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Steam
Locomotion in the 21st
Century
The Recent
History of Steam Locomotive
Development
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Other Recent
Steam Developers
updated 5 February
2022
This page provides brief
information on several steam designers,
not covered in detail elsewhere on these
pages, who have recently worked to improve
steam locomotives and steam locomotive
design. See the other sections of the
Ultimate Steam Page for more information
on these gentlemen.
Sam Mackwell: Sam has been
interested in alternatives to petroleum
based fuels since a young age. and in 2016
he founded the Mackwell Locomotive
Company. Mackwell Locomotive Company is
based in Canterbury, New Zealand. Thus
far, Sam has designed and constructed a
full-size watertube boiler of an advanced
design that retains the outline of a
traditional locomotive firetube boiler and
uses wood as fuel. He also completed a
Lempor ejector installation on a heritage
line railway in New Zealand. Finally, Sam
is also working on the "AgLoco", a modern
steam tractor which will also use wood as
fuel. Read more about Sam's work here: https://mackwelloco.com/
Shaun McMahon: From 2009 to 2022,
Shaun worked for INTI, the government
scientific establishment in Buenos Aires
where Porta headed the Thermodynamics
department from 1960 until his retirement
in 1982. Shaun has steam experience in the
UK, South Africa, and Argentina. Shaun and
worked closely Nigel Day, Phil
Girdlestone, and finally with L. D. Porta
for several years. See the FCAF pages for
details of Shaun's work there. For
several years, Shaun has worked at the
RFIRT, where Porta did much of his work on
steam locomotives. The line had dieselized
in the 1990's, but there was a move to
return to coal-fired steam power. Shaun
worked to overhaul the line's remaining
steam locomotives, restore the
locomotives' Porta features, and further
improve them. There were plans to extend
the RFIRT into neighboring Chile and on to
the Pacific Coast which would make it a
transcontinental railway. While at INTI,
Shaun worked on several energy related
projects, adapting technologies developed
by Porta to stationary steam plants to be
used for power generation. Sadly, Shaun
unexpectedly passed away in February 2022
at the age of only 57.
Nigel Day: A former driver on the
Snowdon Mountain
Railway in Wales, Nigel made
numerous technical improvements to his
regular locomotive, No. 5, including oil
firing and a Lempor exhaust. Additionally,
he has installed Lempor exhaust systems on
the steam locomotives of several other UK
tourist railways. More recently Nigel
worked at the Mt. Washington Railway in
New Hampshire, making extensive
modifications to one of their
locomotives. Later, he worked at the
Grand Canyon Railway on their locomotives
no. 29 and no. 4960, installing Lempor
exhausts and improved oil firing
systems. See the News Archive
page for photos of Nigel's work, and the Last 30
page for information on several steam
locomotives he has worked on.
Roger Waller: Roger is the head of
the steam locomotive design department at
Dampflokomotiv und Maschinenfabrik AG - DLM. Roger assisted
David Wardale with testing of the Red
Devil No. 3450 in South Africa. Later, he
was instrumental in the construction of
new, modern rack steam locomotives at the
Swiss Locomotive and Machine Works (SLM).
When SLM decided to get out of the new
steam business, Roger and his team in the
steam department convinced Hug Engineering
to take them on and DLM was formed. DLM
has improved several existing steam
locomotives, made proposals for new modern
steam locomotives and other steam-related
projects, and furnished state-of-the-art
reciprocating steam power plants for
existing ships in Switzerland.
William Petitjean: Bill Petitjean
is a professional mechanical engineer and
steam enthusiast. Bill wrote a series of
articles analyzing the technical reasons
for steam's demise in the U.S. for the
magazine Locomotive & Railway
Preservation in the 1980's. Bill
has devoted a lot of thought to how new,
durable, mechanically simple steam
locomotives could be built for tourist
railway and "third world" service. His
ideas are based on maximizing steam's
inherent advantages of simplicity and
durability, rather than emphasizing
thermodynamic improvements. Bill was a
sales engineer for the Skinner Engine
Company, the last U.S. manufacturer of
reciprocating steam engines. For
many years, Bill operated the Green Velvet
Steam Engine Lubricants to produce and
sell specialty lubricants for steam
locomotives and engines. Bill is currently
enjoying a well-deserved retirement.
Jos Koopmans: Jos is an engineer
in the Netherlands who has conducted
theoretical research and field testing
with advanced steam locomotive exhaust
systems. Jos developed his "Unified
Exhaust Theory for Steam Locomotives",
which advances the earlier work of
Chapelon, Geisl, and Porta and explains
aspects of the function of the exhaust
system previously not explained. Jos has
assisted with the design of improved
exhaust systems installed on locomotives
in the Netherlands, the UK, Canada, and
the US.
Jos is married and has four children, (1
graduated, 2 students and the youngest
still in high school). Jos studied naval
architecture at Delft University and
became a model engineer at the time. The
Delft library was a "gold mine" for a lot
of technical information which he still
has in the form of a stack of photocopies.
At present Jos is employed as a logistics
consutant for the largest tranport and
logistics supplier of the Netherlands.
During 1987 he wrote a concept for a
doctor's thesis about the history of
exhaust research. This was based on the
notion that research had stopped with the
original problem unsolved! The work
progressed slowly, but early 1993 he
became one of the originators of the
project to build a replica of one of the
Arnhem streetcars of which the originals
were destroyed during the battle of Arnhem
in 1944. One thing led to the other and
now Jos is president of the Tramway
Society of the Netherlands, an umbrella
organisation for a number of societies
owning well over 150 tramcars and
locomotives. One of the locomotive-owning
societies was so kind to be interested in
testing also, so that Jos was in a
position to really test a number of vague
notions that he had about multi-nozzle
exhaust systems. The tests proved his
concepts after which he formulated the
condition for maintaining equal vacuum
while changing to more orifices and the
Unified momentum flux equation defining
the equilibrium between draft and smokebox
vacuum for exhaust systems with 1 to n
orifices. As Jos puts it: "I think I have
advanced exhaust theory and the
computational possibilities for some years
and I really hope that others will pick it
up as a starter for additional work.
Contrary to others like Giesl-Gieslingen I
firmly belief that we do not know all
there is to know about exhaust systems."
Jos' thesis was expanded into the book The
Fire Burns Much Better. More
information on the book is available
here:
http://www.thefireburnsmuchbetter.nl/
Ted Pritchard-Mr. Pritchard did
considerable practical research on steam
power for stationary and automotive
applications. Read more about his
work here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Pritchard_(engineer)
Harry Valentine- Harry Valentine
is a transportation specialist from Canada
who has written many proposals for
advanced steam locomotive projects.
Many of Harry's proposals are available at
Rob Dickinson's
International Steam Page.
Tom Blasingame- Tom is a former
production manager and equipment designer
for the Morrison-Knudsen Company of Boise,
Idaho. Tom later formed his own
company "T. W. Blasingame Company" which
has done a great deal of work on modern,
"diesel-equivalent" solid fueled electric
drive steam locomotives. Several
designs incorporated Rand rotary
expanders, which potentially offer the
best performance characteristics of both
steam turbines and reciprocating steam
engines. Read more about Tom's work
here:
http://www.trainweb.org/tusp/news/Steam
Page Release 6-13-2005.pdf
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