Inside the Forgotten Steam Locomotive That Physically Could Not Explode

Inside the Forgotten Steam Locomotive That Physically Could Not Explode Between 1911 and 1950 the Interstate Commerce Commission investigated boiler explosion after boiler explosion on American railroads, and the cause was almost always identical: low water over the crown sheet. Three men died at Bellefontaine, Ohio in 1942. Three more died near Canastota, New York in 1943. The industry never engineered that failure out. It waited for the diesel to remove it by accident. One machine had already solved it, forty years before the first ICC report. The fireless locomotive carried no firebox, no grate, no ash pan, no tubes and no smokestack. Inside its shell sat a steam accumulator charged with superheated water from a stationary plant boiler, around 250 pounds per square inch at 401 degrees Fahrenheit. It ran on the steam above that water, and as pressure fell the water boiled itself to make more. There was nothing on it to light, and no crown sheet to lose. The invention belonged to Emile Lamm, a New Orleans dentist who patented an ammonia engine in 1870, tested his fireless design pulling trams at Carrollton in 1872, and died in July 1873 at thirty-eight. Leon Francq took the work to the Paris tramways. H. K. Porter of Pittsburgh built its first fireless locomotive in 1915 and dominated the American market until it closed the locomotive line in 1950. This video traces the full arc: the mechanism, the stored-energy paradox that made the safest locomotive in America the one carrying sixteen and a half tons of pressurised water, the economics that beat a diesel switcher idling 75 to 95 percent of its working hours, and the Heisler flagship of 1940 that was too heavy for the paper mill that bought it. Pennsylvania Power and Light ran that machine at Hauto until 1969. Heisler stopped building locomotives in 1941. The type did not lose a competition. It lost the boiler house. When American plants stopped generating their own process steam, a mechanically sound fireless locomotive became an object that could not be started by anybody, at any price, ever again. Chapters: 0:00 The Locomotive With Nothing To Light 3:48 Why The Powder Plants Wanted It 7:11 What Is Actually Inside The Drum 11:39 Sixteen And A Half Tons Of Stored Heat 16:26 The Largest One Ever Built 20:48 What Actually Killed It References: Fireless locomotive. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fireles... Fireless steam locomotive. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fireles... Emile Lamm. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emile_Lamm Valentine, H. Researching The Ultimate Fireless Steam Locomotive, Part I. https://www.martynbane.co.uk/modernst... Fireless Cooker 0-4-0F No. 7240. Whippany Railway Museum. http://www.whippanyrailwaymuseum.net/... Union Electric 4. Illinois Railway Museum. https://www.irm.org/player/ue4/ H K Porter Company: Builder Of Small Steam Engines. American-Rails. https://www.american-rails.com/hk.html Historic Steam Locomotive Heads To Charleston. American-Rails. https://www.american-rails.com/apppor... H.K. Porter. PacificNG. https://www.pacificng.com/w/index.php... Pennsylvania Power and Light No. 4094. Locomotive Wiki. https://locomotive.fandom.com/wiki/Pe... PP and L 4094, Largest Fireless Steam Locomotive. Railpage. https://www.railpage.com.au/news/s/pe... Heisler Locomotive. Trains and Railroads. https://www.trains-and-railroads.com/... Fireless technology. DLM AG. https://dlm-ag.ch/en/fireless-technol... Fireless Locomotives. Preserved British Steam Locomotives. https://preservedbritishsteamlocomoti... Bagnall fireless locomotives (preserved). Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bagnall...) Boiler explosion. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiler_... Fireless Steam Locomotives Pull Big Loads for Industry. Science and Mechanics, Feb 1940. http://blog.modernmechanix.com/firele... H.K. Porter No. 8123. Locomotive Wiki. https://locomotive.fandom.com/wiki/H....