One of the comments from said article:
"If in the last 127 years the same effort and money had been put into developing the steam engine as in the internal combustion engine, today we would be able to fill -up at the kitchen sink and the Arabs would still be riding camels. For obvious reasons, the development of steam powered cars was deliberately suppressed".
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But what would you burn to produce the heat to create the steam? I would dread to think how smoky our streets would be if the answer is err coal.
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>>But what would you burn to produce the heat to create the steam?<<
Smokeless fuel.
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Which is sourced from the middle east?
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>>Which is sourced from the middle east?<<
Eh:
Rank
Country/Region
Coal production
(million tonnes)
share of
total (%)
World
6,940.6
100
1
China
3,050.0
45.6
2
United States
973.2
15.8
3
India
557.6
6.2
-
European Union
536.8
4.6
4
Australia
409.2
6.7
5
Russia
298.1
4.1
6
Indonesia
252.5
4.6
7
South Africa
250.0
4.1
8
Germany
183.7
2.6
9
Poland
135.1
1.7
10
Kazakhstan
101.5
1.5
11
Turkey
84.3
1.2
12
Ukraine
73.7
1.1
13
Colombia
72.1
1.1
14
Canada
62.9
1.0
15
Greece
62.7
1.0
16
Czech Republic
53.3
0.8
17
Vietnam
45.0
0.7
18
Serbia
42.2[2]
0.6
19
North Korea
41.3[2]
0.6
20
Romania
30.6
0.4
21
Bulgaria
26.9
0.4
22
Thailand
18.8
0.3
23
United Kingdom
17.9
0.3
24
Estonia
16.5[2]
0.2
25
Mongolia
12.3[2]
0.2
26
Mexico
11.1
0.2
27
Bosnia and Herzegovina
10.5[2]
0.2
28
Spain
10.2
0.1
29
Hungary
9.0
0.1
30
Mongolia
5.5[2]
0.1
31
Brazil
5.1
0.1
32
Venezuela
5.0
0.1
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I like the idea of a coal powered steam car, presumably complete with tender and fireman. Presumably you would pull into a fuel station and collect half a ton of best steam coal from some sort of giant automatic hopper.
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>> I like the idea of a coal powered steam car, presumably complete with tender and
>> fireman. Presumably you would pull into a fuel station and collect half a ton of
>> best steam coal from some sort of giant automatic hopper.
I stood and watched the London to Brighton run a few years ago. I'll never forget the sight of what was basically a railway engine with steering front bogie steaming along. Driver, fireman and steersman!
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Most steam cars burned, er, petrol.
It was effectively free at the time, being a waste product produced when refining crude oil to produce lubricants, lamp oil and such. Also you can just turn on a tap rather than having to continually stoke the thing with coal.
One side effect of having a petrol feed into the naked flame of the boiler burner was a tendancy to produce rather more fire than was required on occasion.
The reason both steam cars and trains died out is simple. Burning fuel to heat water, producing steam which then drives the engine is hideously inefficient. For a start you burn quite a lot of it to produce the power required to haul around a load of water to turn into steam....
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I think most of the later models ran on Kerosene because of the price and danger of petrol as a fuel.
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>> One of the comments from said article:
>>
>> "If in the last 127 years the same effort and money had been put into
>> developing the steam engine as in the internal combustion engine, today we would be able
>> to fill -up at the kitchen sink and the Arabs would still be riding camels.
>> For obvious reasons, the development of steam powered cars was deliberately suppressed".
The obvious reason being they were useless for the task.
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>>The obvious reason being they were useless for the task<<
Especially the ones with only 1 hump.
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We should at least seriously consider running steam locos during winter months.
At least they won't be un-drivable like modern high tech electric locos which becomes uselsess because of wrong type of snow particles or different types of leaves etc.
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Clearly you have never tried to drive a steam loco in adverse conditions. Some of the time they never got out of stations.
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A chap owned a steam car in Hastings when we lived there - all smoke/noise but no go,
But then it's almost Hydrogen powered in a way :)
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I don't think it is true that steam cars stopped developing at the stage depicted in the OP.
Around 1910 American steamers were the fastest cars in the world and had a top speed and acceleration that would be passable even by modern standards. They had flash boilers, and I think were heated by kerosene, which was presumably produced from US oil wells.
I think it's a good question why they were not adopted - vested interests no doubt.
Studz and Mercer were the big rivals:
There's nothing worser than a Mercer,
or
Youv're got to be nuts to drive a Studz.
There's a story that when Mercer himself was charged with speeding, at 85 mph, he was annoyed because he said he was going much faster.
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Weren't steam lorries still around in the '50s?
Pat? ;>)
Last edited by: bathtub tom on Tue 27 Sep 11 at 12:05
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I'm pretty sure in the early 1950s Cambridge Gas Works used Sentinel steam wagons to deliver coke locally.
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I'm not that old Tubby Tommy:)
Pat
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>> Weren't steam lorries still around in the '50s?
>>
Later than that actually Tom. The last steam lorry built in the UK left the Sentinel works in Shrewsbury in 1951. I believe some of them worked on into the 1960's as tar sprayers, the steam boiler being ideal for keeping the tar hot, of course.
Sentinels were noted for being very fast, BTW; the S4 four-wheeler of the late 1930's was reputed to be good for over 50 mph, though I dread to think what it must have been like to drive at those speeds. Most petrol-engined heavy lorries of the period would struggle to top 30 mph.
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Was there a Foden steam lorry Harleyman?
I can remember them - steam lorries - but they were rare. I do remember traction engines from Cornwall in the early forties, and tractors with steel bladed driving wheels which marked the roads as tanks did...
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>> Was there a Foden steam lorry Harleyman?
>>
There certainly was, they were one of the big names. Made their last steam lorry in 1934.
Here's a little bit of lorry trivia for you; ERF, now along with Foden sadly defunct, was a spin-off of Fodens. Edwin Richard Foden (hence the name) saw diesel as the future of road haulage, was unable to convince the Foden board, so set up on his own, just down the road from the original Foden factory.
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How about a steam car that has a clean burn incinerator that burns household waste.
Your local council could collect it from the door step then sort through and sell it back to us as fuel. Special catalysts would clean or hold the carbon. Local councils make money to re-invest locally and consumers get cheaper fuel. Bingo, i've jsut solved the worlds energy crisis...wait, NO! I don't want to go with the nurse, leave me alone...no, not the big syringe again aaaaggghhhh
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My ole mum used to say " There are more out than in".
:-D
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>> We should at least seriously consider running steam locos during winter months.
>> At least they won't be un-drivable like modern high tech electric locos which becomes uselsess because of wrong type of snow particles or different types of leaves etc.
>>
I understand that the odd sparks from the chimey used to kill railside trees. So leaves on the line was much less of a problem.
But I'd hate to drive a steam train when its icy out. My grandfather used to, but he switched to driving underground trains for the last ten years of his career - he said he could do it sitting down, in a nice warm cab.
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Rudyard Kipling's story 'Steam Tactics' is about early motoring and features a small, troublesome steam powered car with tiller steering. It was published in 1904 I think, but perhaps a little later. He wrote another motoring story, this one published in 1917, 'The Village that Voted the Earth was Flat'.
Both are broadly comic tales of motorists beleaguered by tiresome policemen, magistrates and politicians, and getting their revenge in various unscrupulous ways. Although not great literature they are from the pen of a great writer and well worth a look if you have a dash of Mr Toad in you. Both texts available free on line I'm sure, but find them for yourselves. Google is a great help I find (he murmured with deeply insincere naivety).
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>> I understand that the odd sparks from the chimey used to kill railside trees. So
>> leaves on the line was much less of a problem.
>>
Partly true. Actually the sparks set the trees alight, along with other vegetation on the embankments, which rapidly spread to cornfields and, occasionally, houses. To combat this, the bank sides were cut back far more than is the case today; have a look at any old railway photos of the 1950's era, they look more like someone's back garden than the dense undergrowth you see nowadays. And it was all done by hand, which needs considerable manpower, see my other post.
>> But I'd hate to drive a steam train when its icy out. My grandfather used
>> to, but he switched to driving underground trains for the last ten years of his
>> career - he said he could do it sitting down, in a nice warm cab.
>>
I've only experienced firing on the North York Moors Railway and Great Central Railway in winter conditions, and even from that I can vouch for your grandfather being 100% correct. It's a bit of a myth that railwaymen resented diesels; many were glad of the better working conditions, though like lorry drivers when they reminisce about roping and sheeting etc, it's partly to do with nostalgia for a lost era.
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>> We should at least seriously consider running steam locos during winter months.
>>
>> At least they won't be un-drivable like modern high tech electric locos which becomes uselsess
>> because of wrong type of snow particles or different types of leaves etc.
>>
>>
No. They'd be undriveable because there is no longer any infrastructure in place to keep them running, like coaling and watering facilities for a start. Nor is there sufficient manpower, or indeed a skill base.
With all due respect, before you make a fatuous remark like that, go down to your local preserved steam railway and find out how much work actually goes into keeping a fleet of steam locomotives running, even in the limited confines of trundling up and down a preserved railway at 20 mph, never mind on the main line.
Oh..... and they're not compatible with modern rolling stock.
Last edited by: Harleyman on Tue 27 Sep 11 at 23:22
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World's oldest running car up for auction - Dog
