Weekly Photo Fun 1-1/1-7

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Nice shots, Drew. That patched out Geep looks good.

Matt, tedious wouldn't even begin to describe it for me. :eek: You must have a great sense of concentration. Nice planning machine. I'm sure even building that would have driven me over the edge.

Very little happened with the fuel cell switcher. It went to a few places for demonstartion and is now at the DOT testing center in Pueblo, where they are trying to work out significant bugs, including using twice the amount of hydrogen as first predicted and the problem of providing fueling stations that will manufacture hydrogen using...electricity off the grid. :confused: The net effect of these fuel cell locomotives on pollution may actually be negative until they can find a more efficient way to make hydrogen. For this locomotive to work a normal shift, it will have to tow a hydrogen trailer. I don't think this is ready for prime time yet.
 
DSCN2250.jpg
 
UP2CSX said:
Very little happened with the fuel cell switcher. It went to a few places for demonstartion and is now at the DOT testing center in Pueblo, where they are trying to work out significant bugs, including using twice the amount of hydrogen as first predicted and the problem of providing fueling stations that will manufacture hydrogen using...electricity off the grid. :confused: The net effect of these fuel cell locomotives on pollution may actually be negative until they can find a more efficient way to make hydrogen. For this locomotive to work a normal shift, it will have to tow a hydrogen trailer. I don't think this is ready for prime time yet.
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For Hydrogen fuel cells, this process is pretty smart, though honestly, I do not think its a good idea to start breaking down water like this, we're having enough drinkable water shortages as is now...
http://www.physorg.com/news98556080.html
 


Josh, interesting article, but this process has been known for a long time. The problem is that both aluminum and gallium, in the quantities needed to run a car, much less a locomotive, are both expensive and very heavy. The amounts of aluminum and gallium needed for this process to work are staggering. It would be in the billions of tons of aluminum oxide and at least 20 million tons of gallium to replace gasoline as the primary fuel source for automobiles. Both these products take a gigantic amount of power to produce. In addition to being uneconomical until gas reaches something like $10 a gallon, it's hard to see this process as being a net benefit to the environment, since we are just transfering the source of pollution from one place to another. The need to use what is essentially distilled water as part of the process is also another daunting problem.

There's also a small problem with using hydrogen directly as the source of combustion in an engine. It's extremely difficult to keep all the supply lines and tanks clean enough to prevent explosions, since hydrogen becomes explosively unstable when not in a pure form. The British tried using hydrogen to power two submarines in the 50's, and they were prone to fires, explosions and leaking hydrogen gas, even with the best engineering the Royal Navy could provide. They lasted six years in service, with crews being terrified to take the boats to sea. It's hard to see this working safely in Chris's lawnmower. :)
 
Texas & Great Plains machine shop's new planner is finished. This is the largest machine in the shop at 20' in length.

Matt Dillow
MD Custom Models
 
Matt, that is awesome work (as usual for you I might say). One question. What are you using for the belt material?
 
Ray: It comes with the Western scale machines, looks to be laser cut thin paper in a good color (tan). All I do is work some brown weathering powder on the outside to give it a slightly different looked. It is attached with gel super glue. I usually keep the strips long to allow me to hold them tight as the glue sets.

Matt Dillow
MD Custom Models
 


UP2CSX said:
It's hard to see this working safely in Chris's lawnmower. :)
Click to expand...

And thats why I'm waiting for a Beer powered mower!:p some how or another i don't believe any work would get done if'n my mower was powered by beer!!!!!!!!!!!!!!:D;)
 
I don't know why (seriously) methane hasn't had more work done as an energy alternative. It's about the only gas product that's available in essentially infinite amounts from biomass sources and it has a higher heat production per unit of mass than complex hydrocarbons. It's one of the components of LNG but we won't have to drill for it like we do natural gas. Plus, as anyone who has stood next to Chris knows, it has a lot of propulsive force. :D
 
I'm waiting for a Beer powered mower!
Click to expand...

I had a cheeseburger-powered mower once... but then he went away to college.

On the bright side, though -- sometimes, there ARE leftovers after a family dinner!!

(If you're reading, Son... I'd gladly trade some cheeseburgers for having the lawn mowed again!)

Regards,
Tom Stockton
 
Excellent job on the Planner, looks like the one I ran at South Bend Lathe many moons ago, except the belts were a darker dirty Brown leather, love the trail of way oil and cutting oil in the way trough, and the coloring overall, I Scratch built a 82" Bullard in HO scale some time back but stupid me sold it, what a dumb AS* i was when I did that but 3 ALCO C424 's where more important to me then.

Stan
 


Methane is many times more deleterious to the ozone layer above us (or, that we hope is still above us) than so many other problem gasses such as the old Freon and similar 'bad' refrigeration gasses. So, if we really want to be smart and efficient at the same time, we should be 'mining' all the methane gas that we can, particularly near dumps, landfills, and swamps, and burning it to make electricity. Of course, the byproducts of combustion would be lots of H2O and C02, neither one of them particularly helpful if we want to cool the planety. Anyway, gathering all that gas spread around here and there would be very invasive and expensive.

Probably the best thing, when it comes right down to it, would be for the populace to stop having children for about 20 years. When we lose all those people capable of reproducing over that time, plus all the aging people who would be closer to death actually passing away, we would have fewer people needing energy to live. And that is the problem with methane....it is a byproduct of our burgeoning numbers who need more organic matter of many types to live decently.

-Crandell
 
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