Big Boy 4014 going on a test run ror the first time in nearly 60 years
30 replies, posted
https://jalopnik.com/heres-the-biggest-steam-engine-in-the-world-going-on-a-1834509725?utm_medium=sharefromsite&utm_source=jalopnik_copy&utm_campaign=top
https://www.up.com/cs/groups/public/@uprr/@corprel/documents/digitalmedia/img_up_heritage_4014_infograph.gif
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0BrClWQUmE
Might as well post it here as well.
I hope I get a chance to see her up close like I did with UP 844.
Isn't it not friendly to the environment
Pretty sure it's oil burning now which should be a bit nicer to the environment then coal:
"The coal-burning grates were replaced with a fire pan and an oil burner as part of the conversion to oil firing"
Also known as Megachonker and "oh lawd he comin"
1: Nobody cares about the emissions of a handful of excursion locomotives that never really work all that hard in the first place and don't run often enough to matter. It's like the emissions of Model T Fords; sure the numbers are god awful but they're so few and so infrequently driven that it's irrelevant.
2: She burns cleaner today than her and all of her sisters did when they were coal fired.
3: It's a piece of history preserved in the best way it possibly can be preserved.
Your concern would be worth listening to if UP suddenly announced retiring all of their Tier IV diesels in favor of a fleet of 4-8-8-4s. But they haven't. It's one of...maybe four in total?....a handful of heritage locomotives they maintain for the occasional excursion run. She'll produce less CO2 in one year than the diesel that drug her out of her grave does in one month.
I'm willing to take a guess and say that even if it was still coal burning that the amount of CO2 output from that singular locomotive is probably borderline negligible compared to the output of something like a coal fire powerplant.
The amount of CO2 emitted by a coal power plant in a single day is far greater than these engines produced in their entire lifetime.
This train is without a doubt the most harmful thing to the environment conceivable because it has been engineered by an evil genius to spit out miniature black holes which proceed to consciously seek out random people and moderately annoy them by absorbing their cheesburgers right infront of their eyes.
There's really no such thing as a Steamer that isn't an absolute unit, but 4014 is in a class all her own.
Then it is our duty to create a hysterically small Steamer that can only drive one person.
http://ids.si.edu/ids/deliveryService?id=SIA-90-8126-000002
Sylvester Roper has you covered, in the late 1860s he built what's regarded as the first motorcycle, powered by a twin cylinder steam engine. Also in 1896 Roper would die in the first motorcycle accident, crashing during a bicycle race going 40 mph when his heart gave out.
Dammit, I just realized I fucked up the title.
Been waiting to see this done since it started. Magnificent
I haven't dug that deep but how the hell do you articulate a boiler?
Essentially 2 engines.
Essentially the way a Big Boy works is it has two sets of driven wheels
https://www.up.com/cs/groups/public/@uprr/@corprel/documents/digitalmedia/img_up_big-boy-4014-right_mr.jpg
This is known as "4-8-8-4" because it has 4 unpowered wheels at each end, and two sets of 8 powered wheels in the middle, the wheels are split into groups called "trucks" and each truck can be turned independently.
For a visual example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfMS6qlCRsA&feature=youtu.be&t=7
I don't understand this post but I love it anyway.
Amazing how much Union Pacific still cares about their steam locomotives.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrqzaSDiM-A
Fun fact
Union Pacific is the only class 1 railroad to have never retired one of their steam locomotives. That locomotive is UP 844. It was the last steam locomotive delivered to the Union Pacific by the American Locomotive Company in 1944 and has been in service since.
Here she is being delivered as a Christmas present without her smoke deflectors installed yet.
https://i.imgur.com/04YyARj.jpg
Now if we could get some of that action over here on the east coast with the T1, I'd be set for life as far as bucket list experiences are concerned.
Not my video but this really shows the size of this massive machine. I truly wish I could be there to witness.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcFDE65JEQI
I mean, you don't need computers to do math.
no but they really help for simulating whether your complex machine will do what its supposed to.
Let's not forget the time that UP said fuck it and put 3985 on a revenue freight manifest.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XhgHrDbN4EU
The story is that the CEO of the intermodal company APL had UP remove the five(!) GE diesels and hook up 3985 for the run up Archer Hill.
Megachugger, you mean.
Jesus she's gorgeous
I saw one of these at a museum in Denver, and the size up close is simply unbelievable. It's truly gigantic, and I would have loved to see it in motion! Very cool that some will get the chance to see that now.
What a fucking beast.
844 assisting a stalled freight train.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RU9uEwSGp9M
Full documentary on Union Pacific 844 for anyone that's interested.
https://youtu.be/C3DNvflpSfI
pretty sure those repro'd diesels zipping around the highway near me beat this fat ass in emissions
Firstly, it`s one bloody unit. Boo hoo.
Secondly, steam locomotives are actually incredibly clean burners when operated optimally. Internal combustion has a very low theoretical combustion efficiency of 62% due to it`s very rapid duration of combustion. And the realworld efficiency is rarely at that limit. This is what produces most undesriable gasses from cars, as the carbon does not have enough time to bond with two oxygen molecules, producing mono hydrocarbons, as opposed to carbon dioxide which is essentially harmless, as the earth itself is basically just a device to process carbon dioxide into oxygen.
However external combustion like locomotive boilers are incredibly efficient. The slow burn time and massive path the combustion gasses have to traverse means that they can readily reach 100% combustion efficiency and 90% boiler efficiency in real world conditions, even from first generation locos from back in the day, like 4014 here. And that `boiler efficiency`means that 90-95% of the energy in the fuel is captured and stored as potential kinetic energy in the boiler, with a loss of approximately 2% radiant/misc with the remainder going out the stack. This long burn time also means you get perfect combustion, resulting in the only gas being released being carbon dioxide and whatever chemical contiminates were in the fuel itself, which compared to internal combustion engines is basically nothing.
Now when you see black smoke pouring out the top, it's due to the fuel in the box exceeding available draft, and that smoke is carbon monoxide. However on second generation locomotives (such as red devil and anything L. Porta built/proposed/influenced), your primary air is introduced via a gas producing firebox, which injects air via venturis overtop the firebed. The bed itself also burns much cooler, releasing and burning only the volitile gasses, and does not combust the chemical impurities of the fuel. And the over fire drafting means that no fuel is lifted from the bed and ejected out the stack. Now given that these two things are the only pollutants that a steam locomotive can generate, a second gen locomotive is actually the cleanest/greenest vehicles we've ever made, excluding nuclear powered electric cars. But the manufacturing footprint of batteries for such a thing doubtlessly make them worse than a modern steam locomotive, albiet not in 'final' operation.
https://youtu.be/uIzNVQsUmQo
There's red devil, the only surviving second gen locmotive i'm aware of, outside of paper proposals and the husk of La Argentina.
But people see a big cloud of steam coming out of a locomotive and go "Das bad", even though it's literally identical to rain clouds.
Sorry, you need to Log In to post a reply to this thread.