Porta’s Experimental Locomotive – Ferrocarril General Belgrano (FCGB) 4-8-2 No 1802 photo © Richard Campbell Ferrocarril General Belgrano (FCGB) 4-8-2 No 1802 that was the guinea-pig for several of Porta’s trials and experimentations between 1969 and 1974. It is referred to several times in the text of this Tribology paper where it is describes it as […]
Ramal Ferro Industrial de Río Turbio (RFIRT) No anthology of Modern Steam could exclude reference to the The Ramal Ferro Industrial de Río Turbio (RFIRT or Rio Turbio Railway) in Patagonia, Southern Argentina where Porta practiced his magic on its fleet of diminutive 48 tonne Santa Fe (2-10-2) steam locomotives that routinely hauled trains weighing […]
“Second Generation Steam” – a Definition The celebrated Argentinean steam locomotive engineer Livio Dante Porta devised a classification for steam locomotive development as summarized below: First Generation Steam (FGS) – practically all past locomotives; Second Generation Steam (SGS) – new designs incorporating the best proven modern steam locomotive technology; Third Generation Steam (TGS) – totally […]
Porta’s Water Treatment – Extending the Life of Locomotive Boilers Porta’s Water Treatment is an extension of the TIA system that was successfully used in France and the UK in the later days of steam. Porta’s water treatment is claimed to: stop all water-side corrosion; prevent scale formation, even when using the hardest of water; […]
Reduced Heat Losses Page Under Development This page is still “under development”. Please contact the webmaster at info@advanced-steam.org if you would like to help by contributing text to this or any other page.’
Steam Tightness Lack of steam tightness is usually imagined to be associated with steam leaking from pipe joints and piston rod glands resulting in the familiar leaks that can be seen as a white plume of steam eminating from wherever the leak is occurring. Steam leakage of this sort is indeed wasteful and deletarious to […]
Multiple Element Floating Rod Packing The multiple element Piston Rod Packings fitted to The Red Devil are described on page 176 of his book as follows: Fully floating five-element metallic piston rod packings replaced the single element Paxton-Mitchell type which did not guarantee steam tightness over long periods without attention. Some time previously Porta had […]
Piston Valve Design Various other pages of this website are devoted to specific aspects of piston valve design including: An explanation of terminology relating to valves and valve gear; A discussion of the principles of tribology and lubrication with particular emphasis on piston valves; A discussion on the enhancement of valve events to improve steamflows […]
Lubrication and Tribology The Oxford Dictionary defines tribology as the branch of science and technology concerned with surfaces in relative motion, as in bearings. It is therefore inseparably associated with the subject of lubrication. Ing. L.D. Porta was the first engineer to apply the science of tribology to the design of steam locomotives, seeing it […]
Long Strokes and High Rotation Rates It may seem counterintuitive that locomotives with smaller driving wheels should achieve higher efficiency than those with larger driving wheels, but it is a fact that high engine rotation rates offer a number of technalogical benefits. It may also seem counterintuitive that long strokes (such as used on […]
Franklin-type Engine-Tender Buffer Mechanism A Franklin-type radial buffer provides a rigid connection between a locomotive and tender, allowing no relative movement in the fore-and-aft direction but allowing relative radial movement for negotiating curves. The diagram of a Franklin radial buffer (below) illustrates the basic principle where two wedges are pressed towards each other by coil […]
Internal Streamlining The process of reducing constraints to steam flow is usually referred to as “Internal Streamlining”. Internal streamlining produces two benefits – it raises the Front-End Limit resulting in increased steam flow through the cylinders which in turn increases the upper limit of power output for the engine. It also has the effect of […]