With due respect. 2:39 Shuttles started flying in the 1970s (your video shows Apollo rockets at the moment you says Shuttles). In the UK at least, steam trains cease to run on BR lines by 1969, except for special cases.
Oh, wow, trying to fuel a steam engine with hydrogen is all kinds of insane. Hydrogen is a horrible fuel to begin with (price, efficiency, storage...) but now they'll burn it to run a steam engine instead of just using a fuel cell and power electric traction motors?
1) You are correct about producing hydrogen (it can be "green") but omitted the losses due to compression to 350bar, which reduces overall efficiency. 2) The steam cycle is not as efficient as others. For example look up about Supercritical CO₂ cycles for gas turbine combined cycle power plants. So if a "turbine" is to be used then it would be better, i.e. more competitive, to use a supercritical CO₂ combined cycle setup. 3) Much loved though steam is (it's simpler, it's understandable, it's historic, it's "living", romantic, ...) it is a dead duck. Even Livio Dante Porta and David Wardale (5AT) couldn't save it. I just hope the many devotees manage to keep the heritage lines running.
I've been thinking about a design like this for several years and unsure how to demonstrate it. Though a major difference: Steamology seems to want to do series hybrid where turbines generate electricity and the main mover is electric motors. My idea was basically to have driveshaft bogies, and two movers: a many-cylinder piston motor, a turbine, and a clutch to select between them for running in low and high speed.
I forgot what it was called but there were plans in the US during I think the 1980s to make a modern steam locomotive that looked like a diesel. It never was made though.
Sounds good but can you imagine the problems involved in getting the railway workers to agree to a one driver steam train! They can’t even agree to one guard trains!!
Hydrogen-electric instead of diesel-electric. Hydrogen ICEs are feasible and have been built in the US. The waste product is drinkable water...that's all. Hydrogen will eventually prevail over everything else in the end since it is ubiquitous ( sea and air ) and new technologies are being developed to supply quantities but not yet at scale. The tech is just too new. The Aussies have come up with a method of extracting hydrogen from 'dirty' unfiltered sea water but the science, again, is so new it cannot yet be exploited at scale. Imho the age of hydrogen when it finally arrives will be similar to the impact of steam as motive power.
Hydrogen is an annoying fuel, green hydrogen is not cost effective unless the power used to generate and transport it is virtually free because a lot of the energy is lost at every single step in the process. I guess you could recover a lot of the heat for district heating as a byproduct because it's so inefficient. If at all possible pantograph's are the way to go. Even battery trains seem far more feasible than hydrogen, maybe with a hybrid electrified network where the trains charge via a the pantograph at stations and at regular intervals along the line. Trains are pretty efficient so it would still be more feasible than battery trucks.
There has been quite a bit of research in Aus going on into Renewables -> Ammonia plants. being an energy dense liquid, its far easier to handle than raw hydrogen, and can be produced whenever there is surplus energy. In Aus, we have a practically infinite amount of sunlight, and quite a bit of infrastructure in our remote gas fields producing ammonia. It has kind of been looked down upon for use in domestic cars, as its a fairly hazardous chemical, and the electric fuel cells are hideously expensive, but I could see bulk steam trains running on ammonia being quite viable. Either tanking ammonia into population centres to run base load power plants, or shipping produce. The rest of the world may not know this, but there is a massive amount of fresh water in the north of Australia that has/could be collected for irrigation, and if you water it, the soil is quite fertile. check out the Ord River valley. we have melon, tomato, mango, hundreds more crops, year round. but they all come to the city's via truck. a solar ammonia steam train system would be sweet!
watch?v=mjtj38rc2DI a very good asianometry breakdown of the ord river system. repeated that transport is a major setback for its viability. a renewable cheap as in free (once built) ammonia train could be game-changing. as negative as this video may sound, It does mean our supermarkets here in Perth, WA, are practically never without many fresh A+ grade fruit n vegetables. I think after cotton, alot of the subsidies were given were to keep that supply chain going. a healthy population was a productive one, and cheap fresh food is a good way to do that. There was a fringe political party that endorsed nuclear power to run electric trains to run goods north/south. raw steam made from wind and solar seems heaps better, but to their credit they wanted to put the nuke plants way out in nowhere, half way along the tracks, and feed the citys at the end points. we have alot of uranium to...
Will they bring back the "Tuppenny hapenny" third class ticket as well, Heat transference is the point of energy loss that makes all this talk of steam trains returning irrelevant, the same as going back to horse drawn carriages, this is just Carbon fuel Suppliers, seeking ways to delay the inevitable, I have Great-Grandchildren, that I would love to spend a day-out with at a museum, But I also remember the stink of coal on the Streets of a city, compared to todays
While the idea of using hydrogen to generate steam for trains sounds innovative, it seems quite inefficient. Essentially, this approach involves carrying a hydrogen-powered electricity generator on the train. Producing hydrogen itself often requires significant energy, which typically comes from burning fossil fuels like coal. This process negates the potential environmental benefits. Instead, why not directly use the electricity generated at stationary power plants and supply it to the train through overhead wires? This method is much more efficient and avoids the energy losses associated with converting and transporting hydrogen.
The main issue I see is whether or not they use pure oxygen from tanks, or straight from the air. If it's using oxygen from the air, then there will be NOx emissions.
Steam, seriously?? Ridiculous. Why is the UK so bloody backwards?? Use conventional electric traction like all the rest of us. Yes, you need some poles and wires. It's about time you get them, 125 years after the invention.
External combution, what's the point? So many places to lose energy and be so inefficient. Internal combustion (hydrogen or not) converts energy to motion with no middle step. The Victorians knew no different!!🙄
I'm watching this with interest, but am curious as to the advantage of steam turbines over internal combustion if you are using hydrogen as the fuel? Once you have the gas, actually using it is the easy part? Does anyone know how steam compares to converted diesel engines? I doubt the deltic will be suitable (!!), but hydrogen can be used in engines with conversion works?
I would choose Gordon all days a week because he is my favorite and he is kinda bad ass. We have alot in common that i can relate too we would also even learn alot from each other. Would also be fun to hear his stories, thoughts and argues and i think despite his pompous arrogant features he is after all a really kind caring and good hearted engine that loves to help out and How nice would it be to pull the express 🤩 after all i think we would be a great team
I've never understood the fascination with steam for locomotives. I get it for museums and hobby locomotives and the nostalgia aspect. just like some people love mechanical and self-winding wristwatches. But compared to diesel, steam was bulky, dirty, slow to start, required more maintenance, and especially in service the required starting and stopping or shutting down overnight, inefficient. In the USA, we are building more efficient and lower emission diesel engines. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-imajKbTL3N0.html We have lots of oil and if go back to the Trump way of doing things it will be cheap again.
Get on with it! You're not making a TV documentary for people who know nothing about railways. You're making a RU-vid video that people will only click on if they're already interested in trains and already know plenty about them. Two minutes into this video and you're still just introducing the idea of non-diesel trains and telling us the back story that we already know. Everybody in your audience already knows all of that stuff.
16:10 Dual Cab design isn't what American likes, especially with flat faces, since this design is considered sorely dangerous. without big nose to the front. 17:33 then again heavy weight is no problems to American Class 1 Railroads, particularly with their tracks can support heavier trains. what American wants however is Multiple Unit Operations capability. it would look odds on American tracks though that small British engine hauls bigger American heavyweight freight trains. 17:45 Give a different 'American hull' and Class 1 American Railroads would consider. they don't like European flatface boxy locomotive designs at all.
13:46 Steam turbine electric using on railroads huh? Americans try this sometimes after British did with direct drive turbines (also tried in America by Pennsylvania Railroad, and it is purely for speed and to beat New York Central) and too bad it didn't turn out good (Union Pacific and Norfolk and Western did one.. for UP it is for their streamlined passenger trains, for N&W, seriously to continue their use on Appalachian coals rather than diesel fuels (which not originated within their rights of way), will this same pony trick works this time?
