I have an idea, if a steam locomotive's boiler was heated by a metal heater instead of a fire, how much less maintance would be needed as it does not produce any ash or soot because it has no fire.
And WHAT pray tell is going to heat your metal heater?
No I think the fire and ash is the easy part. all the moving parts would require the maintenance.
There are over one hundred lines interior the united kingdom that use steam locomotives. a clean steam locomotive 'twister' is being outfitted on the 2d interior the united kingdom. Steam locos might nicely be cutting-edge in Poland and on vacationer railways in France, Belgium, Holland, Switzerland and Germany.
Solet me get this straight You want to use a heating element to heat the water in a steam locomotive to boil the water and turn the pistons, etc, etc. That's all good. Sothe heater will be electric right? Okso you are going from (power source energy, batteries, combustion engine, etc.) to electric energy(heater) to heat energy (water/steam) That is three different conversions, very inefficient, and actually useless. Heating water is very inefficient. It takes a lot of joules to bring the temperature of liquid water up. Ok, so if the heater is electric, something powers it right? But if you have a generator powering the heatercan't the generator itself just power the train? That's what a diesel locomotive is. Just think of it like a car engine hooked up to a train. Except, most of the time, it's diesel electric, meaning a diesel generator uses heat energy to make mechanical energy which turns a crankshaft which creates electric energy which drives electric motors on the axles of the train. Steam trains are very inefficient. Plus, the large number of systems it would need would require lots of maintenance, and require everyone from plumbers to electricians to mechanics to maintain, lots of money and time. Of course, I don't know what a metal heater is, I assumed all of them are, metal, like the ones used to boil water.
