Mining equipment was often abandoned in mines, especially bigger equipment. It usually just wasn't worth taking it apart and bringing it back out. The lake part, though, is interesting. Was this an open pit mine? Sounds bigger than just a shaft entrance.

@@Industrial_Revolution The story that goes with the mind in Williamston is that the mine flooded over night so badly and quickly that there was no rescuing the mine. The lake is less than three acres so it would seem this was a shaft mine with an excavated area at the top of the shaft.

Depends how optimistic you are.

I used to drive a Bonneville. Is it blue? We're the mines there intentionally flooded with brine, or just filled up that way? I can't think of any reason to intentionally do that, but I might be missing something.

I've heard of that one, but never been to see it.

Well, in theory, and only if it could actually produce enough steam. Pretty unlikely it could produce that much steam, and certainly couldn't keep it up for long. As for Doc Brown, the Mr Fusion in his DeLorean was outside the Industrial Revolution, so I can't really speak to that here.

I think that would confuse the HELL out of railfans

@@susanlua4792 it would be nice to see 5629 brought back but yeah I agree

The people who designed them got to do the crazy, complex formulas.

Yep. It's been done. Going over some mountain passes, it was common for a second to routinely hook up and help a train over the top, then decouple and wait for the next train.

They didn't really condense the steam, but some larger locomotives did take the used steam from the high-pressure cylinders and route it to the low-pressure cylinders, using the same steam twice. I heard there was even one locomotive that used the steam three times, but I've never seen it.

That's happened quite a bit, all over the place. I hear I-94's partially collapsed into old mines a couple times around Jackson.

Yep, this is definitely more a rule of thumb, on a straightaway, and assuming you have sufficient steam. For something like a switchyard engine, they never cared about, or really needed, speed, and if you get to something like a Shay, then everything changes.

I've always been interested in the Erie and Kalamazoo railroad, the first in Ohio and Michigan. I would love to see a video about it. Keep up the good work.

Is that the one that started out horse-drawn for a bit before they got their first steam locomotive?

Thanks!

That's the case with a lot of mines. The first steam engines were built as mine pumps.

Yep, definitely. I'm glad they're there, given the alternatives. Some have actually then been pulled out of parks, restored, and put back into service, too.

What was the increase in total power available in the transition from human power to water and wind power? That was just as huge, and maybe even bigger, since it represented a bigger paradigm shift.

I've heard that from a few other people in comments here, too. For a while, they could have been brought back into use quickly, but no so much, anymore. You'd not only need to fully service them, often including fabricating new boilers, but there's no water or fuel infrastructure for them anymore.

@@Industrial_Revolution True but, on a dire scale, imagine having to build foundries for castings ect. at least 50- 60% is there and we still have water, coal or trees !

I think that's a part of why there's a romance with steam locomotives. They were individuals. They had personality. Diesels really came in big around the same time as brutalist architecture, when design moved from sculptural to big, ugly blocks. Compare any office building from the early 1900's with one from the late 1900's and you'll see that same thing.

@@Industrial_Revolution I agree. I do enjoy an old sd42T running at run 8 like in the 80s and 90s on a steep grade it’s awesome to watch.These new clean diesels I understand are amazing machine but watching the same old huge intermodels doesn’t do it for me anymore

The trail was a little wet that day, but it's a nice trail. If you keep your eyes open, it's amazing how much history and archaeology you can find along almost any trail.

@@Industrial_Revolution BTW my son is in the Industrial Archeology Department. at MTU in the UP we have been visiting that area since 2006. Great things to see up there.

@trep53 I'm thinking about a UP trip this summer.

Well, partially. Some had that limitation. Others could go considerably longer. Several other people have mentioned it, and I'll be doing a separate video on that topic, as there's quite a bit to consider and a lot of variables that controlled just how far you could go.

Thanks! Glad you liked it. I'm working on several 19th century canal videos now.

Glad to hear that. It's good to see some of these being brought back to life.

I actually saw a very thin coal seam, like 2", at a surface cut in a Lansing park a few years ago.

The past happened, and we can't change it. We can try to understand it, and use that knowledge to try to improve the future

Next month, I have a video coming out on a Watt canal pump, which is a slightly bigger version of this Newcomen engine with just one change, which was the separate condensing cylinder that made his name and his fortune. The name atmospheric engine, I think, throws people a bit. They absolutely run on steam power, with the condensing steam used to create vacuum, which allows the atmospheric pressure to create the power stroke (since vacuum can't actually, technically, suck the piston down). There's no alternative to steam to make them run. Most other steam engines, running on higher pressure (which is pretty much all of them other than atmospheric engines) don't actually need steam at all. They're perfectly happy to run on compressed air. Watt was also involved in a sort of weird transition stage, which is in his rotative steam engine design. It uses low-pressure steam and a condensing cylinder, but doesn't use atmospheric pressure for a return stroke. Henry Ford modified one of those to run, if somewhat inefficiently, on compressed air, although it only ran for demonstrations and without any load.

A separate condenser applied to Watt's own engine. The big change was the change from Newcomen's Atmospheric Power to Watt's Steam Power. To achieve that he had to invent a new engine.

Check out the Watt Canal Pump video when it comes out or, if you find yourself in Dearborn, Michigan, they have this Newcomen engine sitting right next to the Watt Canal Pump. They're very nearly identical, except for that added cylinder, plus extra valve to vent the steam into it.

Thanks!

They've got a start at it, but they're only damming off a part of the river, at least for now.

I think we're getting better at looking at both the costs and benefits of dam removal. Also, getting better at creative solutions. I've done a couple dam removal videos with different solutions, and have a couple more coming with still different strategies to maximize the positive while minimizing the negative.

People have been saying they were used on some main lines, nationwide, but not all. I'll be trying to find out a full answer to this at some point.

It's 13' high. The fish ladder in Lansing is a nice design. Have you seen what was done in Ann Arbor at Argo Dam?

@@Industrial_Revolution No I haven't, we don't get down to that part of the State often.

@michiganengineer8621 the dam was ok, but the canal bank off it wasn't. It's now artificial rapids and pools and full of people canoeing and tubing through it.

Thanks. It was great meeting all five of you.

Places that have done dam removals have seen amazingly fast ecosystem recovery.

Just the piston itself, not everything else connected to it. Mostly it's the weight of the pump shaft pulling on the other end doing the work, with the steam just helping speed it up a bit. That shaft weight is why, as you see in the video, with no pressure anywhere, a Newcomen Engine will come to rest with the piston in the up position. Check out the Watt Rotative Steam Engine video I have coming up to see how that transitioned from the chains you mentioned to rigid links. Not sure of the release date on it yet, but fairly soon. Quite a few other innovations in that engine, too.

China's consistently one of the largest producers of solar panels. They still also use the most coal, and have among the worst air pollution.

That's definitely a big part of it. That, and you can look at it and, with a little time, figure out exactly how it works.

Just need to pull together a group to adopt it, bit if cash (of a grant) for some paint, and it can shine again.

It woodn't whistle. Tried a steel one, but it still wouldn't whistle. So try one made of tin. Now you tin whistle. LoL

@greggweber9967 You used to work amusement park jungle cruises, didn't you?

@Biocarey Oddly, they seemed pretty common. They didn't really need to hold back all the water, just enough to get some extra height from the reservoir.

I edited the last sentence so that I tin whistle.

@Industrial_Revolution No. Just something I heard in the movie "The Jester" staring Danny Kaye.

People are still learning on dam removals. As for flooding, the water IS going to go somewhere. That's why, in this case, they made arrangements with the golf course I mentioned so, if it floods, it'll flood into the golf course, where damage will be much less than if it flooded into downtown, for example. If you visit the town, there are pictures of several serious floods before the dam was built, when even less was understood about flooding. The newer idea is that you'll never stop flooding, but you can influence WHERE it floods, minimizing damage. What you can't do is fully eliminate floodplains.