Comments by "Vikki McDonough" (@vikkimcdonough6153) on "Steam Boilers in the 1900's - The Unusual Case of the Car and Ship" video.

  1. Why did steam locomotives almost universally use fire-tube boilers, given the lower top pressures available and the extreme explosion risk they pose?
    1
  2. 29:06 - I can't help but wonder if Prinz Eugen might've become a long-term presence in the U.S. Navy (instead of being nuked, ineffectually cleaned, and left to sink at Kwajalein) had the Navy actually looked at the size of her boiler documentation, held onto her trained engineers (at least long enough for them to train American replacements), and, thus, prevented the engine failures that plagued her real-life time in U.S. service.
    1
  3. 35:07 - I wonder if a multiple-expansion engine could be made more compact by nesting the higher-pressure cylinders within the lower-pressure ones (using annular bores and pistons for all but the highest-pressure cylinders), which would also (theoretically, at least) increase efficiency somewhat by helping to keep the cylinders hot (because, instead of the outer surface of each cylinder being directly exposed to the external environment, now only the outer surface of the lowest-pressure cylinder would be so exposed, with the outer surfaces of all the other cylinders being bathed in still-fairly-hot steam, retarding heat loss by conduction through the cylinder bodies).
    1