Hudson wrote;

"Another advantage of propane is that it has a long shelf life."

Indeed, I have a 18 year old LPG tank on my property that has never needed cleaning or flushing. The Gas company comes and tops it off a few times each year (based on the number of heating days). All of our gas powered appliances have worked fine for 10 plus years with no need to clean burners or adjust anything.

I installed a whole house backup generator that is LPG powered because I got sick of the portable gasoline powered one not starting if I didn't drain the tank and change the gas line filter and spark plugs every 24 months.

Propane is a much cleaner fuel when it comes to maintaining fuel lines, filters and tanks, in my opinion.

Cheers, KevinK.

Bob wrote;

"Propane is also banned in many highway tunnels. Random example, first one I found via Google. "

I remember taking our old pickup and camper through the Baltimore Harbor Tunnel back in the 1970's. At that time we had to pull over before the tunnel and show the traffic control folks that the valves on the tank were closed, then we went through the tunnel with 50 pounds of propane. Easier times I guess.

Tunnels are always a risk, heck you could probably get hurt by a bunch of stampeding horses in a tunnel 200 years ago.

Cheers, KevinK.

Note that the regulation speaks about TRANSPORTATION of these materials. I am very sure that there is an exception for vehicles whose fuel is LP or propane. If it were illegal, FedEx and other delivery companies would certainly be hurting!

Minor nitpick but the gas-fired refrigerators use the absorption principle which is a heat-driven system and is completely unrelated to the steam ejector A/C system. Some large buildings use absorption chillers where the source of heat is steam. I am not aware of any rail use.

That's how railroad car air conditioning worked on the Vapor Clarkson system. I'm tempted to install it on my car here in the southeast, given the cat converter wastes heat to the atmosphere and the mechanical compressor reduces gas mileage.

dave

Vapor-Clarkson made/makes steam generators. If they made A/C systems it's news to me but brand aside, if you are referring to steam ejector A/C as used on some passenger cars that is, once again, a completely different system than absorption, the heat-driven A/C technology.

I'm pretty sure you don't mean using heat to boil water to make steam for the steam ejector system. (It would never work; that system is a huge and wasteful consumer of steam.) You must mean using waste heat to power an absorption A/C. There has been some discussion by auto parts makers to develop such a system and they are probably working on it. But it's not related to what was used on some train cars. Again, I am not aware of any absorption-based A/C systems on trains and would love to see any references to such a thing.

I kinda wonder why trainlined steam wasn't used to turn a small engine to drive a regular compressor-based system. Or for that matter a lighting generator.

A good summary of railroad air conditioning history is on Don Strack's Utah Rails website http://utahrails.net/pass/dynamos-hep.php#airconditioning.

Note that the principle railroad car A/C systems adopted were:

1. Ice-activated (simple, cheap, but melted 385-500 lbs ice/hour/car; so a 3000 lb load of ice in the under-the-car bunkers only lasted ~6 hours(!); best for cars not needing A/C much of the year...)

2. Steam ejector (ATSF favorite, prodigous consumer of trainline steam; cars needed to be re-watered enroute)

3a. Waukesha propane-driven ice engines & enginators (SP favorite, adopted in 1930s when small reliable diesel engines hadn't yet been developed; consumed about two 100-lb-capacity tanks of LP per day).

3b. A few of the late post-war Waukesha installations used diesel engines.

4. Electro-mechanical (Pullman favorite; used big axle-driven (later Spicer-drive) generators, and big banks of storage batteries)

Each systems had its pros and cons.

I'm not sure if a list exists of which RRs favored which system(s).

Insofar as I know, no serious railroad wreck fires were ever caused by Waukesha propane systems. This is probably due to their massive tank wall thickness (several times thicker than US Dept of Transportation specs).

- Doug Debs

I mean a basic ammonia absorption system.

Back to the topic: Last time I needed help with an oddball generator installation, Action Jackson helped me out. He knows more than I ever will about this stuff...... you could do much worse than giving him, a call - I've lost his number since I left the business about 7 years ago, but I'm sure somebody here can provide it.

dave

Have you tried http://www.generatorjoe.net/ they have a very broud range of generators includeing 3 phase LP ones worth a shot.

Doug, you neglected the axle-driven compressor system. I've always heard it described as the Pullman Mechanical system; I don't know if anyone else used it.