Was there ever such a locomotive?

FJ posted:

In a visit to an Eastern state RR museum a number of years ago (10-15?) I was touring the collection out in the yard and spotted a faded red/pinkish locomotive shaped like a common diesel of the day but was informed by a museum worker/volunteer that it was a "momentum" powered engine.  He explained that it had a central very heavy flywheel that was sped up to a high speed over a period of hours, maybe overnight and the momentum of the spinning mass stored energy to power the locomotive during its duties.  I was fascinated at the time but neglected to get any more information about it.  I guess I assumed it was a prototype of some kind that never made it into general railroad use.  Or was the employee/volunteer just having some fun at my expense? ...

It's pretty hard to identify the item you saw from such vague and possibly inaccurate information. However, there have been some real-railroad applications (mostly experimental) using "flywheel energy storage".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...orage#Transportation

And of course we have a lot of that with flywheel-equipped model locomotives!

I wonder if someone wasn't messing with you back then...

Not a new idea, you can google Gyrobus or fly wheel bus and see how it worked on city busses as far back as 1950.

The idea has been around in many forms for a lot of years. Maybe the museum has a local experimental example there. The idea of load-leveling for locomotives and vehicles can work with flywheels or hydraulic accumulators used for braking and re-starting in frequent stop/start situations like mass transit. Here's a slideshare: http://tinyurl.com/z49a6ok

There seems to be few examples,  search for Sentinel Gyro-electric locomotive.  Was the museum in Britain?  This was also a fascinating idea http://www.scientificamerican....-the-rails-out-west/.  then there was the gyro powered monorail, not quite what you were looking for but interesting as well https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyro_monorail

Also:

The Gyro Locomotive

Another special was the Gyro Locomotive. Based on a 200 hp 4 wheeled 0-4-0 frame fitted with two "gyro units" (see Flywheel energy storage ) made by Oerlikon of Switzerland. The gyros were principally a 3 ton horizontal flywheel enclosed vessel filled with low pressure hydrogen. A vertically mounted electric motor/generator was directly coupled to the flywheel shaft. The motor took its power from an overhead supply via a type of pantograph arm raised or lowered by the driver. Power could only be taken whilst the loco was stationary. When the gyros had reached the required speed, the driver would lower the pantograph, switch the motor to generation and controlled the locomotive in a similar way to a diesel electric loco. Charging posts had to be strategically placed around the site.

This machine was specially built for the National Coal Board (NCB) at Seaton Delaval. It operated very satisfactorily but was eventually taken out of service because of site development and its restricted field of operation.

Well thank you guys, you have renewed my faith in my own memory.  While I can't place exactly where I saw what must have been an early experimental flywheel locomotive, I have now found out enough information from all of you to be convinced I did see something like this somewhere.  In reading the many links you provided and finding some modern, current research being done on these power sources, I think what I saw was probably what they are now calling a hybrid flywheel drive.  

It has a standard, smaller diesel or turbo engine driving the generator which powers the traction motors, and also has a shaft connected to the flywheel.  The energy stored in the spinning flywheel can be used to help turn the generator saving on engine fuel, and the regenerative braking from the traction motors becoming generators recharges the flywheel back up to speed.  I think they're working on that somewhere in Texas.  

One new angle I'm sure the early attempts at this didn't have is that today, the flywheel spins on magnetic bearings so there's no friction. Also, the sealed enclosure for the flywheel is filled with hydrogen to further reduce any drag an air filled chamber would have.  Supposedly, once they get this spinning it can spin for a very long time (maybe days) before it even begins to gradually slow down.  The amount of research was mind boggling and I was impressed.  Another project from the 70's with a 225 page summary report tested three units with the cooperation of the Southern RR, the Seaboard Coast Line, and Burlington Northern.   he study results were  "flywheel energy storage techniques are not applicable to railroad switchyard operation."  Maybe I saw one of those units.

FJ

Frank Garrett, Garrett Engineering of Calif. was experimenting on this in 1978 with many partners. On page 99 of the February 1978 Popular Mechanics magazine described a system that was on two MTA New York Subway trains.  14,000 miles of testing resulted in a 30% savings of electricity.

perhaps you saw a subway car - an experimental RedBird?

I've given up trying to find the exact locomotive I saw way back when, but I'm pleased to learn that there actually were attempts to use flywheel stored energy in railroad applications.  So far it seems none have been very practical, but I'm relieved that I could have seen one of the early attempts.  I guess I should have paid more attention to the guy telling me about it because it's fascinating now.  

On a side note about the '79 experiments, they were conducted by a division of the Garrett Corp. and used an EMD  SW1500 with D77 traction motors as their test vehicle.  If you've got an hour or so to kill, here's a link to their study:  http://ntl.bts.gov/lib/42000/4...storage_switcher.pdf

I've decided I now know as much about this subject as I need (look out for the linked study!)

FJ

Rusty

I get it... that's a flywheel driven locomotive, although for some reason they were called "friction drive".  If they could get a 2-pound flywheel spinning in there with today's technology, it could go miles!  

Good one Rusty.