspectives and Uncertainties (MIT Press, 2003). “You’ve got cloudy conditions through the year,” observes Smil, who grew up in the same gloomy climate across the border in what is now the Czech Republic. “In the fall and in the spring, there are several days in a row where you have no direct solar radiation at all, which means your solar-cell power output goes down to almost nothing...

...generous financial support encourages companies to foist immature technology on unsuspecting consumers. “With the right subsidies, you could give away 2-carat diamonds in cereal boxes,” says Howard C. Hayden, emeritus professor of physics at the University of Connecticut, in Storrs, and author of The Solar Fraud: Why Solar Energy Won’t Run the World (Vales Lake Publishing, 2001). “The upshot is that the productive Germans, the ones who are using electricity for something useful, are subsidizing these solar toys.”

Expensive toys they are. PVs are by far the priciest power source per kilowatt to install, according to estimates compiled by the U.S. Energy Information Administration. EIA numbers for 2002, the last year for which they are available, show that the cost to build a
solar PV plant (minus 10 percent to account for a U.S. investment tax creditfor solar power) is a whopping $3915/kW—nearly 10 times that of a conventional, gas-fired combustion turbine. The capital outlay for PV is more expensive, and so, too, of course, is the output: PV power costs three to five times as much per watthour as nuclear, gas, oil, or coal generation. And a PV plant’s capacity factor—the ratio of the total electricity that a plant produces per year to the total potential electricity that would be produced if the plant operated at 100 percent during every hour of the year—is anywhere from 12 to 30 percent. That pales in comparison to the 84 percent-plus capacity factor of the 19 nuclear plants Germany wants to replace...

...while the subsidies last, Bavaria is also a very good place to install PV plants. Just don’t expect them to make a dent in German energy demand. A plant like Solarpark that is projected to put 10 GWh/year onto the grid will supply less than 0.002 percent of the
country’s needs. It is merely, in Smil’s words, “a spit in the ocean.”"

Hayden about sums it up, expensive solar toys.

I had a toy steam locomotive when I was a kid. It was a Lionel. It cost my dad more than he could afford I think, but although he was merely a laborer, he lived in a country where even the lowest classes could afford to be indulgent.

What allowed for a man like him to do that was affordable energy.

Unlike him, I never went without food. Unlike him, I had a warm room every day I was growing up. Unlike him, I was afforded the luxury of an education, afforded the luxury of time to think, afforded the luxury of having an opportunity to realize my potential.

It was a comfort to have toys then, as a child, of course, but then I grew up, and something called responsibility fell on my head. Apparently many of my contemporaries missed that part of the game. Part of what responsibility is to face the real world, to substitute realities for fantasies, no matter how pleasant those fantasies might be, no matter how difficult the realities are.

I actually despise most of my generation, the most pathetic generation, the baby boomers, for their refusal to do what their parents - informed by depression, deprivation and war - did: Grow up. The world is facing an unprecedented emergency, the possible total collapse of earth's atmosphere, and still we have a huge subset of our generation still talking about their toys.

History, should history continue to exist, will not forgive us.

[benburch]

31. People dead due to nuclear power?

You'll have to look to Chernobyl for that answer. It is not how many die, but how many could potentially die that concerns me.

One safety-related program I wrote could print the message;

THE DISTANCE TO THE ONE REM LINE EXCEEDS 10000 METERS

and indeed it could have with the right sort of accident.

Add the potential danger to the fact that nuclear power is the most expensive form of cheap energy ever devised, and you know exactly why no new domestic power nuclear plants have been started in over a quarter century.

Now, some sorts of reactor make more sense than others. I particularly think the CANDU type reactor makes a lot of sense as it uses unenriched uranium and can burn spent fuel from other reactors, which otherwise would be destined for burial as waste. It also does not increase the threat of proliferation as other types do.

I am not against reactor development totally, but it cannot be operated as we do it now because a business is always cuts corners in ways that you never should with a reactor.

[NNadir]

34. Well, that was helpfully vague.

I have corresponded quite a number of times with people who worked in N-plants, and I find their knowledge of the subject ranges widely, just as knowledge of oil refinery operations vary widely among the employees of Exxon. I'm sure that I know more about the subject of oil refining than the guy who pumps my gas, and I'm sure I know more about refining than most of the guys in the Exxon computer operations office.

It sounds like you're a programmer.

Over the history of nuclear power, not one person, zero, has ever been killed by commercial nuclear operations in a pressurized water reactor anywhere on earth. Not one. If you think I'm wrong, prove it. One hundred percent of the people killed in commercial nuclear power production reactors were killed by a graphite moderated reactor, of a type that is relatively rare and will never be built again, and only then when the entire staff performed unauthorized experimental operations in the absence of an experimental protocol.

Every year, hundreds of thousands, and sometimes millions of people are killed by the social, political, environmental, and accidental effects of the use of fossil fuels. Therefore if one has a cute new form of energy, one should focus one's attention on replacing fossil fuels before one even looks at nuclear, if and only if, one's real agenda in approaching issues of energy and the enviroment involves human decency and environmental sustainability.

[benburch]

37. In any case, I won't continue helping you hijack this thread.

This is about the need to develop an external combustion locomotive so that we can still have transportation in 30 years and won't all starve to death.

[dcfirefighter]

38. REM is a dose amount

If you were setting up hot lines and exclusion zones, you'd be interested in dose rate, R/hr. At 1 R/h, I could work for 5h, or worst case, for life saving efforts, over 25h without suffering ill effects.

At 50-100 hours, I could expect a temporary lowering of wbc. Some hours after spending 100-200h in such a field, I could expect to experience nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea, but no permanent disability.

For non-emergency operations, the DOE would limite operations to not more than 2h a year in such a field.

Most responders would set their hot line at 0.001 to 0.01 R/h, and their turn-back line at 10 R/h.

Assuming the source is an omnidirectional point source, the hot line would be 33 km from the source.

Perhaps someone with undertanding of the physics involved could tell me what sort of source that could be.

[benburch]

39. Exactly.

But the wording was mandated by the NRC requirements.

This was the one REM per hour line.

[benburch]

40. And...

In this case the source was wind-bourn noble gas radio-nuclides from the station's exhaust stack from a core damage event in the plant. We treat the mixture of gasses as an idealized average gas, and then, using wind speed, direction, and half-life, compute the dosage at various distances from the stack in the direction of the wind flow. This is printed out in the plant's control room and also in the state emergency operations center. The goal of this system is to guide evacuation efforts. It is called the "A-Model" system.

[jpak]

35. Anybody that contaminated co-workers with 125-I would be fired

at any lab I've ever worked in.

and anybody claiming that he controlled his 125-I contamination with iodized table salt is a charlatan.

[benburch]

36. I can only agree.

Though stupidity in lab operations happens sometimes. I had to fight with my department at Fermilab because they were letting people go to exposure areas repeatedly without having a permanent film badge. The people DID sign out a one-day badge, but those were never tallied for total exposure for that individual; you only got a report of your exposure if it was beyond the one-day limit. And I know a fellow who had cataracts because he used to align a low intensity particle beam by eye. (You can see the beam because of the flashes particle interactions cause in your aqueous humor.)

[benburch]

19. A couple of other points...

France is a MUCH smaller country than the USA. It has a much higher population density, and few of its track miles are remote from a population center where nuclear power would be available without huge transmission losses.

Second, do you know when electric railways were at their peak in the USA? 1910. Route miles have been dropping here ever since. The ONLY major electrification at present is Amtrak's Northeast Corridor. In addition there are a few surviving interurban lines, like the South Shore line in Chicago, and the Philadelphia system. The only new deployments are urban mass transit systems, not long haul common carriers.

If we wish to have long-haul freight and passenger service of some type in this country 40 years from now, we need to have steam locomotives developed NOW.

The only alternative might be coal-oil conversion plants, or bio-diesel locomotives, but I am assuming that the the amount of bio-diesel produced will never be enough to run the entire transportation system, and likely will have to be used in applications where nothing else will do such as aircraft and load-leveling power plants for the electrical grid.

[phantom power]

20. Nuclear power can be used to make synthetic diesel.

To my knowledge, all biodeisel (or synthetic diesel) schemes need a source of heat for reforming. A nuke plant makes a good heat source.

I've seen write-ups that "prove" we could supply all of our energy needs (not just fuel) from algae-based biodiesel. The land requirement they calculated was actually feasible. If you lumped it all together it would fit inside the Sonoran desert.

I remain skeptical until somebody demonstrates it on a significant scale, but I do hope somebody tries it.

Farmed algae would make excellent input for that infamous "turkey-guts" reforming process, which actually can run on a wide range of organic input. This process could be driven by either a nuclear plant, or by burning part of the product (~15%), which ever is most effective.

[benburch]

22. So can the waste heat from a thermal power plant or solar thermal sources.

And, as you say, by burning the product. I remain HIGHLY skeptical that it will be cost-effective to make bio-diesel in quantities that could replace current uses of diesel fuel. And as I pointed out above, if you have fuel to burn for a locomotive, that fuel is more efficiently burned in a modern steam locomotive than in a diesel-electric locomotive.

[phantom power]

23. Remind me again, what were you planning to burn?

[benburch]

24. Coal if necessary, but waste is what I would prefer.

First, we do have to keep the transportation system going or we all die. If this means we need to burn some coal, then we need to burn some coal.

But we produce tons of nearly useless recycled paper fiber every day in this country, and tons of sewage (yes I mean shit), and sawdust, wood scrap, cornstalks, hay that got too mildewed to use for feed, grass clippings, lawn waste. All of this could be pelletized or ground to a powder and used in a steam engine. Net CO2 contribution zero.

And yes, dried processed human waste will burn and is suitable for a steam engine in mixtures with other more easily combusted fuels.

Much of what now goes into landfills can be made into fuel for an external combustion engine.

[phantom power]

25. I see some possible pitfalls with that.

1) Is the waste stream large enough? Particularly, in the new "depression" economy, where everybody's waste stream is going to be quite a bit smaller.

2) How do you transport all this garbage/sewage to the appropriate filling stations? One reason that liquid fuels are practical is that they can be easily pumped. You don't have to "shovel" them around, like solid fuels.

2a) What are cars and trucks going to run on? We can reduce our use of them, but they aren't going to go away. Rail doesn't handle "the last mile"

3) Burning garbage isn't exactly the cleanest process. Especially a massively heterogeneous fuel stream like you are proposing. I would expect lots of smog, particulate, possibly toxic organics, etc.

[benburch]

27. My answers.

1) I can't see it getting small enough that you couldn't run locomotives with it. And as I said you have coal as a backup to fill in the "gaps" or to augment biofuel that does not burn well enough.

2) Well, all fueling sites for railroads are on railroads... You take the fuel to the depot that way.

2a) What cars and trucks? ;) They are the least efficient means of transporting anything. Seriously, when you must use cars and trucks, we'll need to find a different solution than the one I am proposing. What I am looking at here is the means whereby the billions of bushels of wheat in Nebraska get to the bakery in Maine. My favorite means of doing delivery vehicles is flywheel energy storage charged electrically, but there are people who have thought more deeply about this than I. Perhaps this is one of the places where we use our limited bio-diesel and petroleum resources.

3) Neither is burning coal. Locomotives spend a lot of their time far from urban areas and the emissions do not concentrate in one place. The problem of locomotive emissions in the past is what forced electrification of terminal railroads in the hearts of cities, and that is likely to be a good solution now, too. You could cut off your steam engine and cut on a hemp-oil diesel-electric at the edge of the urban area. I'm here considering the long hauls of freight and food from the remote farming areas to where the mouths are.

[happyslug]

45. 1910? Are you including the old Interurban Railways? (Trolley Lines)?

Sounds about right if you are. The old Rural Interurbans (Trolleys which ran on their own right of ways in rural areas but often on city streets in urban areas) peaked in usage 1918 and than declined rapidly disappearing almost completely by 1940 (With most gone by 1930, through some held out till the 1950s). While Usage peaked in 1918, due to increase wages caused by WWI and the increase use of the automobile, Rural Interurbans stopped expanding about 1910, thus the subsequent decline is NOT in long haul rail but in trolley service. An example of this is the Laurel Line in Pennsylvania which survived till the early 1950s as an electric trolley line but in the early 1950s abandoned passenger service and converted to diesel to haul its coal cars. Note it was NOT an electric long haul fright line but an Interurban trolley line that also hauled coal. When it converted to Diesel it ceased being an "Electric Line" and became a "Diesel line".

The above is true of many of the old interurbans in that they were often included in both railroad mileage and streetcar mileage depending on who is counting. While mileage peaked in 1910, passenger usage continued to climb in the old interurbans till 1918. On the other hand urban streetcar lines continued to expand till 1927 (and than held their own till after WWII, the decline in Streetcars in the 1920s and 1930s were of three types, first further decline in the interurban Lines, 2, New York City and its desire to get rid of Streetcars, and 3, small cities that switched to buses, other than these three categories urban streetcars EXPANDED till after WWII).

As many of the Interurbans died, parts of the interurban system was often taken over by a urban streetcar line but only to the limit of the city or county the urban line was in. For example when the Old Washington Pa to Pittsburgh Interurban was abandoned in 1954, the part in Allegheny County (The PA county where the City of Pittsburgh in in) stayed in use and was rebuilt as a Light Rail Vehicle (LRV) line in the 1980s. Now in the 1950s and 1960s you had the final conversion of Urban Streetcars to Buses, which was a further decline in ELECTRIC RAIL service.

Thus your statement that electric rail has been in declined since 1910 is only true if you count the various interurban rail lines and their decline and abandonment since 1910 AND than also add in the conversion of Streetcars to Buses to continue the decline through the 1960s. Since the 1970s I have NOT heard of any decline in Electric Rail service (Amtrak even EXPANDED Electric Service to Boston in the late 1990s. Amtrak did this expansion so it could run its latest train from Boston to Washington DC).

Now the old Pennsylvania Railroad built the first electric long haul railroad in 1905 (After completing a 14 mile long tunnel to get to Manhattan, prior to building that tunnel Pennsylvania Railroad Passengers had to disembark in New Jersey and take a Ferry to Manhattan). Given the distance involved (14 miles) it was decided Steam could NOT work, so Electric Service was adopted and than expanded to DC and Harrisburg. Plans to expand pass Harrisburg ended during WWI. The least profitable part of the Old Pennsylvania Railroad was from Harrisburg to Johnstown Pennsylvania, rural and mountainous. In 1854 when the Pennsylvania railroad was first built it laid tracks between Harrisburg and Philadelphia and Johnstown and Pittsburgh before it connected the two links given the greater profits from the first two section completed compared to the Harrisburg to Johnstown link. The same problem showed up in the 1920s, while it would be profitable for the Pennsylvania Railroad to electrify its track from Johnstown to Pittsburgh, it made no sense to do it until the Harrisburg and Johnstown Link was done first. Given the problem of the Harrisburg to Johnstown link electrification never took place.

My point in the previous paragraph was to show the problem was NOT the generation of Electricity or its use, but building the electric lines so that the use of electric trains could expand. The Pennsylvania Railroad did not go further south than Washington DC, so expansion meant to Pittsburgh which meant going over the Appalachian mountains. Given the economic Reality of he 1920s and 1930s to conversion was never done (Through talked about till the adoption of Diesels in the 1960s).

The Reason for the interest in Electric Trains was the problems of Steam locomotives. While people site the fact each engine had to have its own crew so did the diesels that replaced them (Union and Management Featherbedding was and is a problem in the Railroad industry). Thus while the Diesels could operate with only one crew for several engines, that did not become the norm till the 1980s, long after you had computers that could do with steam what diesels could do in the 1940s (The the computers could do it better, that is why such computers control today's Diesels). The problem with Steam was NOT the crew size, but how Steam locomotives wrecked the tracks.

Diesel Electric Propulsion was pushed by the US Army starting in WWI, when it was found that such Diesel Electrics could operate on tracks that would throw a Stream locomotive off the tracks (The expansion of the Rural Interurban also reflected this fact, such interurbans being electric did NOT need to have the same quality of track as a Steam locomotives, thus such interurbans could be built cheaper and quick than a Stream Railroad). Steam Locomotives need a set of while built tracks as perfectly aligned as possible. Furthermore Stream being a direct drive on its two (or more) Drive wheels push hard on those same tracks pushing them out of alignment. This occurred mostly at the stations and water and coal towers, all of which had to have crew on hand to constantly put the track back in place. It was the fact that with diesels you could eliminate these crews that Diesels replaced Steam (And encouraged even further decline in track maintenance leading to a lot of derailments in the 1970s and 1980s).

Another problem with Steam was getting them started. Being a direct drive you literally had to give them a kick to start them. This was done by having the brakeman release all of the brakes on the cars all at once (Or to release the brakes of the cars from the front to the rear so the cars when their brakes were released would push the steam locomotive). When the train stop it was the job of the Brakeman to run to the end car and set the brakes and keep the cars in tension. If you ever watch "The Music Man" the first part on the train with the cars jerking back and forth is the result of setting these brakes. In the Music Man it was part of scene, comic, but in real life part of traveling with steam (The Jerks were NOT as bad in real life, but noticeable enough for it to become a stable of Jokes for Decades, till Steam and Rail passenger service both ended).

With Electric Drive (Either by an Electric or Diesel Electric Locomotive you did NOT have to have the cars push the engine. Thus you had a smoother ride. The First Diesels in the 1930s where adopted for Passenger Service and advertise as NOT having the jerks of a Steam Locomotive.

I will NOT go into the technical problems of a Steam engine (Including cleaning and relining the boiler that had to be done anytime the engine was STOPPED for any reason, many of these problems can be solved by the newest technologies, but the best solution is direct pantograph electric drive. In rural areas like the Mountains of Pennsylvania you lose more than with today's diesels, but in most of the US East of the Mississippi that is NOT a problem and electric drive would be the best solution. West of the Mississippi valley (i.e. West of Ft Worth and Kansas City) you getting into low population areas much like the Mountains of Pennsylvania but you also have more opportunity for solar system etc, so less of a concern to me given the best investment would be to concentrate on the Eastern Lines first (Along with the West Coast Lines) before we even think of electrifying the West Coast to the Mississippi Valley lines.

[benburch]

46. A few points...

Yes, I include the interurbans. The most recent major loss was the Milwaukee road abandoning 662 route miles of electrification in 1973. Yes, Amtrak has expanded the Northeast Corridor, but that is primarily for passenger operations at very high speed. I am considering what you do with billions of bushels of wheat deep in the heartland, far from power plants. At the maximum, only 2% of US route miles were ever electrified.

A steam engine does NOT need a "kick" to start from a stop. All steam locomotives are double-acting engines with two double-acting cylinder sets on either side. The two sides at 90 degrees phase to each other so that there is no "dead center" problem. The can start from a dead stop on any sort of grade or flat. I know; I've driven a steam locomotive. (A 15" guage 4-4-0)

Almost any train, if it stops with the couplers under tension might need to have slack generated to start. Usually this is done by using the reverser to push back against the first few cars of the train (even with the brakes set they will slide) and then taking off... Once you have the rolling momentum of the locomotive and some number of loaded cars, the rest of the train can be started. The exception is the ALL electric passenger train. All wheels are driven so there is never any issue with slack.

Yes, flue cleaning and boiler descaling needs to be done periodically with steam locomotives, but not every time they go cold as you suggest. The 15" 4-4-0 I grew up with ran every day during summer with heating pea coal and untreated water and only needed to be laid up for cleaning for a month in the winter. Some locomotives in industrial service went decades with no such maintenance. Flue cleaning largely depends on the character of the fuel you burn. Descaling largely depends on the water you boil.

[achtung_circus]

15. And what generates that electricity?

The Electric motors are coupled with the diesels in the locomotive unit. All-electric trains have motors in each car.

[dcfirefighter]

29. Last mile questions, algae, electrification, coal

Last mile questions could use plug-in electric trucks, if liquid fuel is expensive enough / electricity storage is cheap enough. The equation changes drastically if the 'last mile' is generally only a mile, and can be covered at a low speed.

Alternatively, we could change our urban forms, with 'utility' transhipment areas at the edges of cities, where bulk freight could be used, and intermodal containers could be switched to a local delivery electrified line or electric tractors. I particularly like the transit oriented car-free plans espoused at www.carfree.com, a model I'd love to see New Orleans rebuilt to.

The National Renewable Energy Lab (cancelled by W.) had reported 15,000 to 20,000 gal / acre / year from algae in constructed ponds, which they calculated to replace mobile petroleum use by using ~5% of our current grazing land. http://www.unh.edu/p2/biodiesel/article_alge.html

The entirety of rail lines wouldn't need to be electrified to drastically reduce fuel use. I'm just guessing here, but I think that putting kicker rails on steep grades and on sidings and other start / stop places could allow a large reduction in fuel use.

A large portion of rail traffic is hauling coal to power plants. It seems particularly foolish to burn coal so that we can haul more coal to be burned.

[hunter]

42. The fuels you mention can also be turned into synthetic fuels.

Or electricity.

It's hard to say which would be best. I do think we will turn back to railroads of various sorts as fuel gets more expensive. Multiple track links between cities, both high speed and freight, can move goods and people more efficiently than highways.

It would be really cool if you could drive some sort of mini-car onto a train. A four hour trip between two cities, say San Francisco and Los Angeles, wouldn't be at all stressful. You'd drive on, wander around the train a bit, eat, maybe watch a movie, and then drive away when you arrived at your destination.

"The Ultimate Steam Page" was a nice link. Thanks.

[dcfirefighter]

43. Multimodal rapid transit

doesn't seem to be such a hot idea.

There are folks who'd like to see cars equipped to run on tracks, such that interstate higways could be replaced by tracks with higher speeds and capacities. However, some of the major downfalls are:

A road vehicle must be collision resistant, while a vehicle exclusively for use on a grade separated right-of way can be much lighter & more efficient.

A road vehicle must carry it's own energy, which incurs a weight penalty v. a vehicle exclusively for electrified guideway use.

A road vehicle must still be parked at it's destination. Urban areas typically have 40-50% of their land area dedicated to cars - freeways, roads, streets, parking, etc. A significant portion of this could be reclaimed for productive use, if a viable and attractive alternative to automobile transport were developed.

As for intercity transit, i'd prefer a high functional transit system at my destination.

However, you could always use the Amtrak Autotrain. I rode it once, it was a quite pleasant trip. However, it does take several hours to load & unload the cars.

[hunter]

44. I was thinking something much smaller and lighter than current cars...

...something more bicycle or golf-cart like; something you could park nose-in against the curb on most city streets. This assumes of course you would not be competing for road space with SUV's and other monster trucks.

I dearly love cities like Washington D.C. I can visit without a car.

[dcfirefighter]

47. I follow you, i just don't like cars in urban areas

even if they're small. You might like this link: http://www.skywebexpress.com/ it has potential, but no one's really built one yet.

The best bang for the buck, I think, is http://www.greenmotorsport.com/article_default_view.fcm?articleid=6113&subsite=388


People (generally not here) like to bitch about transit subsidies, and love to quip 'they shouldn't tax me to pay for his bus / train / star-trek transporter'. These people fail to recognize the value a rapid transit system brings to a city. Fortunately, this value is easily measured. A new subway system, while expensive, adds several multiples of cost to local property values.

This is one of many reasons why I support shifting property taxes off of buildings and onto land values. Buildings (and jobs, sales, productive investment, etc) are POSITIVE contributions by people to society and shouldn't be taxed. Excluding others from a natural resource, in this case land, but also water, frequency spectrum, clean air, satellite orbits, forest timber, fish harvests, oilfields, mineral seams, and time slots to public goods like congested highways, airport landing slots, parking spots, as well as excluding others from using knowledge of the natural universe through long term patents, is a NEGATIVE enclosure from society, requiring market-rate compensation to society.

[benburch]

48. Urban Light Rail is the best choice in cities, IMHO

An electric trolley line that grids out the city such that nobody has to walk more than three blocks to get to a frequently-running car line is the best choice.

[evolvenow]

49. Trains that run on MAGNETS are the Future. I rode one in Vancouver at a

World's Fair 20 years ago+ and it was fantastic, silent, non-polluting and fast as h*ll.

The future will be based on generoactive, cool,implosive, magenetic forces.

All of the radioactive, heat, explosive tech are destroying the planet and must end.

There is a town in Switzerland that has been running everything off one magnetic generator for over 25 years, so it is possible.

Read up, it is exciting and does not include waste products that are radioactive for thousands of years.


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kick for new non-polluting tech