Steam Power! A Contender? Maybe.

Steam Power! A Contender? Maybe.

It’s about time I visited the topic of steam power as a renewable energy fuel. I don’t know if steam will be able to compete with all the other renewable energy fuelled motive devices that are coming into focus during these energy awareness times. It’s just possible though, that steam could be on the agenda.

The steam car land speed record, which has stood for 103 years at 127mph, has recently been broken by a British team, and now stands at 139.8mph. Ok, it’s not fast by today’s standards, and not much up on 103 years ago, but the modern car weighs 3 tons, which takes a lot of shoving. The steam car a 103 years ago was just a cart on wheels, mind you, it was a very quick cart, and the guy that drove it was certainly of fearless character, or just plain crazy. The pioneering spirit in those days, apart from killing a lot of people, got us to where we are today. Cars today have to be very safe, and all that safety comes at a heavy price, literally, so the achievement of the current steam cars’ land speed record was no mean feat.

Personally I do like the idea of steam, and maybe it will be a contender, but for it to be that, there needs to be people doing the research, and building the prototypes, but I have searched, and there is precious little out there, in fact I have found nothing relevant to steam cars today, apart from the recent land speed record. If anyone has better searching abilities than I do, and can find some information on modern steam car research, please leave a comment, which will be much appreciated, thank you.

It really is a great pity that steam cars were killed off, almost at their inception.

Below are some videos for you to enjoy, of the current record holders journey into the record books. Plus some really enjoyable stuff from Jay Leno’s garage, which is not all about steam, but does have some of that content, so I’m not really cheating, and Jay Leno is into renewable energy in a big way. So anyway, grab a cup of tea, or a beer, and enjoy.

Part 1 of the Steam Car Record story from Jeff Theobald on Vimeo.

Part 2 of the Steam Car Record Story from Jeff Theobald on Vimeo.

Land-Speed-Record-Run from Jeff Theobald on Vimeo.