@@mitchellbrown2233 Electric pulls more current under load and create more resistance when slowed down to the point of near pure short circuit meaning they are limited to the source of power even when it is a wire unlike steam engines or just boiling water that has no way to escape forms explosive pressure that is going to escape one way or the other the only limiting factor is the cylinder walls and is not the heat source..
While i admit this is a funny comment there is actual danger when it a steam engine goes on an incline or decline see in the firebox and boiler their is a crown sheet which separates the fire tubes and firebox from the water. If the engine goes on an incline all the water comes towards the driver on a decline it goes towards the front of the boiler this is dangerous because of the potential for a boiler explosion if the crown sheet gets to hot and the water suddenly goes back over it the metal will rapidly cool making it brittle When it turns brittle all that steam pressure you built it will quite simply kaboom
Interesting thing about steam engines, the slower the RPM, the more torque it produces. At higher RPM the steam is in and out of the cylinder too quickly, but as a load is applied, the engine slows down giving the steam inside the cylinder more time to apply expansive force. The end of the run had the torque climb into the thousands. That one last little chuff the piston made at the end was able to lift the tractor off the ground. One stroke of that one piston lifted several tons into the air like it was nothing.
Patented in the 1890 by a California grain farmer and inventor named Daniel Best, the steam tractor was originally designed to replace teams of draft horses in the fields, but it soon became popular in the timber and mining industries as a means of transporting heavy loads.
What a FANTASTIC display of pure power! There is to be nothing but respect from anyone witnessing such a wonderful machine at the prime of its life, doing exactly what it was designed to do....PULL !!
@ In the older machineries hand books, they show how to calculate the horse power of a spinning flywheel. But, you are right. Top dead center and bottom dead center can be a bugger. But most single cylinders are double firing.
it never ceases to amaze me reading the comments how many people are commenting on a machine they know nothing about if you listen to it and watch it as it's pulling you can see in here that he was actually releasing the throttle he was getting back off of the throttle he was toying with it that thing had a lot more to go! and he did a wonderful job of setting the front end back on the ground without smacking it that really takes some skill to feather that throttle. and another one for you at a hundred pounds of pressure at 250 RPM at takes three thousand foot pounds of torque to equal hundred horsepower.
The "wheelie" had more to do with the high hitch height than it did with power or smooth operation. At 1:36, you can see the angles of the tow chain. The rear of the tractor is literally being pulled down by the sled weight, which by now, was maxed out all the way forward, and wasn't moving anymore. So all the operator had to do by this point is leave the throttle settings the same, and he'll do a wheelie for the rest of the track.
There's also a slogan for any little 2-8-0 consolidation locomotive. "Pulling impressive loads at unimpressive speeds." At that time, it was the best balance of locomotive weight, tractive effort and power. Then theres the 2-8-2 with bigger firebox. This only increased the speeds of this wheel arrangement but still retaining the impressive pulling power. 2-6-x locomotive lacks the tractive effort but can go ridiculous speeds with very large drivers. 2-10-x has excessive tractive effort and limited turning radius.
@@kimpatz2189 Thanks for keeping this kind of information alive. A few days ago, my wife told my sister that I'm a trainiac. I guess I haven't posted my favorite comment about steam engines on this thread: A friend of the author of a book on the subject written a half century ago wrote and introduction to the book: "When we were young men, it seemed to us that nothing could stop these marvelous machines - steam ships and steam locomotives - not hell or high water. Then we got to thinking 'That's what makes them go - hell and high water.' "
It can go much faster, but pulling it off the ground with that kind of torque at that speed and weight would most likely be the end of the machine, the people around it, and then end of steam engines being used for recreational and educational use.
Actually, a Nuclear Reactor wouldn't make it any more powerful - it's just another way of generating the steam! You wouldn't have to refuel it for about 5 years, but . . . .
@@crestfallensunbro6001 Yes, you can slow it down, but the cooling system must remain operational no matter how slow the reaction is, or you will end up with a melt-down.
Uh.... horsepower is torque over time. And all torque is is force times distance. With enough gearing you could make a 1.5L engine out of a Honda Fit produce more torque than this tractor... it would just be very...... very..... _very_ .... slow. The engines I run have well over 3000 lbs of torque each. But it’s the over 1000 shaft horsepower a side that accelerates it down the runway until it reaches 125 miles an hour in a matter of seconds, then leap off the runway and still _accelerate_ to 200 MPH as it’s climbing a _16 PERCENT_ grade! Then level off above half the atmosphere and accelerate again to 350 miles per hour. This tractor can’t do any of that. Even if you figured out really really really tall gearing for it because the frictional losses would be far too high. It needs most of that low gearing just to move _itself._ But my engines have been used for all manner of purposes. They’re used for helicopters that sling huge loads. They’ve been used to power locomotives. They’ve been used for sports cars, race cars (until they were banned), snow plows, gen sets, etc So no... torque doesn’t rule. And when your time is valuable you want power, too. The Tesla has power in spades (a watt is a measurement of power and is volts times amps and is what actually makes the Tesla move).
The British never made a Big Boy . . but the Americans never made anything like the Flying Scotsman! Both countries made excellent machinery for the time and place of work, they were just different.
Different works... the big boy was made to carry heavy and long, the flying Scotsman to provide a fast service. Its like comparing a shinkansen to an alco.
We Aussies did ok, in my state Victoria,we had(still have, rusting away in a museum..) heaviest non articulated loco in southern Hemisphere, H220.We also had the lovely S class pacific's which were 3 cyl like the flying scotsman, they were marvelous engines, all 4 scrapped rather secretively in the 50's. They ended their lives with gorgeous streamlining.Some other states had some decent sized Garrets (AD60) as well.Some of our later engines are also rather nice, the R class Hudsons very much so, stoker fed and running roller bearings.Many years ago i was lucky enough to experience a main line cab ride at speeds approaching 80mph,which was a seriously rare thing because at that time (now maybe even less) they were supposed to do no more than 80kmh! If you like locos, check out the ones i mentioned above if you are unaware of them. Flying Scottsman is a marvelous machine, i road behind her in the 80's when she visited us.I spent much time talking to one of the drivers(Barry Dunn IIRC but it was a long time ago) many years after the event and he said it was the finest constructed loco he'd ever driven, very sensitive regulator compared to our local stuff, first time he opened it he induced a massive wheelspin, even though he was being very careful!
Steam power is way way more efficient. Had we kept on engineering steam engines, we’d have some crazy machines on our hands. Unfortunately the fuel used to create steam like wood has a far lower energy density than something like gasoline, and has less range because of it. Steam power is badass.
@@GrumpyIanthat has more to do with 1890s safety culture than a design flaw. We use much more powerful steam engines today without that same fear of exploding.
This is where our farm tractors come from and then our semi trucks. It was horse, then train, then steam tractor, then normal farm and tractors and semis
Especially the early years with exploding boilers, shearing rivets at mach speed and boiler cracks that blasted the skin off your face with high temperature and pressure steam. Gotta love it.
+Luckystrike You are right... but my good friend Jim is a skilled engineer and likes to put on a good show! There's no feeling like pulling the sled out the end with a steam engine! I've done it many times and it never gets old.
@@nomon95 how do you know that is torque? Do you know piston diameter, stroke legnth, steam pressure, valve size, is it double acting, single acting, steam pipe size, flywheel weight, governor setting? All of these affects torque in a dig way. For steam pressure. An example. You will get more torque from 100psi then 50psi. You have know idea what the torque is.
Jay Leno has a few videos about steam powered cars. If I recall in one he said the car made something like ~90 horsepower and ~1000 footpounds of torque.
I have a feeling they better be production of these tractors again. Way fuel prices are going, im tempted to have one back in the field. May take me 3 days to mow, but at least i have the wood to supply it.
No. Steam is still used in power generation for coal, oil, and nuclear plants. Truth is these power plants were too limited for ships (which swapped to steam turbines, gas turbines, and diesels), too labour intensive for railroad (which swapped to diesels and electric), too heavy for aircraft (a few early attempts were steam powered but gasoline internal combustion engines and then gas turbines had far better power to weight ratios), and too slow for cars... nobody wanted to get up at 2am to stoke the fire to keep their boiler going so they could leave for work at 8. Even in the farm industry. These were slow. The 10 or so minutes a farmer spend starting the pony motor and warming up the diesel must have seemed like a luxury compared to what it would take to get one of these going from a cold start.
And the scary part? He could have dragged that sled home with him if he'd wanted to. He didn't stop because he didn't have the "oomph" to keep going - He stopped 'cause there wasn't any point in going any further. That sled had as much "STOP, DAMMIT!" in play as it could muster without putting more weights in the transfer box. As it stood, he could have kept right on going until he ran out of fuel and/or water. That rig wasn't even partway to breaking a sweat when he said "That's plenty" and shut 'er down.
It's physically impossible for the Steam Traction Engine to do a wheelie. Its heavyweight and slow speeds make it impossible to lift Its front wheels off the ground. The Traction Engine, of course, does so anyways, because it doesn't care about what people think about it
if never been on one . Man theses things where some work horses . yes it took awhile to get them started . an yes they where slow as all hell . but they could pull just about anything
