It’s Alive!! Air-Powered Locomotive Moves On Its Own! 

understanding why thing do not work helps you understand why they might work in other applications and also helps you fine tune things you cant predict, i love tinkering its the best way to understand,. there isnt just one way do any task and only so much you can apply from something that you've been told or read. being able to adapt a recipe like a skilled chef comes from experience and you can only get that through time and making and understanding the mistakes you've made in the past

Edison

This is also the Elon Musk (SpaceX) approach.

@@johndenison5245 Not exactly. SpaceX is doing "rapid iteration" only because it means they have lots and lots of tests and every test is covered by the news and the fans and that brings in money. Their actual progress is at best equal to the other companies that don't waste billions on pointless iterations. I don't want to start a Musk flamewar here, it's not the right place. All I will say is that Musk is not a rocket engineer, or a tunneler or a car designer, he's not even a programmer. The man has just bought twitter because he did not agree with their rules about what _he_ could and could not tweet. Go do a little more research into his background and skip his cult of personality. And that is all I will say about it. Back to the backyard tinkering!

@@vinny142 One of my friends was in hydrogen research at a pretty high academic level (basically figuring out safer and more efficient hydrogen storage for use in cars). She told me that a lot of times she was doing field presentations, she'd get a lot of flak from people who invested time and research into electric vehicles. She figured out through some let's say creative facebook-detective work those people generally were musk-fans, or even employed by Tesla.

Let Tim know and watch his railroad series.bet you'll like it

A cool idea, though a rotating loop of rope, strung out over such a long distance as that, would be stupendously dangerous. Just for one example, what if one of the dogs got excited, grabbed the rope and were dragged into the mechanism? Not to mention if he fell into it.

@@Nevir202 And I suppose you don’t see anything at all dangerous about the current mechanism, the fly wheel for example. Parts thrashing back and forth, in my opinion everything about it is dangerous. Once shielded from danger it could be under some conditions and vastly improved something good to use. A very small gas engine would do the job. The electricity to run the current compressor or any compressor would come from probably burning coal. Think about it.

@@yt650 LMAO!!! You can observe the area around a running engine, you can't observe 300m of rope all at once. You can contain an engine, a 300m long rope loop can't be contained. Or rather it could, but only with an engineering project which would invalidate the entire point of the device.

@@yt650 I think you're missing the point of this project. Of course they could just get a second hand quad bike with a trailer or something and drive the stuff around, but that would not be an interesting project to work on and be proud of. Also of course it could be seen as dangerous, but I don't think tim is applying for it to be road legal any time soon so I wouldn't worry too much

The EIMCO air trammers used an air receiver tank on the locomotive itself for non-tethered operation and were refilled every few hundred feet. We had one in service at an underground mine in New Mexico a couple years ago.

Sounds like something I should try : - )

So tie the bottle on top of the cart and do away with the whole mechanical contraption. When you are ready to go knock of the valve and voila, you are moving. (no idea how you will stop it now, maybe get a 2nd bottle that you hold very firmly so you can catch up ;-)

For savety you store them standing. In case of inside corrosion this will then concentrate on the thicker bottom walls. Especially when not using modern/high quality air delivering standard compressors. And pressured bottles have to be fixed anyhow.

says they were used for mines, they had huge quantities of compressed air maybe for air Trompe fed mines ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-uvf0lD5xzH0.html

Compressed air locomotives were common in mines, where sparks and fumes were absolutely to be avoided.

Ah yes the all known United States of used compressed air. 😝

@@aprikosenboy1995 The greatest damn country of compressed air in the world!....

i dont think there would be enough pressure for that to happen but im not sure

Yes, it would happen. The first time most people try to repack a cylinder it tends to get stuck so they hit it with air, I will let you work out the details for yourself.

just put a large bale of cotton on the first car(trolly) that's how we did it in the states. only the crew dies that way.

Essentially a shay style locomotive?

Yes she is. Usually. : - )

He still has the compressor problem then though.

@@timseguine2 How does stating that propane tanks that are bigger and thus hold more air are safe at higher pressure than he operates at indicate a problem?

@@calvingreene90 I didn't quite get that you were recommending them primarily for their volume. He said in the video that he couldn't afford a compressor that outputs a higher pressure, so I found recommending tanks that operate at a higher pressure seemed a little pointless. Fair enough though, he doesn't have to use them to their full rating of course.

@@timseguine2 If the price is lower for the volume of tank additional capability is just added safety factor. This is not to say that if you have the additional capability you shouldn't keep your eye out for a deal on a compressor like an AC compressor off a car or while a bit Heath Robinson use a power stearing pump to pump hydraulic fluid between two tanks using the liquid to compress the air. My uncle used an old hand deep-well pump like that to fill his tires with air. All it cost him was an afternoon in the family -scrap- spare parts pile.

Vegetable oil in the boiler.

Aw! Thanks : - )

A buddy of mine is working on 9ne of these right now. Athearn used this drive for it's model RDC's

They were used in great numbers in mines where explosive dust or gas is an issue. They were highly popular until battery electric locomotives became realistic.

@@mfbfreak trolley wire run motors were also very popular in mines. Although some of the last steam was fireless locos

They have been used all over the world, often for railway yard work.

Us too!

Large diameter pipe between the two valves give a chamber of higher pressure air and less pressure drop

Thank you kindly.

Put on some bike pedals!!

Glad you liked it!

Best of luck!

an old riding tractor gear box ( lawn tractor, not big tractor ) could be used. They were either belt drive or chain and sprocket.

Thank you kindly : - )

I believe that is the intended purpose of the heavy steel flywheel.