One of the things that killed the development of the steam engine in this country was the failure of the outside vendors of all of the parts an engine needed.
Quick ferinstance, my area, the electrical parts of a steam engine, the turbogenerator, headlights cab lights etc.the injectors, on and on the list goes. As more and more of the railroads went with deseasel less and less of these parts were needed and as such the price went up until the companies went either into other business ventures or went out of business.
It was not economically feasable for the railroads to manufacture their own parts as much of them were patented and required specialized tooling to manufacture.
Here at the Strasburg, we now make a lot of that stuff, we will make you an injector, I am working on the manufacture of headlight and their reflectors. Ever see an 18 inch parabolic glass reflector? NOBODY makes them. Hopefully I can pry the money loose to set up shop.
The steam engine is a really inefficient machine. Most of it's heat goes out the stack. You can't string them together without multiple crews. Modern deseasels have one fella driving, with all of the other engines run by remote control.
Water was always the limiting factor. Water either in a tower or in a track pan had to have a supply maintained, and kept from freezing in the winter. More personell the railroad had to pay.
Quite a few railroads in this country tried english/european designs. Part of the problem is that most of those designs were made with the assumption that there was a short run, and a stop at night. Over here, runs could be thousands of miles over several days with only the crews changing. By going from steam to deseasel railroads could save lots of money not having to have large service centers in the middle of nowhere.
I still have pictures to post. getting the 20 minutes end to end to get them there is the hard part.
TW
