Don,
I know that SLM (now DLM) came in a few years ago and made a proposal to Mt. Washington for new rack steam locomotives similar to the ones they built in the 1990's for Austria and Switzerland. As I understand it the main sticking point here was that the DLM engineers were not confident in the safety of the existing Mt. Washington rack system and they wanted to rebuild major parts of the line, reducing the grade sufficiently to allow the ABT rack system (as used in Europe and at Pikes Peak) to be used. It's not hard to understand why that proposal would be rejected.
There was significant room for steam improvement even if DLM's proposal was rejected. Nigel Day achieved great things with Mt. Washington #9 and the limited modifications he was allowed to make to it and it's great to see that it is the main engine being operated at present. I would just really like to have seen what could have been done if a new locomotive had been built. It wouldn't have even have needed to be a radical new design, just correct the obvious deficiencies with the existing designs. Provide properly designed piston valve cylinders (no tortuous "Z" ports), valve gear allowing variable cutoff, insulation (why they operated so long in such a cold environment without ever bothering to insulate cylinders or steam lines is beyond me), roller bearings everywhere, a Lempor exhaust and feedwater heater system as successfully applied to #9, water treatment to eliminate the scaling that plagues their boilers, and a superheater.
More expensive to build than their home grown diesels? Probably, but I'll bet a steamer along these lines would have at least eliminated the diesel performance advantage and cut fuel and maintenance costs dramatically. Mt. Washington touts the ability of the diesels to burn B20 biodiesel. An oil-fired steamer could also have burned B100 or even WVO (as proved by Nigel). One man operation would be possible with oil firing as well.
Only time will tell whether reduced ridership cancels the economic advantages of the diesels. New steamers would have provided the best of both worlds.
Hugh Odom
The Ultimate Steam Page
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www.trainweb.org]
Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 10/08/2009 08:05AM by whodom.
