Steam cars
Don Stauffer
without a boiler operators license?
When and how did the steam car manufacturers get laws passed to exempt
steam cars?
Brent
The licenses were likely about protecting jobs and when it came to steam
cars there were no operator jobs to protect.
Tegger
There's surprisingly little literature available online on this subject.
From the scanty info I've been able to dig up, boiler operator licenses
are required for high-pressure stationary boilers. The steam generators
used in steam cars would be considered low-pressure, and thus not fall
under operator licensure requirements.
<http://www.steamautomobile.com/ForuM/read.php?1,7385>
I found two interesting NY Times articles from 1900 that do deal briefly
with license requirements. You need to log in to get the PDF, but an HTML
version is available through Google's cache.
<http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:mRDW5qY33GoJ:query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html%3Fres%3DF50816F83B5D12738DDDAB0894D1405B808CF1D3+%2B%22steam+automobile%22+boiler+license&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=3>
<http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:90Yfdc0qRMUJ:query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html%3Fres%3DF40910FE3D5B11738DDDAE0994DE405B808CF1D3+%2B%22steam+automobile%22+boiler+license&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=4>
Seems to me as though the laws were enacted mostly out of spite, and out
of dislike of those new-fangled motor cars. Apparently manufacturers
would help buyers obtain the necessary license in order to make a sale.
--
Tegger
Vic Smith
Stationary engineers licenses (boiler operators) have nothing to do
with protecting jobs but a lot to do with preventing boiler
explosions.
I wouldn't want to be anywhere near a steamer car, even one operated
by a licensed engineer. Boiler safety takes a good amount of
infrastructure and regulation to prevent it becoming the bomb it
inherently is. That care won't happen with a car.
I was a licensed stationary engineer and have operated a variety of
boilers. They are bad MF's.
--Vic
Brent
> On Mon, 29 Dec 2008 20:34:08 +0000 (UTC), Brent
><tetraethylle...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>>On 2008-12-29, Don Stauffer <stau...@usfamily.net> wrote:
>>> Were steam cars the only steam engines that were legal to operate
>>> without a boiler operators license?
>>>
>>> When and how did the steam car manufacturers get laws passed to exempt
>>> steam cars?
>>
>>The licenses were likely about protecting jobs and when it came to steam
>>cars there were no operator jobs to protect.
> Stationary engineers licenses (boiler operators) have nothing to do
> with protecting jobs but a lot to do with preventing boiler
> explosions.
Boiler explosion prevention was achieved with better construction and
design.
Most licensing comes with a 'public safety' excuse but it's intent
is protecting existing businesses and workers from new competition.
> I wouldn't want to be anywhere near a steamer car, even one operated
> by a licensed engineer.
And that's what it comes down to, the licensing doesn't actually bring
about safety, it just serves as a way of restricting entry into a
particular line of work.
Mortimer
news:92lil45l9fh9lvraf...@4ax.com...
> Boiler safety takes a good amount of
> infrastructure and regulation to prevent it becoming the bomb it
> inherently is. That care won't happen with a car.
> I was a licensed stationary engineer and have operated a variety of
> boilers. They are bad MF's.
I think I'd rather be F'd by a bad M than stand within a hundred yards of a
boiler that hadn't been safety-checked for ages - less of a bang ;-)
HLS
"Brent" <tetraethylle...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> Boiler explosion prevention was achieved with better construction and
> design.
To some extent you are right.. Construction, design, metallurgy, corrosion
control, etc, helped make this a less dangerous field.
It is still dangerous. Any time you have gas under pressure (and steam is a
gas), you are operating a hazardous system.. Hazardous and dangerous are
two related, but different, things.
Ad absurdum per aspera
> I was a licensed stationary engineer
You'll love this site, as will anybody else who actually paid
attention in thermodynamics:
http://www.stanleymotorcarriage.com/
and particularly
http://www.stanleymotorcarriage.com/Parts/Instructions.htm
It sounds like a complicated car to operate even by the not very user
friendly standards of the horseless carriage era.
Superheated steam at 600 psig is not for people unwilling to learn
what they're doing, and pay attention... which hopefully includes
submitting to the periodic tender mercies of a boiler *inspector*
specially trained on what looks like an intricate little fire-tube
boiler (the engines were supposedly proofed at the factory to 1200
psig, but damage or neglected maintenance can make the boiler as found
a considerably less trustworthy item. Modern nondestructive
inspection tools might be interesting,
Back in the day, there were even a few steam motorcycles.
Fun article about the Dobie, a rare competitor to the Stanley back in
the heyday of steam cars:
http://columbiaclassiccars.com/leno.html
As for licensing, some states or cities make exceptions that allow
operation of low-pressure boilers and boiler-like hot water systems
for residential heating with no license at all, and limited licenses
that are easier to get for low-horsepower high pressure boilers. One
implication is that a car could be subject to a lot of jurisdictions.
I honestly don't know who'd claim jurisdiction or how they'd know, on
a homemade car. If you proposed to make and sell steam cars, this
mess would have to be resolved.
There are still some operating full-size steam trains here and there
in the US as rideable tourist attractions, as well as scale model
trains that kids can ride at historical parks -- the people who run
and maintain those might have some insight into these matters, though
I doubt that they usually cross licensing jurisdictions.
--Joe
HLS
There is a newish steam powered tour boat on Caddo Lake between Texas
and Lousiana.
I was very interested in it, and when we took the tour, I found the engine
was
made in Fredricksburg, Texas.
I have no idea what regulations are involved, but the boat functioned quite
well,
A few 2x4 end scraps and pine knots took us a long way.
I dont see why this sort of engine couldnt be used again for automobiles,
but this
is not an area I know much about.
If we dont have to run at 70 mph, this sort of thing could work.
Jay Leno has one of the original steamers, and was on Speed not long ago
showing
it off. You have to drain the condensed water out of the 90 wt (?) oil
before you
fire her up, but it comes up to steam quickly, and ran rather well.
Vic Smith
<jtc...@california.com> wrote:
>
>You'll love this site, as will anybody else who actually paid
>attention in thermodynamics:
>http://www.stanleymotorcarriage.com/
>and particularly
>http://www.stanleymotorcarriage.com/Parts/Instructions.htm
>
>It sounds like a complicated car to operate even by the not very user
>friendly standards of the horseless carriage era.
>
Yes, it is very complicated, and has many points of possible failure,
and many points that require maintenance.
>Superheated steam at 600 psig is not for people unwilling to learn
>what they're doing, and pay attention... which hopefully includes
>submitting to the periodic tender mercies of a boiler *inspector*
>specially trained on what looks like an intricate little fire-tube
>boiler (the engines were supposedly proofed at the factory to 1200
>psig, but damage or neglected maintenance can make the boiler as found
>a considerably less trustworthy item. Modern nondestructive
>inspection tools might be interesting,
>
expansion. Note how an inch of water in the piston becomes 188.5
feet of piston movement when turned to superheated steam.
http://www.stanleymotorcarriage.com/Parts/howitworks.htm
(in Steam System(Superheater))
"As a way to visualize this (in an experiment that assumes no
friction, no energy losses, no gravity, and a few other
impossibilities), if you had a 46.9-inch diameter mass-less/weightless
piston sitting on top of an inch of water in a cylinder at 212° F
you'd have a cubic foot of water contained under the piston. If you
applied heat to the water and turned it all into steam at atmospheric
pressure the piston would move 133.75 feet (assuming no friction on
the piston and the steam stayed at 212° F throughout the cylinder as
it expanded). If you performed the same experiment but held the
piston in place, heated the water to 470° F and put the water under
500 PSIG, and then heated the water sufficiently to make it turn to
steam then let the piston move it would travel 139.8 feet. The
additional six feet of piston movement would be due to the added
energy increasing the water/steam to 470° F. If you were able to hold
the piston in place and heat the water until it turned to steam and
then add another 200° F of heat to the steam (so that the steam was
superheated to 670° F) you'd have the equivalent of the steam leaving
a typical Stanley superheater. Now when you release the piston it
would move 188.5 feet at which time the steam pressure would be
atmospheric (this analogy assumes the system were maintained at 670°
F)."
>Back in the day, there were even a few steam motorcycles.
>
Incredible, really. I suppose that's how bikers started wearing those
"engineer hats" and "engineer boots." Marlon Brando in "The Wild
Ones" I think.
Maybe.
>Fun article about the Dobie, a rare competitor to the Stanley back in
>the heyday of steam cars:
>http://columbiaclassiccars.com/leno.html
>
>As for licensing, some states or cities make exceptions that allow
>operation of low-pressure boilers and boiler-like hot water systems
>for residential heating with no license at all, and limited licenses
>that are easier to get for low-horsepower high pressure boilers. One
>implication is that a car could be subject to a lot of jurisdictions.
>I honestly don't know who'd claim jurisdiction or how they'd know, on
>a homemade car. If you proposed to make and sell steam cars, this
>mess would have to be resolved.
>
>There are still some operating full-size steam trains here and there
>in the US as rideable tourist attractions, as well as scale model
>trains that kids can ride at historical parks -- the people who run
>and maintain those might have some insight into these matters, though
>I doubt that they usually cross licensing jurisdictions.
>
I guess steam cars never became a licensing issue, given their rarity
and that the Stanleys were "safely" built.
As an aside, the superheated steam in the Navy boilers I operated was
950 F. The saturated steam and water was about 650 F. Operating
pressure was 1275 psi. The safety valve is the most critical
component for preventing explosions, but where superheated steam is
being fed to high speed turbines, moisture carry-over can explode
turbines if water hits the blades. Steam drums have scrubbers and
"cyclone separators" to make the steam change directions as it flows
to the steam outlet. Direction change makes it give up moisture.
We considered a high water casualty the worse, since it could kill the
MM's by blowing up the turbines, besides possibly taking out the
superheater. Low water could take out the boiler, but simply cutting
out the burners would quell that.
I was on burners while testing main safeties (we had 3 per boiler)
when the initial safety failed to pop at 1320 psi we kept going to
1340 for the second, but before it popped a bottom blow line in the
bilge burst. It had been corroded by the leak-off of a firepump. The
overboard discharge valve was fine, but the mud drum and header valves
were leaking through we later discovered. The bigshots on the
console were knocked off their stools by the blast. I cut the burners
and manually popped the safety with the lever at the boilerfront as
they were getting up. But we evacuated inside 30 seconds as you
couldn't breathe.
Ever hear the steam exiting from the safety of a 1275 psi boiler?
You don't want to be near that horrendous noise.
If you have any imagination at all, you sometimes think about the
"possibilities" when manning a boiler. You know, the "getting cooked"
possibilities. Frankly though, I felt in a far more dangerous
environment when tending Scotch (firetube) boilers in the Merchant
Marine. They weren't as well made or maintained and inspected as Navy
boilers, and a casing fracture is a far worse scenario than a water
tube letting loose.
BTW, though I was a licensed stationary engineer, I never worked with
it. Just got the license because I knew the stuff, had the requisite
experience to take the test and could pass it.
Got a better job before it came in the mail.
Unlike Brent, I don't think the license is a scam to "protect jobs."
There may be stationary engineers who aren't "on the ball" just as
there were Navy boilermen who didn't exactly have it all together.
Same with some of the Merchant Marine watertenders.
But I really don't want just any schmuck who knows nothing about steam
systems running the nuke plant over yonder.
--Vic
Tegger
news:fzf6l.64$%54...@nlpi070.nbdc.sbc.com:
>
> Jay Leno has one of the original steamers, and was on Speed not long
> ago showing
> it off. You have to drain the condensed water out of the 90 wt (?)
> oil before you
> fire her up, but it comes up to steam quickly, and ran rather well.
>
>
>
You're thinking of his 1925 Doble, surely.
The primary problem with the Doble was its rather stratospheric price
(about $9500 in 1925), which was OK for Howard Hughes, but not for too many
people other than him.
--
Tegger
HLS
"Tegger" <inv...@invalid.inv> wrote in message
news:Xns9B83E14...@208.90.168.18...
I didnt get the name of the car, unfortunately.
I seem to remember that Lear tried to come up with a modernized steam car
in the 70's, gave up on it....One would think that if he could build a
dependable
corporate jet, he could build a steam car, but maybe some technology is just
not well adapted to success.
Don Stauffer
for operating steam cars.
Don Stauffer
>
> Boiler explosion prevention was achieved with better construction and
> design.
>
I know most of the steam cars were more or less flash-type boilers.
Did licensing laws negate need for license with flash boilers for
stationary or boat operation?
Don Stauffer
>>
> I guess steam cars never became a licensing issue, given their rarity
> and that the Stanleys were "safely" built.
>
Actually, in 1900 more steam autos were sold than either gasoline or
electric in US. They were not rare compared to gasoline or electric.
And steam continued into 1930s, longer than electrics.
Tegger
$815e...@news.qwest.net:
Have you considered contacting the Steam Automobile Club of America?
http://www.steamautomobile.com/
--
Tegger
Brent
I didn't say anything about being required or not, only that licensing
is usually about economics not safety.
Steve W.
Steam tractors, launches, automobiles as well as some other mobile steam
did not require operators licenses. The boilers do require inspections
though depending on the application and the state it is in.
--
Steve W.
Near Cooperstown, New York
Kruse
> The primary problem with the Doble was its rather stratospheric price
> (about $9500 in 1925), which was OK for Howard Hughes, but not for too many
> people other than him.
About 25-30 years ago there was a Howard Hughes made-for-TV movie that
I saw. In this movie,
and remember, this was a glamorized movie, he talks to the mechanic
who was working on his steam car.
The mechanic tells about all the cooling fins in the car, how fast it
can run and states the time that it takes to get up to speed from a
complete stop. Mr. Hughes grabs a crowbar and throws it at the car.
The crowbar hits the door and a plume of
water vapor rises from the door. Mr. Hughes walks away from the garage
and as he does says "Scrap the steamer".
On a side note, a few years ago there were about 3 or 4 deaths at a
Michigan or Minnesota state fair. An antique steam tractor exploded
and killed them. You have to fear these things, or at the very least,
give them lots of respect.
cuh...@webtv.net
them to make a big come back.Modern technology can solve any modern day
steam car problems, metinks so.
cuhulin
HLS
"Kruse" <kr...@kansas.net> wrote in message news:44695a40-20fc-48c7-84c0-
On a side note, a few years ago there were about 3 or 4 deaths at a
Michigan or Minnesota state fair. An antique steam tractor exploded
and killed them. You have to fear these things, or at the very least,
give them lots of respect.
*****Years ago when I was young, my mother used to can a lot of
vegetables, meat, etc.. The cans, after being sealed, were then sterilized
in a pressure cooker. You really had to watch those damn things..They
had pressure relief valves, but if they didnt work, the pressure cooker
could explode, go through the roof, kill you.
Nowadays, there are still pressure cookers, but they mostly use
dead weight pressure relief valves. These are all but foolproof,
although the fools keep improving their technology too.
I find it hard to accept that we cannot tame the steam car. Would
be a heck of a university competition, wouldnt it?
cuh...@webtv.net
cuhulin
Nate Nagel
The problem is that hot-rodding would pretty much by necessity involve
raising the boiler pressure...
nate
--
replace "roosters" with "cox" to reply.
http://members.cox.net/njnagel
Paul Hovnanian P.E.
Steam engines don't throttle well. I'd expect that the next incarnation
of a steam car would be a hybrid. The electric motor and batteries would
provide acceleration. Steam would run at constant output to top off the
battery bank.
Hot rodding would involve more work souping up the electrics.
--
Paul Hovnanian mailto:Pa...@Hovnanian.com
------------------------------------------------------------------
We are confronted with insurmountable opportunities.
-- Walt Kelly, "Pogo"
Ad absurdum per aspera
> vegetables, meat, etc.. The cans, after being sealed, were then sterilized
> in a pressure cooker. You really had to watch those damn things.
Fortunately no one was in the kitchen the day the walls and ceiling
were paved with superheated tomatoes. Family folklore (this was
before I came along) includes the theory that this happened after
Grandpa had succumbed to the temptation to improve the device in some
way. My mother used pressure cookers often, though carefully, in the
ensuing years. They held a fascination for me at single-digit ages
that did not apply to less technological and potentially disastrous
means of cooking, and the explanation of how they worked was probably
one of my first encounters with applied physics.
--Joe
jim
Yes and the periodic inspections consists of (among other things)
hydrostatic pressure testing the boiler to something like 10 times the max
operating pressure as well as testing to see if all the devices that are
intended to keep the pressure from exceeding the maximum are in working
order.
-jim
Scott Dorsey
>
>Steam engines don't throttle well. I'd expect that the next incarnation
>of a steam car would be a hybrid. The electric motor and batteries would
>provide acceleration. Steam would run at constant output to top off the
>battery bank.
Wait, I thought the advantage of the steam engine was that it DID throttle
well, that is it produces almost constant torque at any RPM. Because they
didn't need an adjustable transmission with multiple gears, they had
considerable advantages in the early days.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."
Don Stauffer
Ad absurdum per aspera
> Modern technology can solve any modern day
> steam car problems, metinks so.
Maybe. Fuel efficiency would be the biggest challenge -- I've read
that some efforts at a new-generation steam car died off about 1973-4
with the first wave of the energy crisis. For that matter, the
Stanley Steamer was no economy champ, as cars of its modest size went,
at ten miles to the gallon of kerosene (and about the same per gallon
of water (hopefully pretty "soft" water if you're losing that
much!) Back then, the raising and use of steam was a pretty mature
technology but the internal combustion engine was just starting its
evolution, and proved to have a lot of untapped potential.
My hunch is that steam scales up wonderfully but doesn't scale down so
well. Great way to heat a downtown district, propel a ship, or turn
bulk fuels into electricity. Pretty decent to drive a locomotive.
Practical but marginal in a lot of ways for cars.
The ability to raise steam with non petrochemical fuels might help
steam cars make more sense in some scenarios, but that sounds to me
more like a bad remake of "The African Queen" than what we think of
as transportation today -- and if we remain a technological society,
plug hybrids seem a lot more likely.
I can see a steam car being great fun as a techno-hobby and a real
attention getter in parades, but the way the world worked out, its
demise as everyday transportation is understandable...
--Joe
Tegger
4d63-b671-2...@f40g2000pri.googlegroups.com:
From what I've read, steam engines are tremendously expensive to build on
the scale of (and for the sell price of) an automotive engine.
Steam requires a large amount of maintenance in daily use. Steam is more
complex for the driver than an a car with an internal combustion engine.
Ever looked inside the cockpit of a Stanley?
The 1925 Doble steam engine -- otherwise an engineering tour de force --
still required 90 seconds to buld up a driveable head of pressure. Then it
had to be "blown down" at the end of the day. An ICE in 1925 was up and
running in seconds, and required no effort to shut down at night.
Petro-fueled ICEs are the best available in all ways right now. They will
continue to be so until somebody figures out a practical, cheap, safe way
of storing electricity. Personally, I think the future lies in electricity
storage.
--
Tegger
Don Stauffer
> Steam requires a large amount of maintenance in daily use. Steam is more
> complex for the driver than an a car with an internal combustion engine.
> Ever looked inside the cockpit of a Stanley?
>
> The 1925 Doble steam engine -- otherwise an engineering tour de force --
> still required 90 seconds to buld up a driveable head of pressure. Then it
> had to be "blown down" at the end of the day. An ICE in 1925 was up and
> running in seconds, and required no effort to shut down at night.
>
> Petro-fueled ICEs are the best available in all ways right now. They will
> continue to be so until somebody figures out a practical, cheap, safe way
> of storing electricity. Personally, I think the future lies in electricity
> storage.
>
But IC cars of the era of the Stanley were more complex to operate than
today's cars too. Often one needed to control spark timing, carb
mixture, etc.
I am sure today's technology could automate the operation of steam
adequately. A well designed flash boiler could probably cut the warmup
time substantially, though never to zero.
While the steam car would never beat the IC engined car on efficiency,
one good thing about steam in today's world is that they will run on any
liquid that will burn, so fuel cost might be lower, helping overcome the
lesser efficiency.
I wonder if a coal slurry system would work in a car. Of course, the
greenhouse gas emission would say this is not a good idea. Better to
run a steam car on a biofuel. Should be very easy to develop a
practical biofuel for a steamer.
Dan_Thom...@yahoo.com
> On a side note, a few years ago there were about 3 or 4 deaths at a
> Michigan or Minnesota state fair. An antique steam tractor exploded
> and killed them. You have to fear these things, or at the very least,
> give them lots of respect.
The old Mississippi steamboats sometimes exploded. The boilers
either got tired or, sometimes, the engineer, urged on by the boat's
owners, tied down the relief valve to get more pressure and therefore
more speed out of the boat in order to make more money. When all that
superheated water in the boiler turns to vapor when the boiler splits,
the huge amount of expansion blows the whole boat and almost everyone
in it to tiny bits. Anyone not shredded is scalded.
I wouldn't want to see steam cars running around, considering
the condition of some of the autos presently operated by people who
won't look after them.
Dan
cuh...@webtv.net
were swampin water too.
When I was in Saint Louis back in the 1960s, I roade the Admiral
Steamboat Paddlewheeler twice.I sure did enjoy that too.
cuhulin
Don Stauffer
capacity, so there was a LOT of energy stored in boiler.
Most steam cars that actually made it into production used (a more or
less) flash boiler, with much less steam capacity, so a boiler explosion
was not so catastrophic. So it is not quite comparable. Also, those
big steam tractors were either fire tube or else water tube with a very
large steam capacity. So explosions with them were no fun either.
HLS
<Dan_Thom...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:c094c1b5-c092-4f1f...@l33g2000pri.googlegroups.com...
.
>
> The old Mississippi steamboats sometimes exploded.
Yes, they did. Materials of construction (types of steel, riveted, etc)
were not
space age, nor was the treatment of the water used in the boiler.
Caustic cracking, fatigue, internal corrosion, plus the fact that some may
have
tried to run the boilers too long without routine inspection and maintenance
could have been issues.
You know, the White Star line "Titanic" is said to have been vulnerable
because of
the poor quality steel that was available and used in its construction in
those days.
Same would have inevitably been true of boilers of the 19th century.
cuh...@webtv.net
exterior of the old Titantic Ship had considerable slag in the
metal.Nowadays, modern (metalagy?, spelling) metals technology is much
better than way back then.
I also read that the guy in the Crows Nest haden't taken his
binoculars/telescope up there with him, and the Captain of the Titantic
Ship was ''racing'' to make up for lost time.There are some other
''issues'' concerning the Titantic Ship too.
Were there some people (Irish?) down below in the Titantic Ship whom
were not allowed to get out of there to seek safety?
My old buddy retired from U.S.Navy, thirty something years he put in
there.He was on the old USS Ticonderoga Ship for four yeas back in the
1960s.
cuhulin
Tegger
ae6c06...@l33g2000pri.googlegroups.com:
> On Dec 30 2008, 3:07 pm, Kruse <kr...@kansas.net> wrote:
>> On a side note, a few years ago there were about 3 or 4 deaths at a
>> Michigan or Minnesota state fair. An antique steam tractor exploded
>> and killed them. You have to fear these things, or at the very least,
>> give them lots of respect.
>
> The old Mississippi steamboats sometimes exploded.
Ship/locomotive/stationary boilers exploded with some regularity. One of
Mark Twain's own brothers (Henry) was killed in one such explosion.
Nobody then quite understood just why boilers blew up, so explosions
were considered a hazard of the industry.
> The boilers
> either got tired or,
Metallurgy was little understood in those days, and the controlling
mechanical devices were much less than reliable. This is well-known.
It wasn't until insurance companies began investigations into such
matters with an eye to reducing claims, and until the US Army ran into
problems with its new high-powered rifles in the early 1900s, that the
science of metallurgy became better than alchemy.
> sometimes, the engineer, urged on by the boat's
> owners, tied down the relief valve to get more pressure and therefore
> more speed out of the boat in order to make more money.
That sounds good until you read Mark Twain's "Life on the Mississippi".
Grounding a boat was far more costly than simply having it be late for
arrival. If you went too fast, especially upriver (when they stuck close
to the shoreline), you stood a huge risk of grounding the boat.
Twain doesn't mention it in his books, but when a pilot he was
responsible for more than one grounding...
> When all that
> superheated water in the boiler turns to vapor when the boiler splits,
> the huge amount of expansion blows the whole boat and almost everyone
> in it to tiny bits. Anyone not shredded is scalded.
As was Mark Twain's brother.
> I wouldn't want to see steam cars running around, considering
> the condition of some of the autos presently operated by people who
> won't look after them.
>
Automotive steam boilers operate somewhat differently from the boilers
that drove ships and trains. Not the same safety danger at all.
--
Tegger
Don Stauffer
>
>
> Ship/locomotive/stationary boilers exploded with some regularity. One of
> Mark Twain's own brothers (Henry) was killed in one such explosion.
> Nobody then quite understood just why boilers blew up, so explosions
> were considered a hazard of the industry.
>
One big problem was letting the water get too low. This uncovered part
of the boiler directly exposed to the firebox. The metal then got very
much overheated (red hot).
Someone would then notice the water was too low, and immediately add
water- a BAD thing to do. The superheated metal flashed the water to
steam at a high rate. The orifice in the safety valve could only let
out steam at a fixed rate, slower than the superheated metal was
generating it. So the steam pressure increased very rapidly, exceeding
the strength of the boiler. Whenever the water gets too low, the proper
procedure is to bank the fire, and when everything cools down, carefully
inspect the whole boiler. But even today folks blow boilers by adding
water to an overheated, low water boiler.
Steve W.
And that is what happened at the Medina County Fair in Ohio when the
tractor referenced earlier blew. The owner drove the tractor to the
fairgrounds with low water. The crown sheet came apart and the boiler blew.
--
Steve W.
cuh...@webtv.net
cuhulin
cuh...@webtv.net
So, I am a little bit drunk today.
Up and down the floor again,,,,,,
The nights of the Kerry dancin,,,,,,
Braveheart is on the A&E channel.
www.rienzihills.com
cuhulin
Ad absurdum per aspera
> I wonder if a coal slurry system would work in a car.
I think of slurries, too, as one of those things that scale up better
than they scale down.
In today's New York Times is an article about turbine engines that
mentions something I hadn't known about: a GM experiment in using
very finely powdered coal to directly fire a turbine (no steam
involved). This apparently happened in the very late 70s or early 80s
-- the test mule was a '78 Eldorado, and the R&D effort was born of
the energy crisis.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/04/automobiles/04COAL.html
Of course, you can devise simple steam engines to be fired with all
sorts of fuels, especially if you're in no hurry; think "The African
Queen" or 19th-century threshing machines. The discussion rapidly
forks into "non petrochemical ways to power something resembling what
we now consider an acceptable car, with some sophistication available
in both the creation and the use of fuel"; and "transportation and
power for a society that hasn't quite reverted to pre-technological
levels, where we look around for things that burn and throw chunks of
them into a fire under a boiler."
The problem with the latter scenario is that those societies had
highly local and distributed economies. Many of us as individuals,
and most or all Western societies as a whole, are dependent on
mobility; the question is how best to get it, not whether we need
it....
--Joe
--Joe
Anumber1
Mobility.
A to B.
If we could slow down a little, railroads offer outstanding gallons of
fuel used per mile/ton hauled (economy) and is an excellent answer to
inter-city transport but decades of "Just-In-Time" logistics have skewed
our expectations.
"Just-next-week-and-a-warehouse" is a far more sustainable option but
unfashionable/expensive in our current inventory tax structure.
Al
HLS
<cuh...@webtv.net> wrote in message
news:27512-495...@storefull-3173.bay.webtv.net...
>I like that Boat that was in the African Queen old movie.
> cuhulin
I saw the old African Queen on a tv documentary a few weeks ago. Someone
bought it,
has berthed it as an attraction, I believe.
IIRC, it didnt really run on steam. Hollywood made it look that way.
cuh...@webtv.net
Back in the 1970s, Cadillac experimented on an engine that was suppose
to run on coal.It was mostly a regular gas engine and the coal fuel was
ground up very fine, sort of like foot powder.
cuhulin
cuh...@webtv.net
http://sydneypeakoil.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=13&p=2734
I have an old auto magazine article about that car around here
somewhere.It was a 1978 Cadillac Eldorado.They had replaced the V8
engine with a turbine engine.An agitator device and a conveyor device
delivered the very finely ground up coal to the turbine engine.
cuhulin
HLS
<cuh...@webtv.net> wrote in message
news:25094-496...@storefull-3172.bay.webtv.net...
The steam engine was a replica, and a shill at that. It was not even bolted
to the boat.
I believe a small diesel engine actually powered the Queen.
The original Queen is berthed behind a Holiday Inn in Florida, I am pretty
sure.
C. E. White
<cuh...@webtv.net> wrote in message
news:25094-496...@storefull-3172.bay.webtv.net...
> Back in the 1970s, Cadillac experimented on an engine that was
> suppose
> to run on coal.It was mostly a regular gas engine and the coal fuel
> was
> ground up very fine, sort of like foot powder.
It was one of Rudolph Diesel's goals to run "Diesel" engines on
powdered coal. His early patent was for a Diesel engine running on
powdered coal. He also ran them on peanut oil - making him the Father
of Bio-Diesel fuel as well.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Diesel and
http://www.madehow.com/inventorbios/11/Rudolf-Christian-Karl-Diesel.html .
Ed
z
wrote:
> > I wonder if a coal slurry system would work in a car.
>
> I think of slurries, too, as one of those things that scale up better
> than they scale down.
>
> In today's New York Times is an article about turbine engines that
> mentions something I hadn't known about: a GM experiment in using
> very finely powdered coal to directly fire a turbine (no steam
> involved). This apparently happened in the very late 70s or early 80s
> -- the test mule was a '78 Eldorado, and the R&D effort was born of
> the energy crisis.
> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/04/automobiles/04COAL.html
>
you can run diesels on coal dust, according to what i read in an
authoritative source which i don't remember. sounds reasonable
z
> Ad absurdum per aspera <jtc...@california.com> wrote in news:b4b8f5ad-8632-
>
> - Show quoted text -
as it happens, i just saw an episode of my classic car where they went
for a ride in jay leno's 1917 white steamer. man, if you thought the
stanley was complex; this jobbie had a condenser so you didn't need to
carry a big tank of water and refill it (and you didn't trail a big
cloud of steam) and it had kind of a self governor which shut down the
flame to a pilot when pressure was up then fire it up again when
pressure began to sag. and the pilot had one of those reflexive temp
sensor valve things like the pilot on a gas water heater or something
which shut off the fuel if it cooled down so that it wouldn't keep
pushing gas through the pilot if it blew out. so, just like the pilot
on a gas water heater, you had to heat up the pilot before lighting
it; so there was another valve that produces a little puddle of gas
under the pilot that you had to light and burn for a while. very
sophisticated.
cuh...@webtv.net
something went wrong and the water heaters taking off up through the
roof like a rocket.My old 20 gallon water heater is electric.
Get a Horse!
cuhulin
Ad absurdum per aspera
> you can run diesels on coal dust, according to what i read in an
> authoritative source which i don't remember. sounds reasonable
A lot of dusts would certainly explode in a spark engine, just as they
do in the occasional mine, flour mill, grain elevator, etc.
Apparently it works with just compression heating too -- a coal dust
diesel is said to have been one of Rudolf Diesel's early experiments,
motivated mostly by taking advantage of an abundant fuel, and it
worked but he switched quickly to liquid fuels.
Maintaining and dispensing and regulating a supply of dust in a
smallish mobile engine (without risk of explosion) would seem to be a
lot of trouble -- yet another of those things that might scale up,
especially for stationary use, better than it scales down. (I'm
imagining something with all the charm of bulk copier toner, here --
says the guy in the office who always seemed to get fingered to change
that stuff!) And of course for large stationary installations it has
to compete with other ways of using coal.
--Joe
cuh...@webtv.net
a Nabisco crackers factory in Omaha (or somewhere) exploded.It was that
flour dust floating around in there.
cuhulin
z
when i was a kid the grain elevator next to the RR tracks behind my
grandma's house blew up. blowed up real good!
z
wrote:
yeah, in the end i think cooking up some sort of liquid psuedo-
petroleum fuels out of the coal, as has historically been the way, has
to be so much more sensible.
z
> Brent <tetraethylleadREMOVET...@yahoo.com> wrote innews:gjbc80$smv$1...@news.motzarella.org:
>
> > On 2008-12-29, Don Stauffer <stauf...@usfamily.net> wrote:
> >> Were steam cars the only steam engines that were legal to operate
> >> without a boiler operators license?
>
> >> When and how did the steam car manufacturers get laws passed to exempt
> >> steam cars?
>
> > The licenses were likely about protecting jobs and when it came to steam
> > cars there were no operator jobs to protect.
>
> There's surprisingly little literature available online on this subject.
>
> From the scanty info I've been able to dig up, boiler operator licenses
> are required for high-pressure stationary boilers. The steam generators
> used in steam cars would be considered low-pressure, and thus not fall
> under operator licensure requirements.
> <http://www.steamautomobile.com/ForuM/read.php?1,7385>
>
> I found two interesting NY Times articles from 1900 that do deal briefly
> with license requirements. You need to log in to get the PDF, but an HTML
> version is available through Google's cache.
> <http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:mRDW5qY33GoJ:query.nytimes.com/gs...>
> <http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:90Yfdc0qRMUJ:query.nytimes.com/gs...>
> Seems to me as though the laws were enacted mostly out of spite, and out
> of dislike of those new-fangled motor cars. Apparently manufacturers
> would help buyers obtain the necessary license in order to make a sale.
>
> --
> Tegger
heck i remember when you were legally required to get a radio
operator's license from the government (US, anyway) to operate a CB
radio. i even did. (it was free and you didn't have to take any
test).
that interview with leno and his steam car, he said that no stanley
steamer ever blew up, except for one that somebody had modified to run
on propane (and presumably not did a great job). i don't know why he
was talking about stanleys while they were driving a white.
Scott Dorsey
> Were steam cars the only steam engines that were legal to operate
> without a boiler operators license?
I talked yesterday to a friend of mine who is a railroad guy, and he says
that operator's licenses have only been required for stationary boilers.
He said that locomotives never required a boiler operator's license, and
so consequently that may have been passed over to cars.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."
cuh...@webtv.net
cuhulin