I think it’s a little bit funny that they need a steam-powered screw to feed coal into a steam-powered engine. Where do they get the initial steam for the screw if the screw is needed to create steam, Lol? So if that bad boy only carried coal and water for 2 hours, did they literally run it for a couple of hours and then stop for coal and water? Who provided the tonnage of coal and water every few miles? Doesn’t sound terribly helpful to have to stop-and-start like that. Apologies as I’m obviously not from the steam-powered generation.
Hauling it with an ox wagon is a lot less helpful!
Getting these beasts going from cold is no small feat, and takes quite a while (> hour) and a remarkable number of steps. As Gary noted, it also takes a lot of maintenance and supplies to run it, a remarkable logistical feat. If you make a mistake (like running it out of water) - the entire thing blows up in a spectacular steam explosion.
BTW, the stoker engine (which is what the coal auger engine was called) did run off the main boiler, they would start the fire by hand, build up steam and at rest, they needed very little coal to keep it going. Interestingly, a lot of large rocket engines work similarly, they have a small engine (turbine engine) to pump fuel into the engine (an impeller instead of a scroll), that once it is going, uses bleed pressure from the main engine to keep the pump running. You have to start it with some other combustion system to spin it up in the first place.
But bear in mind, before steam engines, they had ox carts and on sufficiently level ground, boats in rivers and canals dragged by mules. Having something that would run 50-100-200 miles at a time at 20-40-50 mph (in the early days) was utterly transformational. It would be as if someone invented a transporter like on Star Trek, people and stuff from a long way away just suddenly appears. It fundamentally changed everyone's world - and in general made everyone's lives *much much better*.
And, just to run the train, think what it took to maintain and supply all the stops. Across the West, there was nearly nothing built up and nearly no one. That's why the railroads were the biggest businesses in the world, the first real national companies.
But all this support and logistics was clearly expensive, very early on, passenger trains became unprofitable, and freight paid the bills. There was a bit to getting early diesels going, too, but, to first approximation, you hit the starter and off it went, want it to run 1000 miles, stick on a bigger fuel tank. Passenger trains were diesel before war, freight was steam (fired by coal which was available in great abundance, unlike oil, which was being used for the war), but as fast as possible afterwards, all these steam beasts were retired as fast as they could get rid of them.
Only one steam engine on a mainline railroad in the USA has never been retired - Big Boys stablemate, UP 844, a high speed passenger locomotive that was intended to safely run over 100 mph. That one still runs, too. Big Boy was for hauling mostly coal trains up the Wasatch mountains by itself, it usually ran around 35 mph pulling *huge* long trains, like a mile long.
Brett
Topic: OT but generally cool (Read 1949 times)