Why didn't oil fired steam locomotives take off? (lemmy.ml)

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

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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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[-] JustAnotherKay@lemmy.world 8 points 1 day ago

Electric motors have high torque at low RPM

For anyone scrolling by and curious about this, this is caused by the combination of physical and electrical resistance. In a typical engine, RPM and torque go up together because it requires more force to get to those higher RPMs (IIRC this is called positive correlation). In a circuit, you have to kind of convince the electricity that it would be better off somewhere else (by connecting to a ground, this is due to electrical resistance), so you have to give it a heavy upfront load to get it going which causes a lot of torque due to the physical resistance

this post was submitted on 16 Mar 2025

32 points (94.4% liked)

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