"Hot rodding" steam engines

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DaveHughes
Posts: 10
Joined: Sat Jan 11, 2003 9:24 am
Location: Ontario, Canada

"Hot rodding" steam engines

Post by DaveHughes »

I've seen the ultimate steam page and noted engineers such as Porta etc. have made many modifications in steam generation, valve gears, valves, draft, balancing of reciprocating and rotative machinery.
What was the most technically advanced steam engine (convetional design ie. rod locomotives) and was this technolgy used in other steam machinery (traction engines, stationary engines, marine what have you)?
One area that has raised some interest is rod ratios, using different main rod lengths to obtain various torque/horsepower curves. Porting and polishing come to mind as well. Porting to reduce wire drawing and polishing to maintain smoothe passage ways and maintain velocity to cylinders.
I understand poppet valves and modified steam passages where done on NYC Niagaras for example, and that N&W had the balancing of machinery down.
Did I understand the Js with 70" drivers could sustain a constant 500 rpm?
I've seen some pictures of traction engines using superheated steam, and marine engines forever changing in design.
Any modelers building something along this line?
Your all excellent at what you do.
Dave
willy

Re: "Hot rodding" steam engines

Post by willy »

Forgive me if this rumor that I heard about Corlis is wrong. (my disclaimer)

The story I was once told about Corliss Steam Engines, was that Ol' man Corliss himself used to visit production shops that had steam engines already. He made a fortune offering his engines for free! Grin something, for nothing.... LOL What he did do was to tell you that he would offer you a engine of 1/4 the size and you would get the full power that you had before, but, that you would pay less in cost of operation. The difference in cost that you paid in operation would be sent to Ol man Corliss.

Back to reality...........

I do not know of anyone actually seeking to get efficiency in their engines, other than perhaps "notching up the johnson bar". The cost to us to create a more efficient engine may not be there. For what I have seen you usually are wicked into modeling and you have a work of art that gets very little track time. Or, you build a sweet loco that runs and runs.

If you want to be interesting and spend 150 hours on one part to extract some efficiency, go right ahead. Yet in my book, I would rather get out there and enjoy the comeraderie and the track, than to spend time concerned with whether I needed to polish the ports, or balance the rods by a couple of ounces.

ok I am off the soap box. Your turn.

-willy-
Allen_from_CHT
Posts: 227
Joined: Mon Jan 06, 2003 8:09 pm
Location: Pennsylvania
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Re: "Hot rodding" steam engines

Post by Allen_from_CHT »

I think a lot of "job shops", especially in oil or timber country, would go fishing for business like that when things were slow - Mark a tightfisted owner with worn out machines and offer to rebuild them for the value of the fuel savings over the next 3 or 6 months.

Some modern multinational companies could learn a lot from the old timers. There is a story about a fairly young Jerome Increase Case (no kidding, that was his name), who got a letter from a farmer that his Case thresher was no good. Well, Mr Case went (in person) to the fellows farm, and looked the machine over. Then he agreed with the farmer that the machine indeed was "no good" , so he borrowed some kerosene and a few rags and burnt it on the spot... He then promised the farmer a new machine within a week.

Wouldn't it be swell if Bill Gates would come to look into that pesky illegal operation error? Or if some little Japanese dude would come out to the house and explain how to program your vcr without being tempted to commit hiri kiru?
FredR
Posts: 1638
Joined: Sun Jan 05, 2003 10:49 am
Location: Cedar Park, Texas, USA

Re: "Hot rodding" steam engines

Post by FredR »

Wouldn't it be swell if Bill Gates would come to look into that pesky illegal operation error? Or if some little Japanese dude would come out to the house and explain how to program your vcr without being tempted to commit hiri kiru?

Actually, I wish both BG would commit hiri kiri for messing me up every time I boot AND that little japanese SOB would too just for making it so much pain in the butt for making it a pain to program the vcr [img]/ubb/images/graemlins/grin.gif"%20alt="[/img]
ccvstmr
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Joined: Sat Jan 04, 2003 10:37 am
Location: New Lenox, IL

Re: "Hot rodding" steam engines

Post by ccvstmr »

Willy,
Like you, I want to maximize my track time too. But, I'm also willing to do a little experimenting along the way to see how much more efficient I can make my propane burner fired loco. After all, once the heat is past the stack lip, I can't get anymore use out of it. Just waiting now for the weather to stay above freezing to get back to the track. Later. cb
Life is like a sewer...what you get out of it depends on what you put into it!
I don't walk on water...I just learned where some of the stepping stones are!
I love mankind...it's some of the people I can't stand!
Rolly

Re: "Hot rodding" steam engines

Post by Rolly »

Hot rodding" steam engines
In my book Its not efficiency like Corliss produced. Hot rodding an engine is getting out maximum power with the engine you have and dam with the fuel economy. It’s no different with a steam engine then with any other engine. Increase the valve lead; so the intake port is fully open at TDC, open up the ports and double the size of the steam pipe feeding the engine. Set the cutoff to eighty percent and raise your boiler pressure to the max and hope you don’t through a rod, bend a crank or something else lets go.
Rolly
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Fred_V
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Re: "Hot rodding" steam engines

Post by Fred_V »

main rod length is an interesting question. Henry Greenly says it should be 3.5 to 4 times the stroke. this becomes an issue in deciding which driver to attach the main rod to.
the 2-6-2 i'm now building brings up this issue. you usually see the main rod on the center driver but in my case that makes it's length about 2.5 times the stroke. this puts more pressure on the slide bar as the angle of the rod at mid stroke is greater.

as far as hot rodding goes i guess getting the steam into and out of the cylinder is the issue just like it is in a gas engine. there will always be a point reached where the engine will go no faster.
the guys that ran "tether racing boats" way back when had to deal with these issues. they used flash boilers and ran the engines as fast as they could. there is an interesting book by Westbury (i think) called "Flash Boilers" that is mostly about tether boats. interesting book.
fred v
Fred V
Pensacola, Fl.
David Powell
Posts: 524
Joined: Thu Mar 13, 2003 10:38 pm
Location: Pickering Ontario Canada.

Re: "Hot rodding" steam engines

Post by David Powell »

Dave, almost any steam engine can be improved by work similar in nature but not in detail to that used in gas engine hot rodding. Modern steam engines with poppet valves probably are the ones which can be " wound up" the best. The engines used in Doble steam cars and the S class Sentinel steam trucks certainly fit this group. Even a lowly slide valve stationary engine can be tailored to give more power than expected if one is prepared to lose a little flexibility and possibly a bit of the efficiency. As you are in Ontario please try to contact me privately, I tried to send to you but have so far failed!!! ( I am new to computers but old to steam) Good safe steaming David Powell
whodom

Re: "Hot rodding" steam engines

Post by whodom »

Dave,

A buddy of mine caught your post this morning and let me know. Glad to know that you've checked out my webpages.

I do have a section specifically on Live Steamers who have built or who are building modernized miniature steam locomotives. Check out:

The Ultimate Steam Page Live Steam Builders

One of these days, I'm going to have time, money, and shop space myself to do this.

Good Steaming,
Hugh Odom
Steve Bratina

Re: "Hot rodding" steam engines

Post by Steve Bratina »

This high tech steam stuff is pretty interesting. A very good friend of mine was the guy who took the indicator cards on the N.Y.C.6023 when she was going through her tests. He told me a story about the 5500 (the poppet valve engine) that I found interesting. Seems that when they built the engine at Alco, the passage ways were undersized for what was actually called for. This no doubt restricted what the engine was capable of doing but since the railroad was commited to the diesel by then, the let her go untill it had a mechanical breakdown. It was then pushed aside and used for parts for the regular sisters. I have heard that if this engine was given a true road test with a dynomometer car, the railroad would have seen how close the engine came to the diesel in fuel efficiency and may have exceeded predictions with the proper cylinders. The thing that would have still killed it in though would have been the labour.
The other story that he told me deals with the smoothness of the ports. Seems one of the engine houses on the Central changed out a cylinder casting on one of their large freight engines. It was near Christmas time so most of the work force was off on vacation now that the repairs were done. Well it turned out that when they were pouring this casting, one of the cores collapsed and closed off the live steam port. The roundhouse foreman decided rather than take the engine back in and have it wait for another cylinder, he would just get a torch and burn out the casting to clear the port. So much for smooth ports. This engine ran till the end of steam like this and gave no troubles.
As for high tech engineering, I am working on a 24" gauge steam locomotive at this time and can assure you that both the engine and I are one and alike. VERY LOW TECH !
We still need to get together for one of those coffees.
Curtis_F
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Re: "Hot rodding" steam engines

Post by Curtis_F »

I know a couple of guys working on a 2-6-0, a 4-8-2 & a 4-8-4 in 1.5" scale, each of which have/will have several “hot rod” things done to them like:

Polished Steam Passages
Polished Valve Surfaces
Square Steam Ports
Feed Water Heater Coils
Steam Dryer (Superheater like) Coils
Lagged Boilers
Cross-Counter Balanced Drivers
Precision Throttles
Light Side Rods
Roller Bearing Axle Boxes
Roller Bearing Side Rods
Many-Many Notches on the Johnson Bar
Fully Equalized Running Gear
and other things…


Possible even running @ 150psi if they can get certified boilers.


They don’t want to have to worry about too much maintenance, don’t want to have to worry too much about fuel & water, nor ever be caught short on tractive effort. Luckily they don’t like to run fast because the 4-8-4 is going to be a race horse!


Curtis F.
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Didnt log on

Re: "Hot rodding" steam engines

Post by Didnt log on »

In further reference to some of the points raised I have been told of ,by old hands , but have no way of verifying the stories,apparently when Sentinels developed the S class steam waggons they found that the torque at low speed was sufficient to pull the studs out of the hubs and they reduced the size of the valves to de tune the engines, however, later it was found that heavily loaded enthuiastically driven waggons occasionally burst the 2 speed gearboxes apart. a retired driver told me that he used to cerry a socket with him and when the waggon was to run unladen for any worthwhile journey he would quickly undo the cover and advance the cam timing a couple of teeth, he figured it was worth 10 mph extra. ( The waggons were quite fast, 60 mph was well within reach without tinkering so goodness knows how fast Frank Hughes got out of his.) Dave most steam engine men have ideas about how to improve it all. Howevre we all need to earn a living so the dreams have to wait in most cases. However , some os us have made some experiments in model form simply for fun. We tried a semi flash coal fired plant for a few years but didn"t get any worthwhile results, but we learnt a lot and had a lot to talk about at the club( Toronto Society of Model Engineers) If you simply want to drive steam engines then follow conventional designs, build models from proven drawings and castings, maybe though you may want to be more adventureous, if so the only advice I would give is learn as much as possible about what has already been done, use any ideas that appeal and make engineering sense, and go to it, you will never have any regrets . Good Steaming David Powell
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