Steam

GenesisFan99 posted:

What does it take to properly manage and run a steam loco?

1) LOTS of money.

2) Lots of experience.

3) Many, many knowledgable & experienced crew members.

Of course, the experience must be coupled with expertise.

$$$$$$$$ and EXPERTISE, and the railroad to run on, ALL in great and competing demand!

GenesisFan99 posted:

What does it take to properly manage and run a steam loco?

Can you refine your question? Do you want to know how to fire the engine? Do you want to know how to run the engine? Do you want to know about different fuels? Water treatment? How to take apart and rebuild a brake stand or an injector?

If you narrow down what kind of information you're looking for, folks might be able to give you more-specific answers.

smd4 posted:

GenesisFan99 posted:

What does it take to properly manage and run a steam loco?

Can you refine your question? Do you want to know how to fire the engine? Do you want to know how to run the engine? Do you want to know about different fuels? Water treatment? How to take apart and rebuild a brake stand or an injector?

If you narrow down what kind of information you're looking for, folks might be able to give you more-specific answers.

Exactly!!!!    His question is pretty much the same as "How high is up?".

He's a kid. They generally ask those overly-broad questions, probably because he "doesn't know what he doesn't know." It's hard to ask a specific question about something you don't know anything about to begin with.

When it comes to kids in the 15 - 25 range who have a genuine interest in steam, and really seem to want to know how an engine is operated, I'll usually direct them to the ICS course books, which I think are available on-line for free, or if not, for sale on a CD for a few bucks.

Unfortunately, I don't think I've ever had one of these kids come back and tell me they read the books.

EDIT: Yep, here are several of the ICS steam locomotive courses (about 3/4 the way down), as well as a heck of a lot more other information.

Without getting into the details (which I don't really know), compared to a diesel steam engines are a lot more complex (I am leaving out the bells and whistles on modern diesels, the basics haven't really changed). 

In a diesel engine (really diesel-electric) the diesel engine drives a generator that in turn drives electric traction motors that drive the wheels (kind of analagous to a hybrid car, where the gas engine charges batteries that drive the motors via an alternator, only difference is diesels don't use batteries as far as I know). Speed control is relatively simple, it is controlling the power going to the electric motors via something not unlike a standard transformer we use on 3 rail. Among other things, this also easily allows an engineer in one engine to control other engines via the same control scheme (MU or multiple unit control). Reverse on a diesel is basically reversing the polarity to the motors as far as I know, much the same way it is done in 2 rail DC or even with the e- units on 3 rail engines. Braking is via air pressure generated by a compressor run off the main engine. 

With a steam engine, there is a lot more involved. There is the boiler, fired by some kind of heat source (wood, oil, coal, almost anything really that can heat up the water), which generates steam which when it builds up pressure, is used to drive a piston located outside the boiler which in turn drives the main wheels (called external combustion, because unlike a diesel or gas engine where the combustion happens inside the drive cylinder, that happens outside the cylinder in a steam engine). Speed control involves controlling the amount of steam pressure going to the cylinders via a relatively complicated control mechanism. To reverse a steam engine is done via gears (much like on a car transmission as an analogy). Brake control is via air brake, driven by compressor and power output off the engine. Steam engines also require a complicated series of valves and controls (take a look at pictures of the backhead of a steam engine), all very mechanical. Inside the boiler there are a bunch of tubes that actually have the water to be heated, the firebox has its own complexity. Given the way the fuel is burned, especially coal or wood, you need to clean out the firebox and get rid of the ash, and you can have problems inside the boiler with the tubes, they can corrode or get scaled up if bad water happened to be used, and from what I have read trying to cold start a steam engine was no easy business (Diesels don't like cold, but they are light years easier than steam).  To have multiple steam engines in a train, you had to have multiple engineers and firemen, each controlling their own engine, which was a cost of using them. More importantly, steam engines require a lot more maintenance then a diesel, there are so many more bearings and valves and tubing and gears that can wear out, and the boiler operating under pressure means it has to be checked out and rebuilt fairly often, which is a major task.

Steam engines are also less efficient then diesels, external combustion vs internal combustion are very different in terms of efficiency, so for a gallon of oil let's say a diesel gets a lot more work out of it. 

This is obviously skimming the surface at a 10,000 foot altitude, I believe there is a pretty good video available right here at OGRR on how steam engines work, might be worth the investment