Steam Powered Locomotives

stehansen

stehansen

Climbing Up
Joined
Aug 25, 2005
Messages
9,185
Location
Ceres, CA
I've always been kind of fascinated by steam power. I didn't realize that China has been using steam locomotives until very recently. I've been kind of addicted to watching them on youtube. My kids have already informed me about how just confirms what a huge dork I am.

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Good thing it's on tracks or the engineer would have to sit on the cow catcher to see where he was going!
 
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  • #4
I'm guessing their cab is all full of steam when it's like that.
 
There is a train park in So Cal I used to go to when I was a kid. You could never get me off the dang things.. Never got to ride in the cab while it was going though. Just as a passenger in a passenger car on a couple steam trains. I should take the ride up here. Just have not done it yet :)
 
I share your dorky fascination Steve. Steam Loco's have always captivated me. The only problem with a video is you dont get the smell - that heady mixture of hot metal, oil, steam and coal smoke. Intoxicating.

We have lots of narrow gauge railways in my area, these are all within 20 miles of me - If you know of Thomas the tank engine, many of the stories were based on these engines.

Ffestiniog Railway - Fairilse loco
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A lot of east european countries still use steam, as do India and a lot of other 3rd world countries.

Some years back, a bunch of german engineers designed a steampowered train, which was way more fuel efficient than dieselpower.
Since most dieselpowered trains here work by having a diesel motor run a generator and then in turn an electric engine, they substituted a steam turbine for the diesel motor.
It
 
My pal Ike chases this Loco. in his Model A

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIB6b0HPTXI

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I used to go to school on one like this. Nice to remember, but a bit dirty.

[Can't embed it]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqP5_aGKcf0&feature=related

This one explains it, sort of.

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Steam is an amazing power source.

I was watching a movie set in the south of England the other night and one of the characters had to stop for a passenger train. You don't notice the scale at first, until the engineer pop his head out the top of the engine like a prairie dog.:lol: That was the tiniest train I've ever seen.
 
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  • #14
Stig, do they use steam because that way they can use coal as their power source (which I think they have) and don't have to use diesel which they would have to buy? Because I think there are a lot of old 1950's and 60's diesel electrics available to buy pretty cheap. We have a small railroad here that is owned by a local family and they use 1950's diesel electrics. They buy them for almost nothing and then spend a couple of years re-wiring them and they throw on a coat of paint and they look pretty good. http://www.metrr.com/sections/locomotives
We had a set of Southern Pacific tracks about a half mile from the house we lived at until I was 12 and I can never remember a steam engine on it. I do remember the passenger terminal in my hometown but I don't think it was being used anymore. Some farmer bought it and is using it as a fruit stand. The tracks are now owned by the California Northern and run between Tracy and Los Banos.
TreeReb, I suppose it would be pretty dirty.
 
Last edited:
No, the idea was to use diesel as a heat source.
Apparently you get a better fuel economy when you use the fuel to heat water instead of to expand in a cylinder and move a piston.

When I was a kid,I grew up way out in the sticks ( way out in the sticks for Denmark, that is!) and the small local railroad still used steam.
Every time I went to Copenhagen to visit my grandparents, the first leg of the journey( which took a day btw..........today I can drive it in 3 hrs.) was by steam locomotive.

The last time a steam locomotive has run for real( as opposed to those kept running by train enthusiasts) was in the severe winter of 1977-78. The whole country was closed by snow. Then someone remembered that the danish railroad company had a HUGE snowplow, basically a whole trainwagon of steel and concrete with a plow on the front end. It only fit onto the steam locomotive it had been build for, so they dusted the old engine off, and had it clearing tracks untill it hit the mother of all snowdrifts and got derailed.
That was the end of the steam era in Denmark.
 
I come from a long line of train geeks. My grandpa used to work on the Feather River line in California.
 
I'm old enough to remember steam powered trains from the early 50's .By mid fifties to late 50's they were all but gone .
 
CurSedVoyce said:
There is a train park in So Cal I used to go to when I was a kid.
Click to expand...

Travel town! Cool place. All those levers to pull!

There is still one steam locomotive in regular service here, and occasionally the railroad company does a special gig where they have a steam loco going through towns. I can see the station from my house, the other side of the rice fields. You can hear that whistle a long way off.
 
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  • #23
Are those the ones that have a pinion and a bevel gear and the bevel is on the wheel? If so that's what the Santa Cruz engine had. If I remember right it also had some cogs on the front wheel and in the really steep places they had a "rack" along the track for the cogs to fit into. Most of the small railroads in California were installed to service either a mine or a lumbermill.
 
I think one of those Shays is still running up in Mendocino county, CA.
I can't remember the name of the railroad, but Jerry Beranek would know, I'm sure.
 
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