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A few posts earlier, Geysergazer commented about the relationship between the experimental oil-fired steam-turbine electrics GE built for Union Pacific and the gas-turbine electrics GE built for UP a number of years later.  Other than having 'turbine' in the name (and the same builder), I'm not sure there was much of a descendancy, was there?  The first experimental turbines were basically small 'conventional' thermal powerplants, using oil to heat water to produce high pressure steam to drive the steam-turbine coupled to a generator.  IIRC, these never got beyond test-driving the 'look what I built' stage.  The gas-turbine electrics (GTELs) were based on an actual combustion turbine (think jet engine) to spin the generator.  UP had something like 55 GTELs in three versions and a lot of revenue miles.  As a kid I saw many of the GTELs in action and in my mind, I had imagined them being powered by the thrust of the jet turbine.  Not so, of course - only later learning that they were actually turbine-electrics.

Apparently the UP/GE experimental steam-turbine locos actually had a closed steam loop with an air cooled condenser stage (one wonders what the Carnot efficiency was when it wasn't moving...).  The GTELs did actually have a successor - albeit a short-lived UP built coal-fired combustion turbine (whose failure mode you'd think would have been predictable - finely divided coal ash played heck with the turbine blades). 

richs09 posted:

A few posts earlier, Geysergazer commented about the relationship between the experimental oil-fired steam-turbine electrics GE built for Union Pacific and the gas-turbine electrics GE built for UP a number of years later.  Other than having 'turbine' in the name (and the same builder), I'm not sure there was much of a descendancy, was there?   

Sure there is a lineage and important connections and similarities between the original steam-turbine-electrics (STELs we might call them) and the fleet of later gas-turbine-electrics (GTELs). The STELs were first assemblage of the idea into an operable locomotive and the GTELs thus descended from that idea. Both used electric transmission re-purposed from diesel-electric technology. Both were an attempt to re-purpose existing technology/hardware for railroad traction. In the end both were a flash-in-the-pan. For many years UP management was enthralled with giant locomotives but the assembly-line F/GP/SD units have triumphed. The GTEl fleet at least worked but could not ultimately compete against the [modern] Diesel-Electric which was, after all, designed and developed from the ground up for railroad traction. EMD quickly gave up on the Winton engines because they were an attempt to re-purpose marine machinery. Alco had similar experience with the 539 which was a marine engine.

Lew

geysergazer posted:
lee drennen posted:

B88C474B-5622-4651-90E0-BC82F9FAA6EDEarly pick up this morning downtown St.louis 

Lee, you made me think of the time I rode shotgun with my friend Jim hauling   stainless coils into NYC. He had to back a 53' covered wagon clear into a building and up to a dock, turning 90 degrees to the two-lane city street in the process.

Lew 

Lew

I know the feeling I deliver in the city now I had to quit the road runs for my company after 23yrs with them due to my arthritis in my hips and knees  now they let me run the city all day and I love it this was a very tight place to get in it reminds me when I use to run to New York City back in the early 90s when I first started driving a truck. 

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