When I was a kid (I’m 70) I used to love visiting my Grandparents in Wayne ,Nebraska. I’d have my bedroom windows open as there was no A/C . And at night I’d hear the steam whistles from way off as they got closer or farther away . Such a wonderful but lonesome sound. Thanks for your video.
What a fantastic memory. I took my 5 year old daughter to see a steam engine on a heritage railway today. She loved it. We've ridden on it before. It's fantastic because at times in summer I can hear a distant steam engine going off into the distance and the whistle being used.
@@erikschiller7210 A term used by railroad employees and sometimes other railfans to describe people who foam at the mouth at trains. Rabid railfans. Train weebs. People with such high passion for everything railroad that they becomes obnoxious to everyone around them.
Jesus said, “No one can enter the Kingdom of God (God's family) unless he is born of water and the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but spirit gives birth to Spirit. You should not be surprised at my saying, You must be born again” (John 3:5-7). what does this mean? Well you have to believe with your whole heart that JESUS died for your sins and after 3 days and nighrs GOD raised HIM from the death, so you can be baptized and after being baptised ask GOD for the HOLY SPIRIT . WHO will guide you trough life!❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤
This is so high quality. 800 views on something this great is an atrocity. Would have loved to see some details on the boiler though. That part has always puzzled me.
The boiler is a mystery to me too. I'd love to know more about it too. By the way, it's 9 days since you commented and views are up from 800 to 14965 which is more like it.
@@bahoonies oh wow! Thanks for the update. Guess the youtube algorithm that helped me find this channel is doing its job :) No word from the author about a potential boiler deep-dive though >_
I learned a lot. Thanks. Correction: Coal was the dominant fuel for almost the entire history of the steam locomotive, not oil. Engines were getting converted to oil as they were fading out, being replaced by the diesel electric locomotives.
@@frequentlycynical642 Wood was also used in places where it was more readily available and cheaper than coal, such as Russia and the Nordic countries. But even in those places coal was preferred if available, as it carries more energy per volume and also produces less ash and sparks, reducing the risk of forest fires caused by steam engines.
In the U.S., after the early days of predominantly wood, the fuel of choice tended to be what was most available and cost effective regionally. Generally (very generally), this meant coal in the east and oil in the west.
There are pictures of locomotives wrecked on Mars. The Freemasons spliced us in, we didn't design any of it, and we will end up going back to the old ways (our space age ancestors had better knowledge than us)
Jesus said, “No one can enter the Kingdom of God (God's family) unless he is born of water and the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but spirit gives birth to Spirit. You should not be surprised at my saying, You must be born again” (John 3:5-7). what does this mean? Well you have to believe with your whole heart that JESUS died for your sins and after 3 days and nighrs GOD raised HIM from the death, so you can be baptized and after being baptised ask GOD for the HOLY SPIRIT . WHO will guide you trough life!❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤
what a fun video! i've always been a fan of steam trains but never knew quite exactly how they worked, this video covered my thoughts regarding the design of these locomotives. it's also fun to mention how steam locomotives use all the major elements of nature to run (fire, water, air for steam, and coal/oil for earth!)
I would argue that it actually isn’t outdated. For passenger transport it is. But so is diesel for that purpose. Steam trains are actually more powerful than diesel trains and are actually generally simpler in design and function. However, the problem is energy waste. Diesel engines are more fuel efficient. But steam engines also use cheaper fuel. You can go back and forth though.
After watching many videos on the working of steam locomotives, this video gave me deeper insights into its functioning. Thanks for making it insightful.
Nice. Your cutaway of the end of superheater flues cleared up a lot for me. Small fire tubes, out of contact w the water, within a big fire tube. The combo of big tube's low surface area for their volume, and the fact that the inner tubes are not in contact w the boiler water, means the air has tons of have tons of heat as it enters the superheater.
The engineering that went into the design and building of these beasts has always amazed me. We have 3 of them at our local museum and they are massive! The info board on one said it could do 160kmh!!! You think of how fast steam and pistons are moving at that speed. 😳
Even Though I'm just a Nerd, I'm gonna point out some things you missed: 1: About The Airbrakes, Pressure Releases it rather than Bite 2:The Steam powered bell does not really move the whole bell, It only moves the Clapper 3: You Missed on How the Injector Works is a steam pump that sucks Water to the Boiler(It's kinda hard to explain without a visual aid) 4:Please A More Chimney Boy Whistle :)
Some bells had the entire yoke swing, called a piston ringer. This was standard from 1906 until the 1940s. It was only later that the clapper ringers became common. There are also several different types of injectors, but all use a fairly similar principle of creating a vacuum and water rushing into fill said vacuum, simply some require steam to lift the water, whilst others use gravity.
That is not quite true. The air in each car does the real work. Reducing air in the train line activates the system. Also locomotives have a separate system than the train brakes. It is always direct air.
Well the bell wouldn't have been activated by steam anyways. It would have been air, or a pull cord. And yes they had two types one that made the entire bell swing or just a clapper.
Thank you for this video. I enjoyed it very much. Not only was it clear, I really learnt something. Very very fascinating, well explained and engaging.
Yeah I have to say I've never even heard of an oil powered stream locomotive. All footage of steam trains I have seen online and even ones I have seen irl have all been coal powered, with one of the engineers needing to shovel coal into the furnace constantly.
You're right most used coal since it was much better than firewood and largely available in Europe, but then Oil came and for a brief moment of time it was cheaper to convert and still use them.
Most were wood prior to 1880, a few logging lines in the Pacific Northwest and in the Deep South remained with wood into the 1930s. Coal came about in the 1880s (some roads adopted it even earlier, such as Union Pacific). Oil appeared on SOME roads as early as the 1900s, mainly western roads such as the Southern Pacific, ATSF (post 1920s), Northern Pacific, etc. Some eastern roads burnt oil (most were coal) to comply with various ordinances or other reasons (such as the Florida East Coast Line post-1910). By that same manner, some Western roads burnt coal (such as the Denver & Rio Grande, later D&RGW post 1921).
There is one preserved railway here in Australia I love and that's the Puffing Billy railway. I've also gotten into the Wilesco brand of steam toys that run on fuel tablets. Another thing that my partner and I like doing is going to any steam rallies So to me steam power is not outdated Love the video ❤
I love steam engines! They are indeed marvelous pieces of engineering and cold starting a more modern engine is quite a time consuming process, in part because steam literally drives everything on that engine and there are a ton of valves and so on that have to be opened and closed in a particular order to do a proper startup. The one thing that railroads could have benefited from, which was never done because it was decided that it would be difficult to integrate, is multi-stage pistons. Here, we have an illustration of a typical two-stroke piston. Once the steam is used, it is exhausted or recirculated through a condenser (rarely) prior to being returned to the tank. The steam that is exhausted still has a good deal of energy in it. By increasing the surface area of a successive piston and reducing the stroke length, you can still take advantage of that extra energy to operate a second, third, or even a fourth stage before reclaiming the water. Multi-stage steam engines (not locomotives, just general engines) are fascinating and significantly increase the engine efficiency, although the efficiency and power of any steam engine is still far below that of an internal combustion engine, which is why they aren't around anymore. However, one thing steam engines have in SPADES is torque which made the ideal for certain categories of devices.
Great video and very informative. Something I do feel was slightly glossed over is the importance of the water valves that control the introduction of water into the boiler. Too much water and the fuel to steam conversion rate becomes suboptimal. However this pales in comparison to not enough water which is when steam engines tend to fail catastrophically. It wasn’t just the higher efficiency of DE-Engines that put the steam engine on the shelf, the higher safety Standard also contributed massively.
You missed a visual description of the blast pipe operating. Which makes the classic chuff chuff. The sudden release of used, but still under pressure steam, surging from the driving cylinder to the blast pipe where it mixes with the smoke and explodes up the smoke stack. To me, this surge of waste steam from the blast pipe up the smoke stack in synchrony with the drive rods is the very essence of a railway steam locomotive. The sound changes intimately with how hard the engine is working. Seeing this animated would have been awesome. This vented steam is used to create draft. It is also why steam locomotives use so much water as the used steam is lost and not re-condensed. Water replenishment stops are more frequent than coaling stops. Otherwise it is a great video. 🙂
When he mentions "The temperature and pressure inside the boiler is monitored at all times" the video is showing a sort of cylindrical device attached to the side of the boiler with a pipe going to it. It might be confused that this is a temperature or pressure sensor and it is not. It is a boiler check valve. This is where water is added to the boiler under pressure and this check valve allows water to flow in if the water pressure is high enough, but not let boiler water ever flow out the opposite direction..
One omission is the ejector connected to the bottom of the 'smoke stack.' As steam leaves the pistons it vents upward in the smokebox thru the stack. The ejector creates a suction in the smokebox that draws the firebox smoke thru the boiler. Without an ejector, there would be no flow thru the boiler.
Very interesting to talk about to talk about the other components. I would like to see someone do a video of a tank engine without steam cylinders on the side.
Steam is a rather unique and interesting thing, as we have used it for many different operations. Even today to generate electricity steam is used by either coal, natural gas or nuclear "pellets" to create the heat to create steam and use it to spin generators for making electricity. Even the ancient Greeks had steam engines.
Great video but I would like to mention that steam locomotives are sometimes pulled out of storage/museums for clearing the train tracks of snow and ice because they are/were better at the task than the modern trains at the time (or there wasn't enough locomotives that were capable at the time). Happened in Sweden in 7 to 12 years ago, can't remember it to well because I was a child at the time and couldn't find any articles from a quick search.
First-time channel viewer, a bit skeptical since so many descriptions of steam engines get the details wrong, and then I heard -- "Johnson bar" -- OK, this guy's not so bad :)
I believe that they also use the steam engine not just for moving the train but for braking as well such as going downhill and as an aid for making emergency stops , It's all about how you work the valves and by doing so , You can achieve dynamic braking , Similar to a Jake brake on it semi truck Back when I was a kid I was at Cedar Point riding the train to Frontier town and it was powered by a steam engine and the engineer had to make an emergency stop because an animal was on the track , So the engineer worked with the valves to stop the wheels on the engine itself and besides applying the brakes and locked up the wheels on the engine I can imagine how hard it is to operate a steam engine because you have to deal with the unbearable heat coming from the firebox , You have to keep a constant eye on every pressure gauge besides watching down the track and constantly working the valves when you approach a hill going up or down I can also imagine how hard it was for the engineer back in the old West during the summer in certain areas where temperatures topped out at 100 degrees plus
While they are mostly nostalgia, UP 4014 recently pushed a broken down freight train WHILE still pulling its fully loaded tour train. Steam may be old fashioned but it’s still got it 💪
The names of wheel arrangements shown are correct and are the most commonly used names. However, specific railroads sometimes used a different name. For example, the Southern Pacific was NOT going to call its 2-10-2's "Santa Fe's" (Santa Fe being a rival). So, they called them "Decapods" even though that is more correctly a 2-10-0. Usually, they shortened it to just "Decs." The 4-8-4 probably had the most names. "Niagra" on the New York Central. "Greenbrier" on the Chesapeake & Ohio. "Pocono" on the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western. "Wyoming" on the Lehigh Valley. "Dixie" on the Nashville, Chattanooga & St Louis. "Golden State" on the Southern Pacific. "Potomac" on the Western Maryland.
Some of the activity of the valve gear is not discussed here. And it can get a bit complicated and there are many valve gear designs besides the one shown here (which is the Walschaerts design). But one thing may be worth mentioning. If you look at the side view, the rod from the piston valve does not connect directly to the rod providing the push/pull motion. Instead it attaches just a little bit down a vertical rod. The push pull starting from the eccentric rod motion acts on the top of that vertical rod. The "crosshead" which is attached to the steam piston motion is attached to the bottom of that vertical rod with a short little horizontal rod. This effects the timing of the piston valve a bit like distributor advance on an automobile engine. It starts the admission of steam to the piston just a little bit before the piston is at the end of its stroke. In the video, you can see the slight timing difference when the piston valve and steam piston reach the ends of their travel.
Jesus said, “No one can enter the Kingdom of God (God's family) unless he is born of water and the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but spirit gives birth to Spirit. You should not be surprised at my saying, You must be born again” (John 3:5-7). what does this mean? Well you have to believe with your whole heart that JESUS died for your sins and after 3 days and nighrs GOD raised HIM from the death, so you can be baptized and after being baptised ask GOD for the HOLY SPIRIT . WHO will guide you trough life!❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤
Our local steam train is a 2-8-0 ex Canadian Pacific locomotive it originally burned coal, but was switched to oil and runs tourist trains in our area with classic ex cpr coaches from the 1920s to the late 1940s, the diesel fuel backup locomotive is a Sw 1200
