# What would a modern steam engine be like?



## lownote (Jan 3, 2008)

I just finished reading a few books on the history and technology of steam locomotives, and it makes me wonder what a steam engine would be like if one were to built today, from the ground up. NOt a copy of earlier designs which are all 60 years old or older by now, long before micro electronics or computer control were even imagined. We have different materials available now. We have a different ethic in terms of energy use.

I'm guessing it would probably be a steam turbine, with a duplex drive, and would use computers to monitor the air mix, steam heat and moisture content, and regulate wheel slip like the traction control on a car. But I don't know all that much. Has anyone ever tried to take stab at designing a 21st century steam locootive?


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## peter bunce (Dec 29, 2007)

Hi, 

That is making things a bit complicated as was found out in the late 1940's. There is a project in the UK at the following website http://www.5at.co.uk/ 

That is a modern Class 5 (mixed traffic loco) in UK terms; because of the different way you run your railroads, a modern version of the 800 class of the UP perhaps? One was proposed but it fell by the wayside under the relentless tide of the diesels. 


Coal, or oil fed steam locomotives are always dirty, high maintenance objects, needing feeding and watering, so it would need and infrastructure as well don't forget. Thus the simpler they are the better, as less 'time out' in the shops is then needed.


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## Charles (Jan 2, 2008)

Ross Rowland's project ACE 3000:
http://www.trainweb.org/tusp/ult.html


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## jmill24 (Jan 11, 2008)

Not exactly a steam engine but when I worked for General Electric we were developing a Turbo Diesel engine which ran on micronized coal. I was helping to design the emissions control devices to protect the turbo and meet air polution regulations. GE had a one cylinder working model in Erie, PA. This product was aimed for the Chinese market since they had plenty of coal..............Jim


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## Richard Smith (Jan 2, 2008)

I would guess that it would be more of a steam-electric or steam turbine electric and bear little resemblance to the steamers we so loved in the past. Also it would certainly have to have m.u. capability thus eliminating the need for a crew on every "unit". It would have several water tenders much resembling those on UP's Gas Turbines to reduce water stops. 

I doubt it would display the powerful exhaust plumes or flashing siderods of the traditional steam locomotive and be much more generic in design as are diesels. All in all a bit disappointing but maybe just a bit more intriguing than the current diesels. It might still have the hissing and crackling sounds of old.


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## GG (Jan 1, 2009)

Check the article I just posted in the forum. 

gg


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## tacfoley (Jan 3, 2008)

You only have to look at Bulleid's 'Leader' to see how it might have all ended in tears....

The thermal efficiency of a steam propelled locomotive was woeful at best, and gaspingly appalling at worst. Even with the latest technology available atthis minute, the 14% efficiency of the British 'improved' Class 5 bears no comparison with even a clapped-out old Alco dismal running on half its cylinders. 

The only time ANY reciprocating steam engine approached efficient working was when used at constant rpm in a ship, for days on end....

The next step up, the steam turbine, was also tried on both sides of the Atlantic, and were massive and extraordinarily expensive failures.

tac
http://www.ovgrs.org/


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## ralphbrades (Jan 3, 2008)

It is a question that often comes up amoungst "friends at the pub" on a Sunday evening... I have often proposed some ideas and my normal general argument goes something like this. 

It will be based on the last great technological design leap in locomotives -the Golwe. It should have a Kylchap exhaust system and it should have a deep de Porta "producer gas" firebox burning pulverised coal. Possibly it would employ compounding in the classic "de Borres" or "Smith" methods and it would have a very high degree of superheating. Caprotti valve gear and roller bearing on all surfaces, along with pulse pressure oil feeds to all journals. The stoking would be automatic and there would be some form of automatic water treatment (TIA etc).


After all this -do we simply throw in the towel and build a bigger "Argentina" (?)



Terry's points about "Leader" are well founded, but in my view "Leader" suffered from the basic problem of its designers obsessions... Riddles knew enough about "OVB" to give the guy enough rope to see if the concept could possibly work ,(and it didn't), once in the UK, and once in the Irish Republic -where it burned Peat(!) If "OVB" had kept to the design he originally submitted to Missenden while they were still the Southern Railway then possibly he could have got the double bogied "Stretched Merchant Navy" to have worked. This assumes he ditched the chain drive timing system for the valves, made sure the boiler lagging didn't keep catching fire, etc etc!!! The problems with Number One Bogie on "Leader" could be traced to two root causes. The asymmetric chain drive (my favourite), or the test fault where they reversed the bogie without stopping it first, (Martyns favourite). Some people have put forward the problem is due to the differences in expansion of the sleeves, (Pip's favourite).


Could Leader ever have been made to work -er no... 


regards

ralph


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## Torby (Jan 2, 2008)

I think it'd look like something Chris Walas would come up with


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## lownote (Jan 3, 2008)

Complexity. My car is much more complex now than my car in 1980. For the most part, the changes are better--it gets better mileage while delivering more power, it pollutes less, it starts more reliably, it's significantly safer. Of course it's much harder or a shade tree mechanic to work on.When I think about the changes tat have come to cars since 1970, I wonder what sort of influences might be applied to steam? 


I suspect Richard is right--it would look nothing like the steamers of old. I'm no expert, not even remotely close but it seems to me some kind of turbine drive would work if you could inject the steam as fuel is injected in a car--something they could not do in 1950. But then again as I said I'm no expert. What's the downside of a turbine drive? No pistons to wear, even delivery of torque, no hammer effect--seems like it would even have less parts. . I assume there are solid reasons why it's unworkable?


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## Ray Dunakin (Jan 6, 2008)

From what I've read about the previous experiments with steam turbine locos, they were very sensitive to the kinds of jolts and bumps experienced by a train under normal working conditions. I have no idea whether or not that would be true today.


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## astrayelmgod (Jan 2, 2008)

The problem with all turbines is that they are only efficient at maximum power. 

One of the ocean shipping companies (either Sea-Land or APL, I don't recall which) built a bunch of turbine powered container ships, designed to run at 33 knots (~40 mph). They worked great, but then the price of oil went way up. To save fuel, they tried to run them at 16 knots. I don't recall what the fuel consumption numbers did, but it wasn't enough. The company had to get rid of the ships, and replace them with diesels. Today, all commercial ships are powered by diesels.


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## Hagen (Jan 10, 2008)

Posted By astrayelmgod on 02/25/2009 11:22 PM
The problem with all turbines is that they are only efficient at maximum power. 

One of the ocean shipping companies (either Sea-Land or APL, I don't recall which) built a bunch of turbine powered container ships, designed to run at 33 knots (~40 mph). They worked great, but then the price of oil went way up. To save fuel, they tried to run them at 16 knots. I don't recall what the fuel consumption numbers did, but it wasn't enough. The company had to get rid of the ships, and replace them with diesels. Today, all commercial ships are powered by diesels.

Except for LNG tankers that feed of their cargo to fuel the burners, but that is about to change too


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## Dougald (Jan 2, 2008)

I followed with great interest the ACE 3000 project during the 1980s and 90s. My late uncle worked for GM (diesel division first in London, then South Africa later in LaGrange) and was close to the GM engineering team which kept an eye on what Rowland was proposing. We had many fascinating discussions which essentially boiled down to:

1) a modern steam locomotive that could meet a thermal efficiency of 15% (the original ACE goal) would most certainly be less costly in terms of fuel consumption per ton mile than diesel locos
2) achieving that 15% would involve overcoming some very complex engineering challenges that would most assuredly have meant some complicated and expensive to develop subsystems
3) the maintenance nightmare of steam locos did not appear to be fully dealt with in the ACE proposal - the real reason diesel locos won out over steam initially was mainly because of their maintenance and in service advantages
4) perhaps most telling (in the thinking of GM engineers about ACE) was that the ACE proposal did not address the complicated issues of adhesion factors and dynamic braking - both serious issues for railroads operating in snow/rain in mountainous or hilly terrain

While dreamers continue to hold out hope that steam will rise again in some modern loco variant, technologies as we know them suggest the future is more likely to be nuclear then coal.

Regards ... Doug


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## Semper Vaporo (Jan 2, 2008)

When people say "Steam Engine" it usually conjures up images of something from a Shay to a Hudson, or Mikado or Mountain or Berkshire or Northern, etc. etc. etc.

Then someone throws in "efficiency" and the design starts to swerve away from the mind's image to those of Turbines, first Turbine Mechanical (Turbine motor geared directly to the wheels) then to gain some more efficiency it becomes Turbine Electric (Turbine motor drives a generator which drive electric motors on the wheels... same as a Diesel Electric). 

Then it swerves off into the fantasy realm of nuclear heat source and that will then lead to some other method of converting the heat to motion.

At this point the mind's image of "Steam Engine" becomes a box on flanged wheels... no "firebox", no "Boiler, no "Smoke stack", no "Cylinders", no "Side rods", no "STEAM"... and the question has to be changed to "What would a modern defibbledydo engine be like?" which is not the intent of the original question (to me, anyway).

I am not saying that there could never be some technological breakthrough that will turn a Mike or Berk or Big-Boy into the most efficient form of powered transportation but if you start from the ground up to design a Steam Engine, you will get a Shay or Northern or etc. etc. etc. and it will look like what was last designed 50 to 150 years ago.

Personally, I think a "Modern Steam Engine " *SHOULD[/i]* look like this...

http://www.aumania.it/fa/matthews/009.jpg
("Heavy Metal Hero" by Rodney Matthews)


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## Charles (Jan 2, 2008)

Could be a hybrid such as this:


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## jfrank (Jan 2, 2008)

With the highly efficient and high horse power diesels available now days, even pure electrics are having a hard time competing. Steam will never come back. Forget it.


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## Semper Vaporo (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By jfrank on 02/26/2009 9:10 PM
With the highly efficient and high horse power diesels available now days, even pure electrics are having a hard time competing. Steam will never come back. Forget it. 


"Forget it." ... "Forget it?"... FORGET IT?????







NAY, NEVER!

I do not know the original poster's reason for the question, nor what point he was driving at...

BUT, I think for most Steam Fanatics it is not about "effeciency" and it is not necessarily a simple "nostalgia" trip of "Oh I remembere when..." 

It is a PASSION of unparalleled proportion.

Yes, I suppose that some technological breakthrough might be able to create a locomotive that uses steam some place in the energy conversion chain... maybe the boiler becomes an instant flash-steam set of coils that squirts superheated steam across a crystal of unobtainium which is then dribbled on a couple of lab rats such that they gain super strength and they run in the rims of the tires like squirrel cages to make the locomotive move (and the SPCA issues a waiver to do so...)

But if it is not beltching steam and smoke from the stack in a staccato chuffing that echos off the canyon walls (either in the rock canyons in the mountains or in the building canyons of the city), with steam leaking from all the joints, flexures and seals, and with the boiler bubbling, creaking and groaning, and the side rods whirling around flashing in the sun, and a steam whistle wailing in the night... alive, at work, in the hands of men doing real work for the good of the people and nation...
then..., 
well..., 
yes..., 
"Forget it"!










The cry is:

SEMPER VAPORO

Semper: Everlasting, Continuously, Forever, Eternally!...

Vaporo: Steam "In Transistion", Active, Changing, Alive!...


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## Hagen (Jan 10, 2008)

Posted By Charles on 02/26/2009 7:01 PM
Could be a hybrid such as this:











Hmmmmm
like this GG1 look alike
German Lübech 



Or this one?









It's all been done before



Fun to check out this site


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## Dan Pierce (Jan 2, 2008)

Why limit your thinking to water/steam?? 

Would another liquid to gas material be better? 

A freon based product could change how everything is done.


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## lownote (Jan 3, 2008)

I'm the original poster--not getting at anything, just interested. People who study the history of technology are interested in why some technologies win out, and how those circumstances change. For example, AC vs DC. The advantages of AC were overwhelming at one time in our history, and for the most part still are. You could transmit electricity long distances with few losses, and you could centralize generation, which fit the prevailing business model of the time. If that debate were taking place today, when we have more concern with "green" energy, I think DC would look better. How many of my home devices have a converter to take the AC to DC?. A neighbor put up solar panels on his house--he loses a lot of efficiency, and adds complexity and cost, converting the DC from the panels to AC. Nobody think stwice about home heat generation--every house in the US has a furnace. Home electricity generation is possible (maybe not desirable), and my simple point is just that in some ways, it looks like a better idea.


So I'm interested in what might make steam a viable alternative. I had no idea about the projects like the 5AT or the ACE3000. I learned a lot. Thank you!


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## Mike Reilley (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By lownote on 02/25/2009 5:34 AM
I just finished reading a few books on the history and technology of steam locomotives, and it makes me wonder what a steam engine would be like if one were to built today, from the ground up. NOt a copy of earlier designs which are all 60 years old or older by now, long before micro electronics or computer control were even imagined. We have different materials available now. We have a different ethic in terms of energy use.

I'm guessing it would probably be a steam turbine, with a duplex drive, and would use computers to monitor the air mix, steam heat and moisture content, and regulate wheel slip like the traction control on a car. But I don't know all that much. Has anyone ever tried to take stab at designing a 21st century steam locootive?




I seriously doubt it would look anything like the steam engine we all know. It wouldn't burn fuel externally....pollution. It wouldn't use cylindars and crank pins and mechanical timing. It wouldn't include a large steam pressure vessel (boiler). It would not be "alive" in the context we use that term to describe "steam engines". In fact, it would likely be quite boring.

I had the opportunity in 1965 to work on a new steam engine design...for the Army. I was hired as a GS-4 Engineering Aide in the summer between my first two years in college and worked at Ft. Belvoir's Night Vision Lab complex in Virginia. Why the Night Vision Lab...the lab credited with developing the technology that lets our soldiers fight at night...was developing a "steam engine" was beyond me...but it paid. I sat for three months computing stuff called TITS and TOTS...with a Freiden calculator...a big mechanical contraption with hundreds of buttons on it that added, subtracted, multiplied, and divided. The focus on the specific project piece I was working on was how to improve the efficiency of a "closed cycled turbine engine"...and the relationship between the Turbine Inlet Temperature (TIT) and the Turbine Outlet Temperature (TOT) was fundemental to those calculations. Generally speaking, the wider the difference between the two measures means the engine is using up more of the heat energy...and thus is more "efficient".

This turbine was part of a US Army Corps of Engineering project to develop a nuclear powered train and portable power plant. The "engine" of the train contained four elements...a nuclear reactor, a closed cycle turbine engine, a generator, and the power plant control system....oh, and it was to be a D-D chassis design. BIG. Big big big. It looked like a diesel engine on steroids (for that time period). The idea was that the nuclear reactor made steam...which was put through the closed cycle turbine...to spin the generator and make elecricity. The "used" steam was piped (yeah, right...pumped is more accurate) back to the reactor to be heated again so it could be used again. The electricity was used to run traction motors when the train needed to move...and power an Army division when it wasn't moving. It was a completey closed system...nothing escaped the "engine" or went in...no fuel, no water, no nuttin'.

That was the theory. In reality, the main effort we were doing was on how to ensure that "nothing escaped the "engine""...and as far as I know, the inability to control the thermal losses doomed the project. It was cancelled a few years after I worked that summer on it...but I earned enough money to get through my second year of college and taught me I didn't want to be a mechanical engineer.


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## Moleman (Dec 17, 2008)

My .02, 
The main reason that diesels won out over steam wasn't efficient or power, they were in fact inferior. It was the fact that a diesel could be started from a cold start and run in MUCH less time than any steam engine could. 
My 21st century steam engine would be a turbine electric using atomic power to heat the boiler. It would require a condenser to prevent radioactive steam escaping, and absolutely NOBODY would allow it in their backyard.


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## jfrank (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By Moleman on 02/27/2009 6:13 PM
My .02, 
The main reason that diesels won out over steam wasn't efficient or power, they were in fact inferior. It was the fact that a diesel could be started from a cold start and run in MUCH less time than any steam engine could. 
My 21st century steam engine would be a turbine electric using atomic power to heat the boiler. It would require a condenser to prevent radioactive steam escaping, and absolutely NOBODY would allow it in their backyard.


Actually they were so much more efficient that thousands of boiler workers, pipe fitters, etc eventually lost their jobs. Steam is maintenance intensive. It is also much less fuel efficient. Plus diesels could mu making it possible to put together any horsepower arrangement without the expense of double heading. And an electric motor is much smoother than steam and can be overloaded for short periods of time. A good example is Cheyenne on the UP. In the steam days there were 5,000 people working there. Now there are 20 and that only because of their steam program. Multiply this all over the country at every division point. Think about it, no more water tanks, no more coal docks or oil tanks, no more roundhouses, no more shops, no more firemen on the locomotives. The diesel is the reason that railroads still exist today. Without it they would be with the stagecoach.


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## DarkTalon (Nov 8, 2008)

Didn't they recently build a steam locomotive in the UK? I thought I saw an article in TRAINS mag recently that talked about it..


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## xo18thfa (Jan 2, 2008)

I would think the boilers would actually be smaller and of the flash type. Make much more use of the fuel before all the heat is lost. Maybe nuclear powered. Back in the cold war era we (my battalion) had some very small nuclear weapons and they were warm to the touch. Outrageously high pressure running a staged turbine. A bank of computers controlling the feed water.

Be hard to model in Gauge 1


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## Semper Vaporo (Jan 2, 2008)

Yeah, but think of the weight on the drivers!!!!


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## Les (Feb 11, 2008)

Posted By Moleman on 02/27/2009 6:13 PM
My .02, 
The main reason that diesels won out over steam wasn't efficient or power, they were in fact inferior. It was the fact that a diesel could be started from a cold start and run in MUCH less time than any steam engine could. 
[edited]

Mole,

It is exceeding interesting to me that I got shut down on this very subject less than a month ago by a moderator worried about political fights.

Glad to see hardier souls soldering on, this is a very trenchant subject.

Les

Who has no idea what a modern one would look like: where is enough 'enough' in technology? When it gets the job done.


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## Les (Feb 11, 2008)

Posted By jfrank on 02/27/2009 7:00 PM
Posted By Moleman on 02/27/2009 6:13 PM
My .02, 
The main reason that diesels won out over steam wasn't efficient or power, they were in fact inferior. It was the fact that a diesel could be started from a cold start and run in MUCH less time than any steam engine could. 
My 21st century steam engine would be a turbine electric using atomic power to heat the boiler. It would require a condenser to prevent radioactive steam escaping, and absolutely NOBODY would allow it in their backyard.


Actually they were so much more efficient that thousands of boiler workers, pipe fitters, etc eventually lost their jobs. Steam is maintenance intensive. It is also much less fuel efficient. Plus diesels could mu making it possible to put together any horsepower arrangement without the expense of double heading. And an electric motor is much smoother than steam and can be overloaded for short periods of time. A good example is Cheyenne on the UP. In the steam days there were 5,000 people working there. Now there are 20 and that only because of their steam program. Multiply this all over the country at every division point. Think about it, no more water tanks, no more coal docks or oil tanks, no more roundhouses, no more shops, no more firemen on the locomotives. The diesel is the reason that railroads still exist today. Without it they would be with the stagecoach. 







JF:

My question is: with all the low-intelligence/low-motivation folk in society sucking up tax $$, IF we brought steam back, would it make the unemployables less unemployable? With suitable changes in the welfare laws.

Les


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## Les (Feb 11, 2008)

Bob,

Back in _my_ day in the mid-70s, they had big fat nuke missiles slung under the wings of F15s stationed right on our East coast.

It's kinda 'different' to climb into a cockpit and see the 'Nuclear Arm' switch not safty-wired closed. Makes you want to look over the cockpit sill and see what's under the wings. And then you see, and understand.

Yo.

Somebody's on the ball, anyway.

Les


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## tacfoley (Jan 3, 2008)

Posted By DarkTalon on 03/10/2009 2:39 AM
Didn't they recently build a steam locomotive in the UK? I thought I saw an article in TRAINS mag recently that talked about it..


Please read the 50+ posts on the subject of 'Tornado'.

tac
www.ovgrs.org


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## xo18thfa (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By Les on 03/10/2009 3:57 PM
Bob,

Back in _my_ day in the mid-70s, they had big fat nuke missiles slung under the wings of F15s stationed right on our East coast.

It's kinda 'different' to climb into a cockpit and see the 'Nuclear Arm' switch not safty-wired closed. Makes you want to look over the cockpit sill and see what's under the wings. And then you see, and understand.

Yo.

Somebody's on the ball, anyway.

Les


Our little 155mm cannon launched "nukes" weighed about 120 pounds. Most if it in the steel projectile body so the thing would make it to the target. It felt like "Dr Strangelove" when they took the locks off for periodic maintenance. It was kind of spooky. All you needed was a howitzer to start WWIII. 


Probably would not a live steamer fueled this way.

Bob


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## Les (Feb 11, 2008)

Bob,

Was yours the 'atomic cannon' that was in all the kid's news in the late 50's? Didn't they leave a huge cloud of dust/smoke after being fired, and were difficult enough to set up, take down, that the crew was essentially a 'one-shot' group? I remember reading about those things with wonder in late grade school. You're the second guy I've met associated with those ... uh, 'Long Toms'? was that what the press called them? I remember the 'gee whiz' factor, but not much else. Or was your setup a smaller version?

Les


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## vsmith (Jan 2, 2008)

They studied the Atomic locomotive back in the 50's...didnt work, too heavy and waaay too dangerous, heres some information on the Project X20. 

http://gold.mylargescale.com/vsmith/X-20%20atomic%20loco%20doc.jpg


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## xo18thfa (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By Les on 03/12/2009 1:59 PM
Bob,

Was yours the 'atomic cannon' that was in all the kid's news in the late 50's? Didn't they leave a huge cloud of dust/smoke after being fired, and were difficult enough to set up, take down, that the crew was essentially a 'one-shot' group? I remember reading about those things with wonder in late grade school. You're the second guy I've met associated with those ... uh, 'Long Toms'? was that what the press called them? I remember the 'gee whiz' factor, but not much else. Or was your setup a smaller version?

Les


You must thinking of Fred Flintstone or something. We delivered the M454 nuclear projectile with the very capable M109 self propelled howitzer, M109A2 model in our battalion. A weapon system in service today. I was also in an 8 inch battalion with M110A2 howitzers. But, alas, they are in the museums now. The 8" nuke, the M422 was a real crowd pleaser.

"In my day" we could have pretty much vaporized the bad guys while the Air Force types were still hanging out in the Officer's Club. 



What type squadron were you in? B36's you say (?) 




Go Army


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## tacfoley (Jan 3, 2008)

Ah, you mean 'Atomic Annie'?

Renwal made a super big model of it , with the two trucks and a little cart to convey the projectile.....I must have built about four or five of them........

tac
www.ovgrs.org


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## thekollector (Jan 2, 2008)

For the red legs young and old. jack 

http://www.efour4ever.com/long_tom.htm 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_artillery


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## Les (Feb 11, 2008)

Tac & Kollector,

Yeah, that's the one I was thinking of. "Atomic Annie". Thanks, guys.

Les


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