Past, Present and Future of the Steam r Vehicle
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There is No Reason, Says Our Contributor, Why a Stearn Vehicle Cannot Be Constructed to Comply With Petrol vehicle Taxation Conditions.
TFIE prospects of manufacturing and putting on the roads new steamers are 'practically nil. Assuming the exist • ence of designs and productiOn tools— which are known to exist—the overriding question of priorities would sink any.attempt to operate such a scheme. Guns, 'planes, ships, Tanks, to -say nothing of other supplies urgently necessary, but less in the limelight, are in such demand that it would be a bold ministry man, holding in his hands the decision of priorities, whowould dare to override such vital materials -of War for such Comparatively unimportant necessities Further; in actual practice, that man would•be difficult to find ; he would be snowed under by the vast :majOrity of " passed-to-you-please " men.
The conversion of existing engines is sometimes suggested, in an attempt to • turn them over to home-produced, Solid fuel. This is not an easy job, far ' several reasons, the first being the fact that the four-stroke operation of the internal-combustion • engine has to be altered to the two-stroke of the steam engine.
An Actual Petrol to Steam Conversion
It is not, however, an impossibility, and has actually been accomplished recently by those Well;known steam enthusiasts, the Bolsover brothers; particulars of their conversion of a four-cylindered petrol engine to a two-, cylindered steamer by the superimpoSition of steam cylinders. on the existing cylinder, • the pistons then acting as cross-heads, were published in "The Commercial Motor " dated September 25, 1942, The , boiler is fired with solid coke fuel; the draught being controlled automatically by the steam pressure in the flash boiler. This plant has been in actual operation on the test bench, and has produced significant figures of power developed. 'Apart from the engine. conversion, there is the boiler to make, which is certainly a considerable item. It must be of the flash type, as no converted vehicle could accommodate the weight or bulk of the ancestral type of steamwagon boiler.
There is an alternative way of dealing with the engine, which merits consideration.A steam engine is fundamentally more simple than the -internal-combustion type. Being a two-stroke, it can have half the number of cylinders, to say nothing of the greatly decreased number of necessary parts, apart from the reduction in the actual number of cylinders.
It is, therefore, possible to ,consider making a two-cylindered V-type engine, either simplci or compound, with valve gear of only sufficient complexity to allow of a cut-off which will , give reasonably economical operation. The need for compounding exists only • for this economical running, and is not for the sake of having two cylinders on high pressure for starting up, .as the • gearbox would be retained, which would provide for both' this requirement and fiSr reversing. Compounding may not be necessary for even economical running, as it is-obvious that there are two schools of opinion on this. A conversion somewhat on these lines is known to be now running in the north of England.
Another possibility of obtaining the assistance of steam in these hard times is to Search the country for machines that have been scrapped for various „ reasons; " taxed off the roads,." shall we say. It would not be too difficult to search for themin likely and unlikely places, to dig them out and to Overhaul them for a fresh lease of life.
Many of these machines must, of course, have, succumbed to the drive for metal, but there must be some about in nooks and corners that could be made serviceable again for a cornpara.' tively small cost in labour and material.
How Number of Steamers In Use Fell Looking up' the S.M.M.T. • figures, and remembering that steamers last for years and years, I find that the 1927, figure shows 9,093 of them on the roads in that year. It is, of course, true that the numbers declined persistently, and, by. 1938, liad reached the low level of 988. From among those • machines, however, there must be a goodly.num13er available for rounding-up for the use of the Nation.
In private cars we should not be interested from the national-emergency point of view, which is just as well, because there does not appear to have been a single steam private car registered for SQ far back as the S.M.M.T. records go. . Apart from expediency, the proposal to " warm up" a system that is dead and cold, so far as the future is concerned, is wrong: The. first way in which .steam protagonists have gone wrong is in sticking to the heavies.(1 The market is so Small that there is no prospect of allocating funds for research, without which no progress is possible. Of the 473,000 total of general transport vehicles, only 18,000 are heavies; the balance of 455,000, or over 90 per cent, of the total, are in the medium and lighter classes. . . There is no reason why „steam should not invade this class • which provides the possibilities of economic production and therefore attractive selling prices,' besides affording -research and eXperimental development funds.
Further, in this class there 'is no taxation penalization for steam; it
• enjoys the same conditions aS petrel; it requires only that the business policy of steam should _he. competent, and its engineering design . efficient,. using.
• the actumnlated improvements in materials instruments and technique developed in recent years. in the motor,
steam-raising and metallurgical branches of engineering. _
Somewhat more than 30 years ago, the steam car went off-• the :roads, beaten hollew by the rising petroleagined cars .' :There were no light -or Medium goods steamers, nor have theft ever been'. '
Conditions of stearn raising, inthese days were pressures of 150 to 250 lb. per sq. „in.; and temperatures of 500 degrees F. at most. Concerning these conditions Colonel Crompton, the eminent engineer,. had to say: " Engineers thought they had' been using steam engines, but they had really been using hot water engines."
Preisures Reach Great Heights
Corresponding figUres to-day, in modern steam raising, are as. high as 2,300 lb. per sq. in. and 950 degrees F. Boilers have been made to work at over 3,000 lb.. pressure, but metallurgy limits temperatures, although progress permits • gradual • but Continuous increase.
One of the' troubles of the cars of 40 years ago was the necessity of engineering knowledge to drive a steamer, unnecessary for a petrol car.
An advertisement, voicing this condition and exploiting it for the benefit of the petrol car, appeared in" The Car" on May 28, 1902; it said: "-A carriage, not a machine," and was issued by the Duryea Power Co.. Coventry, the maker of .petrol cars. It was a cleverly implied, descriptive condemnation.
The difference between those days and now, so for as steam is concerned, is that instruments for the automatic control of the steam generator, according to the demands of the engine, are now in existence, and have proved their practicability, .and reliability in all the great electricity generating stations of the world;. 40. years ago they did not exist, and the driver had to exercise complete control, whether he were comp6tent or otherwise to do so. Most drixerswere not competent, so. the steam system of road transport suffered, and, to all intents and pur• poses, died. There were economists among the petrol executives and engineers in those days. Those economists had a clear idea of the fundamental value of weight in the construction of a motor vehicle, as in everything else. Therefore the engineers and designers-were instructed to "get the weight off,'" and the instruction was imperative, so the designers had to go to 'it. They took the bold eburse and, instead of paring bits off. here and there, they. lioubled the speed of the
• engine. Of course they ran into balancing troubles, but they managed the job, and the weight came down as
the speed went up., • The speed of the petrol engine to-day is four times what it was in ,those days. What did the steam " people do? Nothing. They stuck to their 250 r.p.m. engine S and their weight. They called the fast petrol engines fussy and unmechanical, and there it rested.
There is, therefore,' lying about ready, for steam designers to pick up and use. the experience of high Pressure and superheat, of instruments for steamgenerator control, and of high-speed engines and their weight-reduction. potentiality.
A high-speed steam engine and a monotube boiler can, by use of all the possibilities of design 'and modern materials, be made within the weight of a petrol engine and gearbox, which component steam does not require. The condenser would add weight to the vehicle, but there is no reason why a steam vehicle cannot be constructed to comply with the same taxation conditions as those of a petrol vehicle.
Two Journals on Only Road Steamers
In the October issue of the American journal " The Steamobile and Ye Olde Time Car." there are illustrations of eight steamers, one of which is a covered van. They are all modern vehicles. In the same issue are also pictups of old steamers, still running. These include a 1909' White, a 1913 Stanley, a 1910 Stanley, a 1911 Stanley, and a modern 1940 Packard saloon in which has been installed a Stanley engine: there is also an 1898
Stanley and an 1899 Mobile steamer. • In the "New Steam -Age," another American steam-vehicle journal, is a picture of a steam caravan, a modern saloon steamr, and particulars of the Knox steam n engine with interesting technical details. • These ancient and modern steamers indicate the enthusiastic interest in steam that exists in* the U.S.A. The existence of two journals devoted exclusively to the subject of steam road vehicles is further evidence.
It may be that there is another reason for the interest that is being taken in America in steam, more in keeping with the hard-headedobusiness interests of the citizens of that country. The enormous drive for 100-octane petrol now going on in the U.S.A., and the plants being erected, practically ensure the world-wide supply of that super-fuel in post-war days.
This high-octane spirit is much more refined in various ways than paraffin, which is just as good for steam raising
as the best petrol. In such circumstances the steamer fuel will naturally be much cheapet than the 100 octane.
It is possible 'that the difference, in 'the cost of the fuels, mill-diked by the 500 gallons per vehicle per annum, and the 40 million vehicles of the world, has attracted the attention of far-seeing executives in the U.S.A. and the technical wd'rk going on is, maybe, due to that incentive.
This is all to the good for the future of the finest prime Mover in the world.