Comments by "Keit Hammleter" (@keithammleter3824) on "Joe Scott" channel.

Public transport, including passenger rail, got into decline in most Western cities for a simple reason: the fares had to be set low enough to compete with cars. In many countries the railways were government owned, and still got out of most passenger services because of the losses caused by the motor car. GM was and still is a major manufacturer of diesel locomotives n their EMD division, which puts the lie to the urban myth that they pursued an evil plot against rail. They were a major manufacturer of prime mover engines in their 71 series used by other manufacturers. Europe has some special circumstances that count against the car: many of their cities and towns were town-planned hundreds of years ago and their residential streets are narrow and there's nowhere to park.
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@apveening Europe is more complicated than that. The Romans, who conquered much of Europe including England, were very good town planners, very keen on orthogonal street alignments, with highways adequate for fast military deployment. But in the dark ages, after the Roman empire had collapsed, local rulers allowed cities and towns to develop chaotically. Then in the 17th and 18th century, European kings attempted to make things orderly, with greater or lesser interest and greater or lesser success. Town planning as a modern occupation of administrators in major European countries such as France and Italy dates back to the 15th century. Rich folk, with their royal connections, have always been keen to keep the slums out of their palace grounds and make their areas easy to administer by easy access. (A young prince: "Sire! The peasants are revolting!" The King: "Oh, aren't they always?" ) However, people then moved by walking and goods were moved by small horse-drawn carts, so streets could be very narrow. People tended to sleep and eat at their place of employment (eg a bootmaker would live above his shop), so traffic was low and more even - no peak period congestion as we see today. Town planning in the USA goes back to the earliest days. Savannah Georgia was founded in 1733 as a planned city with Roman-style orthogonal streets and public squares. Cities such as Washington (1791), Philladephia (1682), were planned cities dating from well before the car. New York is the way it is because of the Commissioner's Pan of 1811. The USA is famous for its wide straight grid pattern streets and public squares and parks for these reasons. Planning of industrial estates in USA dates back to Lowell Massachusetts - planned in 1820. The introduction of town planning for residential / small business areas and industrial estates in the USA from before the car is an important reason why the USA became an industrial might and adapted to the car more easily than other countries. However, the Great Depression in the 1930's led to employment-creating schemes such as freeway construction and land reallocation.
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Dawson, the largest steam locos have about the same power as the largest diesels. This is because the limit is not set by engine technology, it is set by wheel-to-track adhesion. Both steam and diesel is limited to about 500 to 600 kN tractive effort depending on track gauge and construction for this reason.
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The turkey in this video knows nothing. He claimed explosions killed steam - they didn't, steam was phased out because coal is way too labour intensive - locomotives spent more time being cleaned out than they did running. In most parts of the world steam continued in use until the 1970's, and are still in use today in some countries where labour and coal is cheap. Diesel locos replaced steam because they don't need all that labour intensive cleaning, and because diesel engines are about three times more fuel efficient. Boiler explosions were extremely rare, due to the use of safety valves and other measures. Once in a rare while something breaks in the mechanical side (pistons and rods) - this does nothing much more than vent enormous quantities of steam and stop the train, with bits of piston and cylinder flying off. He claimed some crews deliberately run boilers low in water level to get faster heating. That's utter nonsense because all the pipes in the boiler must be kept submerged in liquid water or they will burn through or melt. And the pipes, for efficiency in heat transfer, go all the way to close to the top of the boiler. Boilers are kept full at all times, and fresh water from the tender behind the loco is injected in to keep it that way.
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@73Datsun180B No he's wrong. He's wrong in saying crews run boilers low in order to get faster steaming. You can tolerate a small amount of water volume change in going up hill or down hill, but the percentage change in water volume in the boiler in doing this is very small. We are talking about the top few percent or so in height, but boilers are round ie narrow at the top, so the percentage change in water volume and therefore change in steaming rate is so small you wouldn't ever notice it. I agree that the firebox crown sheet must never ever be run unwetted, or it will be disaster and probably kill the crew, but the firetubes must be kept wetted along their full length too or they will quickly fail too. Note that, as wheel to track adhesion is low (steel wheels, no rubber) railway tracks have always been graded so that hills are only a very small slope. Where this is just not possible, funicular or geared propulsion is used and boilers are kept level. Even so, one of the operating parameters of steam engines is that the fireman must be good at anticipating heat needs during the trip, putting on more coal before beginning a hill climb and easing off with the coal before a descent. Not doing this skillfully and timely can waste a lot of coal due to blowing off steam. The reason for putting on more coal for a hill is not of course to raise temperature or pressure. It is because if the cylinders consume more steam, the greater consumption of steam will need greater consumption of water, which would increase cooling of the tubes,. Therefore more heat is required in order to keep to the same temperature and pressure. Coal has to be added before beginning a hill as the act of adding coal causes a drop in flame temperature until burning of the new coal is well under way.. It is not a matter of getting more steam by allowing water level to drop.
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