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Cutting Edge Steam Locomotive

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mallard

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To a fairly significant extent, all electric trains in the UK are running on steam power... Just with the steam being generated and used to produce electricity in large power stations which, even with transmission losses, are much more efficient than any self-powered train ever has been. That's the future of steam power.
 
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hexagon789

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The thing is though that most locos aren’t compounds. That they were almost always worked in a sub-optimum way explains why so many theoretically good compounds turned out to be disappointments, working, but often little or no more efficiently than a normal engine. Tests on the W1 were done with 30%, 40% and 50% high pressure cut off, when analysis has shown that 90% was best (yielding an estimated 3960 drawbar hp with double Kylchap compared with 1702 on test at 50%), showing how far out they were.

Would such high-cutoffs be sustainable?

I'm may have this wrong but wouldn't it make firing more difficult for the fireman by using more coal?

Though that could be negated by using other fuels of course.
 

Spartacus

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Would such high-cutoffs be sustainable?

I'm may have this wrong but wouldn't it make firing more difficult for the fireman by using more coal?

Though that could be negated by using other fuels of course.

W. Brown’s book on the W1 goes into quite a lot of detail about it, and I can’t remember half of it off the top of my head but essentially in a compound that’s not quite how it works. The point behind building a high pressure compound was to improve efficiency, and a long high pressure cut off would have been coupled with a short low pressure one. The French firemen seem to have managed with Chapelon’s designs.
 

hexagon789

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W. Brown’s book on the W1 goes into quite a lot of detail about it, and I can’t remember half of it off the top of my head but essentially in a compound that’s not quite how it works. The point behind building a high pressure compound was to improve efficiency, and a long high pressure cut off would have been coupled with a short low pressure one. The French firemen seem to have managed with Chapelon’s designs.

I think I'll need to read up a bit, I have heard of Chapelon though.
 

broadgage

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To a fairly significant extent, all electric trains in the UK are running on steam power... Just with the steam being generated and used to produce electricity in large power stations which, even with transmission losses, are much more efficient than any self-powered train ever has been. That's the future of steam power.

This was the case until recently, but not these days.
For two weeks, no coal whatsoever has been burnt to produce electricity for the UK grid, the first time that this has been achieved since the very beginning of the electric age well over a century ago.
Our electric power has come largely from wind, solar, imports, hydroelectric plant, nuclear and gas.

Nuclear plants use steam, and natural gas power stations also use some steam. Wind and solar involve no steam.
 

Northhighland

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Biomass is not as environmentally friendly as it was professed to be. No future for that as a part of future rail design.

Electricity is the dilutive if transport power unless hydrogen power takes a leap forward.

This is definitely a solution looking for a problem.
 
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