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submitted 1 day ago by doomsdayrs@lemmy.ml to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

A steam locomotive is known to be able to pull more then any pure combustion engine locomotive. (Uncited)

Why didn't oil fired steam locomotives take off?

This started when I watched: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hszu80NJ438

During the runtime, it mentioned oil fired retrofits.

I search it up, and found one.

It was an overview video of a modern retrofit, and it seems to not be too difficult to retrofit, even using the same steam blaster to spread the oil in the smoke box: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Up1UaMVnv4M

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[-] ArchAengelus@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 1 day ago

That’s definitely part of it. Also not an expert, but I believe you have the gist of it. Diesel engines are more efficient for a couple of reasons, not the least of which is more efficient heat capture to use for Work.

Another factor would be that if you want to do an oil combustion into steam power, you have a few issues:

  1. You now have to lug around a LOT of both fuel and water, instead of just water and dry coal. Water and oil are both heavy by comparison to coal when lugging a train car of it around.
  2. you now have two areas for heat loss to happen. Steam engines require massive boilers, high heat, and run much greater worst case failure risks (I.e. explosions) which are at highest risk when the water runs out. Coal is worse for this than I imagine oil would be, though inertia is a powerful force. Why move to another complicated system that does the same thing when you can use the old one?
  3. Supply lines and training: if coal is already managed logistically, why switch to something else that provides a marginal benefit when coal is both cheap, easily accessed, and your engineers already know how to use it?

I’m sure there are even better reasons out there, but that’s what comes off the top of my head.

[-] NABDad@lemmy.world 6 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

You now have to lug around a LOT of both fuel and water, instead of just water and dry coal. Water and oil are both heavy by comparison to coal when lugging a train car of it around.

I think you're making an assumption there. You would need to consider energy density of the fuel. Diesel fuel has almost twice the energy density of coal. For the same trip, the weight of the diesel fuel you would need for an oil-fired steam engine would be just a little more than half the weight of coal needed for a coal-fired steam engine.

Also, delivering the diesel fuel to the boiler would require a less complex mechanism and/or less workers than coal.

this post was submitted on 16 Mar 2025
32 points (94.4% liked)

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