Re: Thought exercise - steam VFT

[matthew@mail.usyd.edu.au (Matthew Geier)]

 David seems pretty set on a coal fired recripocating steamer.
 I still think they would have gone electric at the time, using the Snowy Hydro
project as the main power supply.

 In 1947 C&O, with loads of coal, were resisting the comming of the diesel electric.

They ordered 3 huge coal fired steam turbine electrics from Westinghouse & baldwin.
This book I have claims they were the heaviest and largest steam locomotives ever
built.

 Its stats are listed as
Coal-fired fire-tube boiler (112sq ft grate), 310psi,  a 6000hp turbine
coupled to 2 generators that fed 8 axle hung traction motors.

 Weight - 230.5t adhesive, 560t total.
 Max axle load, 28.8t
 Lenght - 154ft
 Tractive effort - 436kN
 Max speed 100Mph

 It carried 27t of coal in a forward bunker, water in a tender in the rear.

 Its wheel arrangement is listed as 2-1 C0-1-C0 B0

 The M-1s apparently lasted about 3 years before they gave up on them and sucummbed
to diesels.

 They would have been an impressive sight!.

 The steam HST (hardly TGV) could have used a version of these steam-turbine-
electrics, the electric transmission being able to get the power out to multiple
axles with out any hammer blow effects, or complex mechanics.
 If you are going to go for complex drive mechanisims to address the hammer
blow at high speeds, the complexity of an electric transmission starts to not
be so much of a killer.