“You are quite similar to use steamies huh”

I agree. On a cold day the heat came from under the seat, which is just where you need it most.

That depended on the length of the train.

Moisture in steam heat vs. Heat exchange from open flame heaters.

Moisture in steam heat vs. Heat exchange from open flame heaters.

Said internal steam generators were also one of the significant contributors to the tendency of the SDP40F to derail (in combination with poor track quality) due to the Water tank for the steam heater

@@cyri96 yeah, I’m honestly surprised that wasn’t a drawback of steam heating mentioned in the video, as I believe it was more than just the SDP40Fs that suffered from the water slosh issue, though I believe the E60 was the only other locomotive where it was bad enough to cause derailments

@@patrickmartin3322 While the water sloshing around was an issue, there were also other factors as to why the E60 and SDP40 derailed. They were basically just freight locomotives, and so were extremely heavy and didn't have high-speed trucks, so they were rough-riding. And since they were running on railroads in the 70s, they often encountered poor track.

The EM2 (Class 77, later NS class 1500) and some of the EM1'S (Class 76) had steam boilers (In the case of the EM2'S, much to Nederlands Spoorwagen's amusement when British Rail sold the EM2's to them!)

@@robertwilloughby8050 Those classes, and I think the three Southern Railway electric locomotives, had electrically heated boilers rather than oil fired ones. I know very little about them, and they would have been taken out of use when the passenger service on the Woodhead route was withdrawn in about 1970. I lived in third rail electric land and so only saw steam heat when I started to travel around the country, from the 1970s, so I only saw steam heat with Diesel traction in it’s later days. I think the last service to use it in London were the Class 37 hauled trains from Liverpool Street to Cambridge, but I’m not sure when these finished. I mainly experienced steam heat on a number of rail tours in the 1980s, and my main memory of it at that time was that it was very unreliable; it a train was booked for steam heat that often meant no heat. At Kings Cross station each of the tracks in the main station was equipped with a long steam hose to enable trains to be pre-heated while at the platform, though these were long disused when I saw them. I’m not sure if they were connected to a stationary boiler somewhere or if they were just all connected together so they could just run a locomotive or boiler van into one track and use it to heat stock in any of the others. Dual heated BR Mk. 1 compartment coaches had a pair of very modern looking cross shaped aluminium knobs on the wall of each compartment. One was labelled ‘This controls steam heat under the seats on this side of the compartment” and the other ‘This controls steam heat under the death on this side of the compartment and electric heat under all seats’ Use of the steam boiler required a suitably trained crew member, and the lack of one could be another reason for no heat. A couple of months ago I travelled on the last train of the day on the preserved Severn Valley Railway, which was to be Diesel hauled. The locomotive arrived andI was surprised to see the steam hoses being coupled; I didn’t there were any Diesel locomotives which still had functioning boilers, but this one did, and it actually worked for the whole journey. Some early Diesel locomotives were originally built with water scoops to enable them to fill their tanks from troughs, but these were little used as the troughs were all removed after the end of steam traction.

Wow, never thought that a diesel switcher would heat a car...

That's true although I'd like to add that some of these diesel locos with a steam boiler for heating ran until the early 2000s, not just the 80s. :) Thinking mainly about V100s (Br 212 at that time).

@@1dree1And 215s in the Frankfurt area until Dec. 2001.

Interestingly did Germany also employ obsolete Electric Locomotives as portable Substations, aka "Heating Locomotives" similar to how obsolete Steam Locomotives became portable Boilers. It's a good Question what these were used for though, as the 16 2/3 Hz AC that Trains use in Germany can't really be used for anything unrelated to Railways; the low Frequency requires larger Iron Cores than the usual 50 Hz here. Anyway, the Town Lörrach where I grew up had such a portable Substation Locomotive for a few Years in the 1980ies.

And the SDP40F

@@patrickmartin3322 + Amtrak Steam Heated Car = Problematic Engine

Those were used in the 1950s and early 60s when old steam heated cars were still in use. But al coaching stock built from 1950 onwards had dual or electrical only heating as the plans to withdraw steam entirely by the end of the decade were already set. Coaching stock was normally only used on electrified lines, as the few non electrified lines were operated with DMUs. But in the 1970s traffic during peak hours on some of these lines couldn't cope with passenger numbers. So trains pulled by diesel locomotives were employed. Problem was that these diesels didn't have any means of heating the train as they were purely intended for freight traffic when ordered. The stock operated with the diesels were dual heat, so steam or electric heating could be used. Because steam heat cars were out of service by that time new heating cars had to be built. Regarding the better reliability and easier handling generator cars for ETH were built, the train guard would be responsible for its operation, which in essence was a pre service check and starting the diesel engine powering the generator, it would run for the whole journey unattended unless a fault emerged which was rare. Similar cars were used in Belgium when diesels only equipped with steam boilers had electrical heated coaching stock on the drawbar, mostly if more modern stock on international trains had to travel over non electrified routes like the Ardennes line. Later some Belgian diesels class 55 were rebuilt with ETH instead of the boiler.

I don’t think it’s the same process, but large office block A/C systems in NYC use steam from the steam network for cooling as well. I think it just drives the compressor on the air conditioner in that case.

It is a broad gauge carriage for The Overland Express between Melbourne and Adelaide. The service was jointly operated by Victorian Railways and the South Australian Railways.

I wish I'd said that...

The voltage wouldn't be the problem, since you can generate quite a lot of heat even with just 120 V if you run enough current. The burning of fuel to produce the steam heat was probably a matter of cost savings, since if you use electricity, that means you have to account for the inefficiency of generating the electricity in the first place With modern power plants, you can approach 70% efficiency, but they didn't have power plants anywhere near that good in the 1930s, other than hydroelectric (the only usable renewable energy available back then) which was of limited availability (unless you're in some place like Switzerland). So to get the amount of steam you would get by burning a gallon of fuel oil directly in the boiler by instead using electricity, you might have to burn 2.5 to 5 gallons of oil (or more likely, the equivalent amount of coal) in the power plant to get the electricity.

doesn't surprise me with the age of some of VIA Rail's rolling stock

@@MercenaryPen they were former CN equipment

@@Elliottblancher And CP. I used to be a technician with CN Telecommunications and back in the mid 70s, when I was based in Northern Ontario, frequently rode trains, both passenger and freight.

I thought it was York.

So?