Community Off-Grid Living in a SHTF scenario

I can't tell from that site if those are actual steam locomotives or not. One at least is Honda powered, so I think maybe not. However, if they actually are steam engines, having that guy on board would be priceless. Stationary engines are easy after locos.

 

Yep. Oversimplified to a degree, but there are basically two flavors of steam engine, piston or turbine. Both are in a pretty high state of development, with the nod going to turbines for simplicity of operation and maintenance. Pistons get the nod for lo tech constructability, and have relatively high maintenance requirements. (They can be built in a good fab shop, not possible for turbines.) "Small" turbines require a reduction gear (not completely beyond a good machine shop, but a pretty complex item to make) to gain torque sufficient to drive a generator, piston engines can produce torque at zero speed, thus no gearing is needed. That said, spinning a piston steam engine at something over a few hundred rpms is problematic; they might want step up gearing for an AC drive. That is where a slow speed multi pole generator gets interesting, and why I asked how old that battery factory is, and if there might be some multi pole motors in it.

 

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