Science fiction and steam engines

I doubt it's scientifically possible to null and void electrical fields permanently. You won't see a scenario like the show, "Revolution" where nothing ever works again, even new stuff.

In the event of a solar flare worse than the likes of the one we had in the 1850s (which fried telegraph wires worldwide), you'd most likely see a concerned effort among industrialized nations to rebuild the infrastructure of the electrical grid long before anyone would seriously consider rebuilding steam locomotives for daily use and way before anyone would think of building new ones.

Unless we start burning books, I think we would be able to build steam engines again. Plus, as is evidenced on this board, there are still people with first hand knowledge.

Sci-fi writers have used this concept in many books portraying a post apocalyptic earth.

In the real world..

The use of EMP bombs would quickly bring us back to steam engines.

Simple diesel engines,  crank started would work.

Your modern toy trains would decorate your shelves as you watch those who have windup/mechanical trains play with them.

Dave

An interesting recent novel about an EMP strike on America is called 'One Second After' and was written by a fella from nearby Black Mountain NC just east of Asheville. In his book, the only two vehicles still running in town were an older Jeep Wrangler and a 66 Mustang convertible.  Great story!

An EMP bomb would not permanently wipe out power production, though it would wipe out the modern control systems, and it would not wipe out power cables and such. Electromagnetic pulses will bring down the power grid, but the real loss would be the switching equipment and electronic controls. Computer equipment, unless hardened or shielded, would be wiped out, the computer controls on modern cars and so forth, but if you have an old tech car with breaker points and the like, it likely would start up after the EMP radiation disperses. I have no doubt the power grid would be down for a long time, again because of the control equipment, but the generators themselves and the power lines would not be wiped out and they could probably rebuild sections of it pretty quickly. 

An EMP would fry electronics-- but I'm pretty sure plain old batteries would not be affected. Electric motors would also survive if they were not close enough to the origin point of the pulse. 

I don't think there would be any problem in bringing back steam locomotives if need be, the builders plans for the engines are available, and more importantly, the technology is well understood. How easy it would be is another story, because you would need to find foundry capability in making the parts for it, or if using alternatives (for example, instead of forged steel, using high temperature ceramics not available in the 'golden age' of steam), but it would be doable. However, diesels would work if you are talking a simple diesel with a glowplug arrangement, if we are talking an EMP based disaster rather than a total loss of electric power. 

Interesting thoughts.

Being human bein's, adaptability would make sure we'd use what we had. A good example would be aspects of the maritime industry in WW2.

The British had tight capacity for diesel and gas engines, but needed small vessels for coastal supply purposes. They used the small shop skills available and built 19th century style Clyde river "puffers" ; non-condensing steamers, vertical boilers.

The American T-2 turbine-electric tankers came about due to tight wartime gear-cutting capacity for the usual steam turbine arrangement, so turbine generators drove big electric motors direct-coupled to the propeller shafts.

No worries, we don't need no stinkin' electricity..............no, wait.....

Interesting comments.  However this story was written early 1900s (just wish I could recall title or author), long before atom bombs and EMP pulses.  As I remember somehow the Earth passed through or subjected to external phenomena such that scientists could not generate electricity, it was a permanent condition.  Might have been a writer fearful of new fangeled electricity and envisioned dire consequences hence the story.  Made interesting reading to this 7-8 year old.

AH,  first thing that popped into my head was a bit of an Anime I saw once with trains in space as space ships, kinda weird seeing Challenger have guns and blast away at a foe. Then it sure was creative, and has some real world basis. just not with American of Japanese rolling stock, more British and European

Back to your question, steam might make a come back for a different but related reason, it is less fuel picky,internal combustion engines require high grade oil to run, to many impurities and they run afoul. Steam engines on the other hand can put up with this, as the New York Central Hudsons can attest too, they were welding their own grates in place from the iron contamination in the low grade coal and still pulling loads beyond what thought they could do durring WWII. Steam engines also lack computers so any kind of smart grid hacking disaster would  leave them free to run, yet strangely would have a good chance to take out any steam engine the has any form of electronic track control system. Fun to think about, and yes in my writing steam made a come back for those reasons and more, just have yet to finish the book with them in it yet.

I remember reading old science fiction stories from the steam era, that envisioned these fantastic steam engines that could do all these things, that could power flying machines and personal transport and so forth, and even steam powered computers (don't laugh, Charles Babbages analytic engine from the 1850's was designed to run on steam power, and in recent decades they actually built what he envisioned, and it worked... 

The H.G. Wells type "steampunk" styles are something that I think Lionel, MTH etc would have some success with, given the popularity of the genre. Design competitions, collector sets,the works maybe.

Here's a sample:    http://tinyurl.com/kmekzny

Didn't the final "Back to the Future" movie have a steam engine time machine?

That show did end up using steam locos for trains. The only reason I watched a few shows.....but then 'some' fighter jets worked....and it all fell apart for me......

Magnetic fields collapsing??!!

We'd be back on horses and I'd guesstimate that 90% of the population would be dead within a year.

That's true - I think somebody out there makes a paper model of it - don't know the scale for sure, but there is a paper model GG-1 at 1:55 scale.

The foresight of how we might over-depend on it seems very interesting in a "1984" kind of way.

 Not steam, but I got a kick out of these.

I would have to find it, but a skilled blacksmith could build a steam locomotive out of scrap metal, the Central Pacific first steam locomotive a 4-4-0 if memory serves was made from old horse shoes and other scrap metal, the cylinders that is the tricky part. and finding someone with an understanding of drive gear, at least makes it some what easier sounding to do today. Just getting all the needed high grade coal or charcoal also becomes a major challenge.

If your electronics is off it will be unaffected by an EMP.  Not true if it's in a stand-by state.

That isn't true for all electrical components, it depends on the kind of chips they are using.DRAM chips can get scrambled, and CMOS is notorious for the effects of electromagnetic interference which EMP is a form of (just ask Ford Motor Company,who decided to use a CMOS version of the Intel 808x chip in their engine control computer, and put it in the engine compartment, really bright..).  When an EMP flares, depending on the intensity and how well something is shielded, the compoments often will be permanently fried. 

Good post!

Uncle Al

As long as there is the ability to produce steel, building a steam engine should be doable. Worse case there are surviving examples that could be reverse-engineered. NASA is doing that now with a surviving Saturn V rocket engine.   

Gilly

A few years ago, the Brits built a new steam engine from scratch. There is a video and photos somewhere out in cyber space. It's a rather impressive locomotive. 

Don

They're not reverse-engineering that F-1 engine, as they have all the plans to make as many as they want.

The issue is cost.

Mostly, how to affordably test the gas generator on one to get some modern data out of one (as one probably hadn't been fired up since 1973 but I'm not certain on that point), in anticipation of the SLS program (think of a Saturn V rocket with two taller Space Shuttle solid rockets boosters strapped to the sides) without having to have new ones built.

The F-1 rocket engine is the DC-3 (or M1911A1 pisto,l if you will) of the space world. They got it right, back in the 60s, and nobody at NASA or their contractors are saying they can come up with something much better, design-wise.

For example, if you wanted to know how fast you could fly a piston-driven airplane, you would't likely want to build a new one from scratch. Instead, you'd probably get something like a Mustang fighter plane from WW2, tweak it, then do your tests from that.

Since a couple of members touched on the subject earlier, here's a clip from Back to the Future III.

They had a little help.  The boiler was made in Germany...

Rusty

The locomotive mockup they built for the end of the movie (oddly based on the locomotive that was 'played' by Sierra # 3, which they'd destroyed in the plot) used to be at Universal Studios Orlando. I saw it there in the 90s and can only assume it's somewhere in the area today. I bet it was a pain to ship it all the way to Florida:

Mankind has been forging and casting metal long before there were electronics cluttering up the world.

The industrial revolution was started with the clang of a hammer and not the click of the keystroke.

Rusty

Don't forget you can still build something, locomotives included, with water-wheel power 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFpLuJMYJdE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVmF6Nsf77Q

Originally posted by P-51:

Instead, you'd probably get something like a Mustang fighter plane from WW2, tweak it, then do your tests from that.

Like this?

Could the emp pop capacitors through attached coils?

bigkid,  actually that form of science fiction has been resurrected as steampunk.  Books like The Difference Engine and A Midsummer's Tempest base their worlds on the assumption that the steam engine as a form of power and transport occurred much earlier.  

When I got to move into my older brother's old (and much bigger) bedroom, I "inherited" his 1950's SF paperbacks too. The short story you're talking about is in one of them, but I'd have to dig the books out to recall the author and story title. It was written about 1955 or so. The storyline is that a kind of semi-transparent cloud creature that lives in space surrounds the earth's atmosphere and begins feeding off of the world's electricity in such a way that anything electrical was rendered useless. As was common in those stories (which were a running theme on "The Twilight Zone"), the story had a happy ending. Basically life goes back to the 19th century, with steam locomotives, gaslight, fireplaces, acoustical guitars, band concerts in the park etc. and everyone is happier than they had been in the stress-filled Cold War years.

Of course, our cells and the synapses in our brains use electricity, so if that really happened it wouldn't be all that rosy.

At the time the story came out, there were still quite a few steam engines around, and I think one or two builders were still making steam engines (at least for export). Today, it hasn't been too long since China built it's last steam engine, I'm sure they could start building them again pretty quickly if they had to. I think there is enough written information and first-hand knowledge about steam (old railroaders, people running restored steam, and non-railroad steam people such as power plant workers) that steam engines could be built again if needed.

If the Coalition for Sustainable Rail is successful, there might be new steam engines built anyway...

http://www.csrail.org/