I thought I was the only one were born in steam era, but it looks so many steam lovers down here. It really remind me about my boyhood. Enjoy the shown !
Beautiful! I could watch all day. To see it for real instead of a model or old film is something to cherish. Somebody is going to make a full scale model of this for sure.
Ah, yes, the Upstream 2-8-2 steam locomotive, the train of my childhood. Had plenty of those at the steel refinery near where I lived as a kid, but I got scared of approaching them after one of them released steam at me. But since then the steel plant was demolished and the trains left with it. One was left in a park as decoration but years of vandalism and corrosion took its toll. I heard a few of these are still working in the US.
This is absolutely fascinating! It's nice to see steam locomotives in revenue freight service but with the benefit of modern day recording technology. I notice in China they do not turn on the headlight in the daytime. It also seems as if these locomotives use air horns instead of steam whistles. The locomotive with a bicycle on the pilot is probably how the engineer got to work! I'm so glad people made the effort to record these operations. Thanks for posting!
I love these Chinese steam units. They really are quality locomotives. They are oddly American though, being standard gauge, using AAR couplers, and Diffco side dump cars. It is no surprise that Valley Railroad (New Haven marked) 3025 was built as Tangshan works 1658M in 1989. They are not just your typical Mikados: they are the best and only "new" steam locomotives.
love the sharp switching moves, these are very professional crews. Also love the hydraulic(?) dump cars, like the old Lionels!! -- and the electric looks like the old Swiss crocodiles!!
Marvellous video, with first class filming. A documentary without words. I think the loco livery of several shades of grey and scarlet wheels is oddly attractive. Thanks!
I venture to say all the engines and many cars and their trucks are US built..Never knew how similar China's trains and track look so very much like ours !! Wish they hadn't put those square red plaques on some of the steamers. Anyway, very enjoyable Vid. Looks like standard gauge to boot ! 12:22 Check the bicycle on the pilot beam ! M
I read a article once, some time ago, that some western steam train spotters went to China to record the steam trains there, since China was the last to actually work steam trains, but got into a bit of a hassle with the police that had a hard time believing that people would be wanting to record steam trains working and thought they were spies. Those crazy westerners! Maybe they are more used to being recorded now. I hope, as China modernizes, that they realize what a treasure they have.
China is ashamed of its coal locomotives. They think they make China look backward. So the local police assumed the railfans were gathering pictures of obsolete locomotives to embarrass China. China seems easily embarrassed.
That's a Chinese SY 2-8-2 modeled on the old Japanese JF series occupation engines which were copies of the old American ALCo Mikado design. These were actually built mostly during the 60s. The current design is almost identical to the original Mikado. 1441 is one of the last ones they built.
The electricity generation stations in China aren't regulated when it comes to emissions for the most part.. so you could probably run a million dump trucks and it would equal to one locomotive.
does anyone know what the clanging on all steam locomotives is coming from. Sounds like two pieces of steel hitting together. It is on all steam locomotives American or foreign
Jerry Hubbard What you're hearing is the air compressor which is of course driven by steam pistons. The pistons or the pump (in general) is what creates the clanging sound.
*This freight railroad in China must have adopted the Janney couplers for speed* - they're lightning fast compared to the bumper-and-chain method standard throughout Europe and can be released on the roll for sorting multi-thousand-ton unit hoppers chock full of number nine lignite in a hump yard for multiple destinations.
If those locomotives are burning lignite, they have definitely been upgraded to Modern Steam standards. The exhaust looks like they were burning anthracite.
It's really cool that they use steam, but why do they do it? Why are they not using diesel? I thought maintenance wise and fuel wise diesel was better.
40-50 mph is probably their top, I have seen Susquehanna 142 (an SY) move at a pretty good clip back in the 90's. They have 57" drivers so 50 mph would probably be the top they could run without doing themselves harm.
@@thomasbush5778- The imbalance of the.main drivers hammers the rails with each turn. When severe enough they can pound kinks in the rails. An old NC&StLRy driver told me that he drove ALCO J-3s (1943) at 110 mph on the Bruceton-Memphis (Tn.) route. They had 70" drivers. The old rule of thumb was the diameter in inches x 110%. Balancing a reciprocating mass (main rod + crosshead + piston rod + piston + power thrust) with rotating mass (driver counterweights) is not an exact science.
I wonder if all of their level crossings have crossing guards and what their accident rate is if they are all like the one in this video. Also, that locomotive seems very quiet..
@@haoranli693- Crossing guard was the usual employment for RR workers who had lost arms, legs, etc. Most of these men wanted to work, to do something, not go home and draw a pension.
Интересненько! Паровоз китайский (но скопирован с американского прототипа №1701 Центральной Илинойской ждpro-parovoz.ru/index.php/sitemap/1006-parovoz-1701-tsentralnoj-illinojskoj-zheleznoj-dorogi.html ) А думпкары - точная копя наших ВС-80 scaletrainsclub.com/board/viewtopic.php?t=7868. А электровоз германского производства EL2. Вот все срисовывают китаёзы!))
Jerry Hubbard Some of these engines seem to be fired efficiently as well (Less smoke, more steam) so at least the engines aren’t polluting much. Kudos to the fireman
Wait a sec- I thought China experimented with Modern Steam technology, but rejected it. Those locomotives are putting out way too much horsepower with way too little smoke to be unmodified. Nah, the Chinese would never pirate somebody's technology.
On a placard in the cab of any "modern" steam locomotive is a chart showing acceptable smoke under different conditions. Smoke (soot) is partly ash (fly ash) and partly unburned carbon. The carbon is wasted, lost energy. The worst part of locomotive exhaust is carbon monoxide, which is the major component of locomotive exhaust. It, being invisible, is not reducible by firing technique. At the end of steam locomotive development in the USA in the early 1940s the peak efficiency was about 6%. This is locomotive, not system, efficiency. System efficiency from the coal mines to the drive wheels is
I was surprised by this footage. Maybe those Steam Locomotives are brought in by Imperial Japan before Japan-China war. They are over 80 years old but still working without breaking.
one thing that is hard to believe the amount of eletrafcation iin N Korean rail roads forthese very ritchy US railroads claim electrification cost to much but there is more of it in one of the poorest countries on the planet figure it out?????
+david levine Well for one thing, this is China, not North Korea, which is one of the RICHEST countries in the world. For another, The issue with electrification is it only works in more crowded city enviornments. The US DOES use electric engines, mostly near their major cities, and there's even stopover points where transnational passenger trains swap from a diesel-electric locomotive to a fully electric locomotive. However, using an electric locomotive is only possible where there are power lines to supply it. And power lines are tricky things. You see, you can't just string a wire from point A to point B across the country and call it a day. Electricity gets weaker the further out you go, so you have to have substations along the route to keep the electrical supply constant and strong. That's where most of the expenses would come in, building substations, and putting lines up across the US in the more remote areas. And if you've ever been to the Midwest United States, you'd know there's a LOT of remote areas. It's also not a matter of just plonking a substation down and leaving it there. With every substation, you'll need about ten people maintaining it. Not hard to come by in a city, but like I said, in the remoteness of the US, you'll be hard-pressed to find men and women who live in those areas or who are willing to drive an insane distance just to get to the substation and work on it. TL:DR: This is in China, not North Korea, and the US actually is working on electrification of railroads but the country's larger relative size compared to European countries brings in a whole new set of problems.
@@AINGELPROJECT667Most of China's land is nearly uninhabited desert and mountains. Most of China's population is in the Beijing, Canton, Shanghai and coastal areas. Very concentrated. North Korea has lots of coal. No oil. Their main benefactor, China, has no oil. That's what the hoo-hah in the South China Sea is over.
