Talk:History of steam road vehicles

Genesis and purpose of article
This article is intended to provide a home for the 'common history' shared by the various types of steam road vehicles. (I'm fed up of reading about Cugnot on every page!) The idea is that each vehicle page will link here for the 'early history', and then diverge off to cover the specific vehicle type development in detail.

The bulk of the initial text was moved from the steam car history sections. These, in turn were substantially sourced using text moved from vehicle in August 2007. Inevitably, therefore, there is a distinct 'steam car bias' to this article as it starts out, but I hope that over time a comprehensive coverage of all relevant vehicles will be the result.

EdJogg (talk) 14:34, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Stanley Steamer and other cars
This needs to somehow transition or refer to the Steam car page. I got to the end of the 20th Century section and as written, it led me to think that things just petered out about 1905. But because I had heard of Stanley Steamer, I knew something was missing. Some folks may not. How can you take this page and make it smoothly link into the Steam Car stuff? Paulc206 (talk) 17:58, 23 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Trundle round WP and you'll find many pages with chunks missing from the history sections -- infuriating, isn't it? As the bulk of the article was lifted from steam car, there may well be a hole here (and there too?). To try and offset this, at least for now, I have added a for link. But please note that this is supposed to be a common article for all steam road vehicles - we still need to fit in C20 development of traction engines and steamwaggons, for a start.


 * The whole article needs a huge amount of work and expansion. I am working on each part in turn, and checking related links on other pages. I've just about done Cugnot, and I'm deep in sorting-out Ferdinand Verbiest just now. You can see I have a little way to go.... :o)


 * EdJogg (talk) 01:04, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Further research
On-line sources found during research, for possible inclusion in / expansion of article:
 * The Wheels of Invention...Keep on Rolling -- (casual style) article covering development of wheeled transport. Includes suggestion that Verbiest's 'car' was "...kept at China's beautiful Winter Palace until recently, when it mysteriously disappeared. According to written reports, this little car could chug along at a fairly brisk pace, but when the water ran out so did the ride."


 * What was the first car made out of? -- non-steam, earlier than Verbiest!


 * "The Old Times" -- History of the automobile


 * Brumm 'Old Fire' models (gallery) -- page of links to model photos of the early steam vehicles.


 * Interesting steam car race mentioned -- did this come from WP??


 * Translation of French article -- mentioning a steam carriage by Charles Dietz in 1800 (no further details)


 * Belgian site - history of cars from origins to 1900 (top page) -- you know what? Verbiest was Belgian....try searching in 'Belgian' and you'll find what you're looking for, like this (Verbiest)!! (Google translation) - individual pages for each car!!


 * Généalogie de l’automobile (Google translation) -- excellent coverage of vehicle history, with illustrations


 * Jerry Evereard page -- pics and links for steam motorbikes and a record-breaking 1884 DeDionBouton steam car.


 * Fundamentals of Jet Propulsion with Applications -- Early history of turbines, including Hero's aeolipile, and steam turbine vehicles by Branca and Newton. Note that info must be double-checked, as this is a source used in steam engine to state that Hero's device was used for opening temple doors. Note, doesn't mention Verbiest's vehicle, which was also turbine-driven.

(latest addition) EdJogg (talk) 12:17, 15 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Here are a couple of quotations from the first page of W J Hughes: A Century of Traction Engines:


 * "In the first instance, the application of steam on the roads was to carriages, and there is a great temptation to discuss the trials an tribulations, the successes and failures, of such men as Gurney, Hancock, Russell, Hill, Maceroni, and Dance. But ..."


 * "Murdock's little model of 1781 is often cited as the first successful road engine, but it never achieved the dignity of growing up. The same must be said of Symington's model coach of 1786, highly successful as it was in miniature."


 * Who? What? Globbet (talk) 22:58, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Ivan Kulibin's electrical carriage
Removed from article for review, as previouly removed by Edjogg, as not suitable as not steam, and then reverted by author. The one english reference says its pedal powered, the other 6 refs are in Russian. ====Ivan Kulibin's electrical carriage====  In Russia in the 1780s Ivan Kulibin started working on a human-pedalled carriage with a steam engine. He finished working on it in 1791. Some of its features included a flywheel, brake, gear box, and bearing, which are also the features of a modern automobile. His design had three wheels. Unfortunately, like for many of his inventions, the government failed to see the potential market and it was not developed further.

Placed here for review, and consensus as to suitability. Any body read Russian to check the other refs, and providing 9 references to one tiny articles a bit strange ? Comment please. - BulldozerD11 (talk) 10:34, 26 July 2008 (UTC)
 * In the Russian sources they actualy said that there was a steam engine and electricity there. Think about it yourself. You could you put a gear box in something which is practicaly a bisycle? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.176.154.152 (talk) 13:49, 26 July 2008 (UTC)


 * I have removed this section again for the simple reason that I do not believe that the vehicle in question was steam-powered. If we can be provided with a translation of a Russian webpage that can demonstrate that a later model WAS steam-powered, then his machine is as relevant to the history of steam road vehicles as that of Cugnot (ie an interesting experiment that did not lead directly to further developments) and should be covered here. However, from research I have carried out concerning Verbiest's 'car' and Cugnot's fardier, the majority of information available online is at best questionable, and usually copied from equally questionable sources: from the one English source we have for Kulibin's vehicle (which is probably an automatic translation) and the Russian website that includes diagrams, this vehicle is clearly pedal-powered and is not relevant to this article.
 * EdJogg (talk) 17:03, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Gurney
Have removed the short piece about Gurney's technology being particularly advanced for its time. His boilers were poor and based on his own understanding of how water boiled. Many of the other 'advantages' are fixing problems in the basic design. The steam path on his early carriages is particularly bad with over 70% of the steam pressure being lost between the engine and boiler by both his own admission before the Select Committee hearings and also by reports of others such as in Elemental Locomotion.

Hancock's boiler and wheels were the two main lasting designs from that period with there being relatively little change between his boiler and that of some of the earliest steam cars of the 1900s. He is also credited with inventing the basic design of Artillery Wheel for use on his carriage. Chenab (talk) 15:12, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Great article; Thoughts re the "Modern steam vehicles" section

 * 1) First of all, great article! And excellent idea behind the building of it ("to provide a home for the 'common history' shared by the various types of steam road vehicles", i.e., to transclude what should not be repetitively forked).
 * 2) Second, my 2¢ about the "Modern steam vehicles" section, which suggests the idea of using steam engines for cars in the future. It is an interesting section, but it may overlook the thermodynamics of fuel efficiency. One of the driving forces in the life of Rudolf Diesel was overcoming the inherent limitations of efficiency in the chemical→thermal→kinetic energy conversion of steam engines. His "rational heat engine" was a way to get more useful work from each calorie of fuel. Certainly for most of the 20th century, the most efficient practical diesel engines far surpassed the thermodynamic efficiency of the most efficient practical steam engines. This was also an impetus driving the conversion of steam navies to diesel navies (more range from given fuel tonnage was a military advantage). I believe that this is still true today, although I am not a thermodynamics guy. At any rate, this is just some idle pondering. — ¾-10 13:59, 17 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the 'vote of confidence'. I got fed up of finding odds and ends in different articles -- it's a common problem in WP (I've just run into the same situation with the history of rail tracks and had to give up for now).
 * There's a lot of work still to be done on this article, much of which originated at steam car, and I keep getting side-tracked away (GA and FA proof-reading requests, etc)!
 * As for modern vehicles... I am no expert either (so I haven't added anything myself yet) although now that you've reminded me, there's a certain (2008-09) British attempt at the Land Speed Record for a steam-powered car that ought to be mentioned...
 * Nevertheless, there is no deadline...
 * EdJogg (talk) 15:00, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

WW1 American Steam Tank anyone?
I thought that the WW1 US Steam Tank might also be of interest to readers, and we already have an article on the Steam tank which could be summarised within this article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Illdz (talk • contribs) 00:17, 23 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Feel free to add something appropriate. Don't know where it will go.
 * As indicated in every other thread on this page, this article is incomplete and car-biased, so any non-car stuff should help. -- EdJogg (talk) 15:27, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

a) thanks for your patience concerning my typing errors in the Trevithick section! i come from the german wiki.

b) in order to copy/paste the link above, i was looking for the TOC-list - until i finally found it at an odd place. is there a reason for this irritation? i would rather prefer it left (a standard in the german wiki). if it's too long, it could be simplified quite a bit.

Maximilian (talk) 20:49, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

Modern steam vehicles section
"Today most of the problems facing steam cars have been satisfactorily solved,"

afaik the problem of absymal energy efficiency achieved by the limited amount of plant practical to build into a car has not been solved. It takes a large volume, weight and cost of plant to reach good efficiency.

"but currently the re-introduction of any modern steam car project would run up against the problem of a general loss of steam engine culture which would make it difficult to set up an infrastructure of spares and qualified mechanics."

No special difficulty has been encountered by the introducers of hybrid cars. The infrastructure of dealer networks already exists.

"It would also be necessary to meet more stringent safety standards and legislation than existed in the heyday of steam-powered road vehicles."

yes, but not a downside of steam versus petrol & diesel

"The biggest arguments in favour of such a movement would be: greatly reduced pollution by particulates and noxious gases without recourse to filters,"

The use of filtering is a far smaller issue than the gross waste of fuel inherent in self propelled land-based steam engines - all that wasted fuel causes pollution.

"silence in operation,"

no more or less true than with petrol/diesel. There are noisy and quiet designs for both.

"and direct drive without a gearbox."

The techniques used to achieve this with steam are also doable with ICEs. But manufacturers consistently prefer a gearbox, so no advantage there.

"However the competition which development of a modern steam-powered vehicle has to consider is not so much from gasoline-powered cars as from electric, hydrogen-powered and hybrid vehicles."

Steam would of course compete with all real world engine types, diesel included. And really that's too obvious to need stating. Hydrogen has never been a realistic contender.

I'll edit this section accordingly. Tabby (talk) 11:26, 7 March 2013 (UTC)


 * The deleted paragraph is essentially correct and valid. I would agree minor edits might be needed but not deletion. I have restored the deleted text. --Roly (talk) 13:55, 7 March 2013 (UTC)


 * The problems affecting steam cars in the '30s can reasonably be said to have been solved today, but the fuel cost problem is relatively new and hasn't been solved. It's thus true to say both "the problems have been solved" and "there are insoluble problems". We need to clarify this through expansion, more than just deleting the claim. Andy Dingley (talk) 12:23, 7 March 2013 (UTC)


 * ' "and direct drive without a gearbox."The techniques used to achieve this with steam are also doable with ICEs. But manufacturers consistently prefer a gearbox, so no advantage there.' I would despute that. The IC engine typically has a very narrow range of speeds delivering a usefull torque and therefore needs a gearbox. It has zero torque at zero revs so needs a clutch. The steam engine can work without a gearbox or clutch because it has full torque down to zero revs. --Roly (talk) 13:32, 7 March 2013 (UTC)
 * I'd agree, but that was never a problem with steam cars – an advantage if anything. Andy Dingley (talk) 13:47, 7 March 2013 (UTC)
 * That's what I mean.--Roly (talk) 13:55, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

Nonexistent Roper steam carriages
This article states the Ford museum has a Roper carriage (only on-line source, a nondescriptive sentence in a 1965 newspaper article) and the Smithsonian has one. The Smithsonian source indicates what is in their collection is the photograph of the "pre 1870" machine. The caption states it was probably destroyed at some point.

It's looking like no one knows if these things exist, which is to say, at one point, some people thought they existed, but, as they can no longer be found, they're gone and this article is making unsubstantiated claims.

71.34.240.167 (talk) 09:52, 30 April 2014 (UTC)


 * Per the problems you pointed out, I deleted the sentence that claimed that his carriages ended up at those museums. — ¾-10 19:25, 30 April 2014 (UTC)
 * There is no problem with the New York Times source, McCann, Hugh (2 April 1972), "Museum Traces History of Wheels", The New York Times: IA27. There are numerous archives of the NYT where you can read that in fact the 1863 Roper steam carriage was in the Henry Ford Museum as of 1972 and was the oldest car there, a fact I just added. I just removed the mention that it's currently in the Smithsonian. Keep in mind that, per Offline sources, not being able to locate an online source is no excuse for deleting cited facts. You can always ask the editor how added the facts (me) or you can use WikiProject Resource Exchange to obtain copies of offline sources. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 22:21, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

History of steam road vehicles - duplication of steam car article
This article seems to be a duplication of the steam car article. Maybe there is a case for merge or significant rewrite? I note there are also articles on traction engines and steam wagons (trucks) that have similar cross overs. NealeFamily (talk) 08:54, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

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a notice
the benzin or the carbon-coal or the kerosene-petroleum fuel is no "great" "improvement" or "cleaner" or "better" either since it badly pollutes the environment too! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 119.235.251.172 (talk) 20:20, 18 July 2020 (UTC)