Live Steam Tram

Melbournesparks

Melbournesparks

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Technically.

Back in the very earliest days of railways the famous engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel was sure of the advantages of stationary steam engines for railway traction. He wasn't wrong, but it would take the invention and refinement of the electric generator and electric tram for the idea to be fully realized.


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This was a bit of a proof of concept, to see if the big 504 boiler and stuart no. 8 engine could generate electricity for the tramway. It works, but the generator is not terribly efficient. I want to make a new generator that makes better use of the steam engine's torque characteristics. Electric tramways were some of the earliest users of electricity on a large scale, so it's fun to be able to demonstrate the complete system in miniature form.
 
Excellent fun. What an interesting sound it makes. Should keep the wildlife away!
 
That is a good thing. Just today I was shoked. I'm working in a school as a helper for kids with problems in a 3, Klasse. They are between 9 and 11 years old. In a German lession the listen to a story from a book with well knwon author. "Emil und die Detektive" It is a story about a 11 year old boy, living round about 1900 near Berlin. He got some money to visit his oncle in Berlin. Using for the first step a horse drawn tram and than a train. That train was pulled by a steam engine and 2/3rd of 24 scholars didn't know what a steam locomotive is. Even the female teacher couldn't explain how it is working. :cry:
 
idlemarvel said:
Excellent fun. What an interesting sound it makes. Should keep the wildlife away!
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Most of the noise is coming from the generator brushes at the moment, I need to see if I can find or make a brushless generator. It will be more efficient too.

dunnyrail said:
Great fun, your name would not be Malcolme at all?
JonD
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Hahaha, unfortunately I have not made my own full size tram yet!

schienenkönig said:
That is a good thing. Just today I was shoked. I'm working in a school as a helper for kids with problems in a 3, Klasse. They are between 9 and 11 years old. In a German lession the listen to a story from a book with well knwon author. "Emil und die Detektive" It is a story about a 11 year old boy, living round about 1900 near Berlin. He got some money to visit his oncle in Berlin. Using for the first step a horse drawn tram and than a train. That train was pulled by a steam engine and 2/3rd of 24 scholars didn't know what a steam locomotive is. Even the female teacher couldn't explain how it is working. :cry:
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That sounds like a serious failure of the education system! I saw some pictures of another school somewhere in Germany which had some Wilesco stationary steam engines and generators to demonstrate how a steam engine works. Every school science department should have one, it's such an easy and interesting way to teach about the conversion of energy to useful work. My school never had anything like that. :(

When I was that age I think most kids I knew had at least seen a steam engine, there is a few heritage railways nearby. Since then I've met quite a few people who said they would have loved to have traveled on a steam train as a kid, but their parents never took them.
 
I'll bet a huge amount of kids dont know much about internal combustion engines. Your not meant to go meddling under the bonnet!
 
Melbournesparks said:
...it's such an easy and interesting way to teach about the conversion of energy to useful work.
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Agreed. In my youth we had comics and magazines that showed you how to make your own steam power - empty syrup tin, candle, poke a tiny hole in the tin, turbine from a cork and bits of wire and paper. And I was lucky enough to be given a small Mamod steam traction engine powered by meths. I learned about engineering and science by doing it. I get the feeling that today the elf and safety custodians would have a fit. Perhaps I'll skip over the book I had that showed you how to make your own gunpowder and fireworks...
 
Or the science book which used an old fridge compressor to evacuate a cloud chamber (needed dry-ice as well) to play with low-yield isotopes!!
 
PhilP said:
Or the science book which used an old fridge compressor to evacuate a cloud chamber (needed dry-ice as well) to play with low-yield isotopes!!
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Or the well thumbed illicit black & white editions of Health & Efficiency. I learnt a lot from those.......

David
 
You're showing your age, some of you. I've still got my gunpowder book somewhere.. It also showed you how to make laughing gas and chlorine. Would I be prosecuted for possessing terrorist material? At school we used to rub mercury onto ha'pennies to try to make them into shillings.......
 
My grandfather was a chemist, I inherited a good collection of books filled with similar horrors. Good stuff. I never did make my own rocket motors...

Interestingly the 50psi <1l volume boiler I'm using here requires a certificate to operate in public.
 
Mercury, and schools...
When they started getting 'health and safety' mad, they tested the lab benches, and had to have a specialist company take the top surface off and re-seal them, because of the Mercury content in the top surface..

From my childhood back garden, I could fire home-made rockets over four back gardens, a row of bungalows, the road in front of them, and they would land in the (public) park! :eek::oops::rolleyes:;);)

It's a wonder we didn't burn something down, break something, or maim someone really..
 
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