Railroad steam engines

All through the thirties and forties the manufacturer of railroad steam engines asserted to the bitter end that diesel engines could not be competitive in railroad use. By about 1950, no further steam engines were manufactured but none of the steam engine producers were making diesels. 

Wood was the easiest fuel to use in early steam locomotives, but it was soon realized that the logistics of wood fuel were limiting. Steam engines were developed that could burn coal, peat, or (later) oil where those fuels were more abundant. For intercity railroads (especially in the Americas, Asia, Australia, and Africa), coal remained the fuel of choice for one hundred years. Despite impressive technology development, steam locomotives never could achieve thermal efficiencies greater than about 6 to 8 percent. 

In 1939 General Motor s Electro-Motive Division sent its famed demonstrator FT-103 diesel-electric units on a triumphant tour of America. One purpose was to show skeptical railroaders that this 5400 hp, four-unit diesel locomotive developed more low speed tractive effort than competitor steam engines, which meant smooth starts and excellent performance on long mountain grades. The effect was much like Trevithick s demonstrations 130 years earlier, and a new generation of railroad locomotive power was assured. 

As the most efficient fuel for the internal combustion engine, gasoline has vastly increased private and public mobility of the world s people, especially in industrialized societies. The nineteenth century increased humanity s mobility through the steam engines of railroad trains, and the twentieth century saw the rise of gasoline to enable private automobile transportation. As such, gasoline significantly affects the lives of almost every person in a developed country. 

Coal in 1947 was at a record high price of 4.16 per ton at the mine. More than 600 Mt were mined that year in the USA, but already, oil was + beginning to displace it The old steam engines, which used a ton of coal for every four miles hauling a heavy freight, consumed a quarter of the coal production (125 Mt). By 1960 when the railroad had almost completely converted from coal to diesel, the rail industry used only 2 Mt of coal. 

The Roman Pont du Gard in what is now France China s Grand Canal Printing press Steam engine The telegraph system Transcontinental railroad in the U.S. 

Experiments with steam engines to drive boats were being made in Britain and in America, and the first commercially successful river paddle steamship, Robert Fulton s Clermont, appeared in America in 1807 (36). Then, in 1823, Englishman George Stephenson established a locomotive firm in Newcastle and, two years later, demonstrated the feasibility of steam-powered railroad transportation (37). 

By the end ofWorld War II the use of residual fuel oil in the United States had reached about 1.2 million barrels per day. The bulk of this use was in industri-al/commercial boilers, railroad locomotives, and steamships. Shortly thereafter, railroad use declined rapidly as diesel engines, which used distillate fuel, replaced steam locomotives. In the 19.30s and 1960s residual fuel oil use for marine and industrial applications, as well as for electric power generation, con-... 

Far less than the stoichiometric amount of sequestrants precipitation of insoluble salts from water hardness can be prevented by slowing down the formation of crystals and crystal growth. This process is called the threshold effect. It has long been used in the preparation of boiler feeding water, e.g., steam vessels of railroad engines. Originally sodium pyrophosphate was used for this task, but alkylphosphonic acids and derivatives thereof are superior in their effect. 

It is fascinating to speculate whether the outcomes we observe in the past might have been entirely different with different timing. For example, had steam turbine electric engines been introduced in the market a few years earlier, would we still have railroad transportation based on coal and steam ... 

Unions had traditionally argued that minimum crew sizes were necessary for safety reasons, but railroads claimed that changing technology, such as the shift from steam to diesel engines, made some positions unnecessary. See for example Fisher et al. (1971). 

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