Live Steam toy trains 0 Gauge

Nice locomotives.  But it looks like they are running on S gauge track not O.  I wouldn't mind having some of mine own. 

Now watching this, a thought came to me.  We run trains on metal rails with electricity running in them.  What if we heated the water with that electricity, like electric water heaters, only instead of getting hot water for our showers we are using it to run the trains.  Then you can use the remotes, AKA TMCC/DCS, to control the throttle, real steam whistle, blowdown, injectors, and heat.  Has anyone ever looked into this?

Yes! Steam Electric in ca1932.

Ron M

Plausable, but IMHO just not enough electrical current (6A @ 18VAC) to produce enough steam to run a model train. If you kicked it up to 120VAC @ 20 amps, you may make it work. It would be dangerous, but would be a good solution for keeping the cats off the layout...

Gilly

Gilly has it right.  Just not enough energy to heat up the water to make enough steam pressure at the wattage we are using even in small amounts.  That's why we often see alcohol or other fuel to heat up the water to build enough steam pressure.

It would be really cool to have an o gauge live steam train with a modern remote control system to operate it remotely, but I doubt it would be electric powered to generate the heat.

Agree with others, electric heating uses resistance to do that, and it would not work at 18v@6a. Put it this way, even at their lower setting, small electric space heaters are at 600 watts....so doing this on a toy train layout in a safe way would be a non starter. 

Besides, part of the fun of live steam is that alcohol has been used to generate steam (probably not on trains I would suspect, but it was used on some early steam cars), so it is somewhat prototypical.

The other downside of live steam probably will be that what it puts out may be kind of gunky, or will fall on items on the layout that will attract grime. 

Well, goes to show why I picked mechanical engineering over electrical for my career path.  That electrical stuff is all black magic to me.

I hate to punch holes in the supposition that you needed 120 volts to get sufficient energy to power a toy train steam loco BUT here is the patent granted on Sept. 24, 1935: 2015438 <https://www.google.com/patents/US2015438?pg=PA1&dq=2015438&hl=en&sa=X&ei=gdoQU6fJEM6F0QH2loDQAQ&ved=0CEoQ6AEwAw>. This particular unit shown in the patent was a standard gauge loco. Steam Electric Co. manufactured, I believe, three standard gauge units and one "0" gauge unit. An insert in their 1939(?) catalog shows a Lionel 700E being offered with a S.E. steam unit. To date I don't believe that any of these locos have emerged. Examples of the other S.E. locos have surfaced.  

Trivia bits. The Pres. of S.E. Co., Benjamin H. Smith, was a 50% owner of the 3-position 'E-unit' used by Ives. Smith was also on good terms with Joseph Bonnano - Lionel Engineering Dept.

Ron M

Hornby did an electric powered live steam HO model of the famous A-4 .

NOTE: Also known as the Mallard (blue livery). On striking display at the British Railway Museum at York, UK.

I didn't say it was impossible...just not likely or practical.  Without doing any math and physics which this is, you just don't have a great deal of energy from our transformers to generate a lot of power or to boil much water to produce much steam pressure for any length of time.

I believe you, that Hornby managed to accomplish this in HO and perhaps other scales.  I'm sure there can be some compromises made to make this work.

There are a lot of factors involved, the amount of energy you can put in from the transformer to heat the water, and the amount of water that you can sufficiently heat to the boiling point to generate enough steam and steam pressure to push the locomotives cylinders turning the wheels.

Then you still need enough steam power to pull the locomotives own weight and any cars behind it for some length of time or what's the point?

I think it would just be easier and more practical to harness the energy from alcohol, butane, or some other fuel which packs a lot of energy to heat water fast and maintain proper steam pressure.

When I was a kid, we had a stationary steam engine in our elementary school science lab that was powered from a wall plug to heat the water.  Needless to say, it was my favorite model to experiment with, and to learn about steam power. 

I used to think how could transform this stationary steam engine, into one I could run on my o gauge layout, but of course it just was too big and bulky and used 115V, not a measly18V.  Everything would have to be scaled down.

Neat!,, One speed only,, Wide open....

I have also observed other operating HO live steam models at Diamondhead, MS (the "York" of miniature live steam) in 1996 and 1997.

Personally, I will stick with my 1:22 scale, 45mm (Gauge One) butane-fired live steam loco.