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For questions like this you can check out Pratical Engineering on YouTube. He has all kinds of videos on pipes and waterways and nice demonstrations on how everything works. Here's his video on water towers.

https://youtu.be/yZwfcMSDBHs

Steam isn't a clean power in trains it uses coal and the coal smoke created was a major issue from the first day it was used and steadily became a bigger and bigger issue.

Old steam trains burned a lot of coal to make steam, which is dirty, smells bad, weighs too much to make it an efficient energy source for a moving object, and requires a ton of labor to keep the boiler fueled because of the limited space in a train making automated hoppers, like they have in coal power plants, just not feasible.

Oh, and diesel was a much more efficient fuel source and internal combustion a more efficient way of utilizing it. So, because of all that, steam trains died off.

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Old fashioned reciprocating steam engines died out because they're very inefficient, heavy, and they burned coal so not at all clean either.

But we still use steam power. It's just that these days, we use steam turbines, which are much more efficient at extracting energy from fuel. It's still not clean energy unless the heat source is nuclear (or sometimes solar), but modern power plants burn a lot less fuel to produce a given amount of power than the old steam engines did.

Steam has to be generated by burning something to make heat. Early Steam trains burned wood or coal for that purpose.

Diesel electric trains (that we use today) are by comparison more powerful, pollute less, and have the advantage that you don't need to stop for water for the boilers.

Some form of electric train, or hydrogen powered trains have the potential of replacing diesel.

Like others have said, steam for power generation is very much alive (and will continue to be so).

Besides not being "clean", it's cumbersome to generate steam power for use in many situations, especially in comparison with combustion engines, electricity delivery or storage, and other ways of producing energy.

Train: "It's a living."

It didnt dieand it did become common. We are still using steam power. Nuclear power heats the water that turns into steam to spin a turbine under pressure. Coal /fossil fuel /natural gas same process to boil water into steam for a turbine. Steam is inefficient and dangerous due to the excess energy needed to keep it's temp.

We just realized there was a easier way to use steam in the form of electricity eventually. We still haven't really figured out how to turn one source of energy into one that our energy grid supports except in hydro, wind and solar without steam.

You are right. Totally forgot about the 787 and though that Emb only start deploying FBW on their E2 series.

Hitler took direct control of Russia offensive overruling the operational generals (whose superiors feared Hitler and were making mistakes in their craven support of him). Long supply lines, the brutal winter :- both were impediments … ; the unnecessary declaration of war on US: perhaps tactical focus on Moscow alone rather than pushing also elsewhere at same time could’ve pushed them to win Moscow; and no declaration on US would’ve helped … but in the end these are exactly tactical arguments. As is Eloquently stated above: strategically they could not win: was it inevitable? By lack of resources yes, but the ruthless soviet commitment (and bravery) was stalling the German army effectiveness by a sheer numbers game (a sobering lesson to recall) … : In the end economic might and a war on 2 fronts … Germany were declining and the end game was set in 1941; and leadership was crucial: Churchill / Roosevelt turned US opinion…to support brutal Stalin: all whilst the increasingly isolated Hitler depended on personal control : his erratic decisions were both the cause of the war and the reason Germany lost. If his ambitions were less he could have held more for longer … but that simply wasn’t an option for him/his ideology.

That train doesn't look impressed: 😑

As the saying goes, a picture is worth 1K words

https://previews.123rf.com/images/biggreg50/biggreg502001/biggreg50200100040/137251426-steam-freight-train-blowing-black-smoke-and-steam-while-traveling-through-the-countryside.jpg

The power goes through the wire.

If you've ever had noise canceling wires headphones, they need to be charged because the wire power is just enough for the speakers and nothing else

Old steam engines were powered by burning wood or coal to make the steam. Not a clean energy source at the time.

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You get steam by boiling water. How do you boil the water? That's the power source, not the steam.

The typical answer has been "burn coal to boil the water".

>Eli5: If we had steam powered trains back in the day, why didn’t steam become a common “clean” energy source? Why did it die out?

Steam is created by heating up water a lot. Steam engines burned coal for that.

You can heat up the water by other means too! Nearly every conventional contemporary power plant uses steam turbines to generate its output. Coal power plants burn coal to provide steam for their turbines, gas power burn gas to provide steam for their turbines, nuclear power plants use the heat generated from nuclear fission to provide steam for their turbines.
It's steam turbines all the way down. Either way, none of it is particularly clean. There's always something that gets set on fire or used up in the process.

Steam has to be made. When talking about fuels or propulsion, we use words like efficiency. This basically means: how much energy (for example heat or moving distance) can I get out of a fixed amount of a certain power source.

And steam is very inefficient. It takes a lot of energy (coal fire for example) to get the water boiling. For the same amount of money you pay for the coal, you could buy 4 times the amount of diesel fuel for a train (random numbers for clarification).

Edit: in modern days, steam engines kind of still exist. Nuclear and coal power plants are just another way of producing steam to turn generators to produce electricity. But making the steam requires a lot of non green fuel. And it's only capable of being used in huge power plants. Powering a car with steam would be a financial doomsday

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TLDR: They stretched themselves out too far, too fast, and fought too many enemies at the same time. They ran out of raw materials, and lost all of their best leaders.

The Nazi's needed to maintain a technological superiority to overcome their lack of natural resources. By the end of the war the allies had mostly caught up and had the industrial might of the USA backing them up and supplying them.

After some early successes in Europe they became over confident and began attacking on too many fronts at once.

Once the Soviet Union got involved the Nazi's couldn't compete with the massive weight of bodies and industry the Soviets could throw at them. While the quality of the Soviet Unions troops and equipment was very poor their sheer numbers overcame their disadvantages. The Nazi's highly trained personnel couldn't be replaced quickly enough and their advanced weapons could no longer be made in adequate quantities.

The Nazi's were also running out of key raw materials like metal and Oil. So even if they had the planes and tanks, they couldn't fuel them.

By the end of War Hitler had replaced all his competent generals with people loyal to him (yes men) and he had taken personal control over many military decisions. Hitler became deluded and was being affected by his addiction to various medications. He made bad decision after bad decision, and several failed attempts to kill him arguably made the Allies job easier.

The loss of the Battle of Britain is cited as the beginning of the end. If Britain had been captured, or invaded it's far less likely that the US would have stepped in to help them directly and instead would have focused 100% on the Far East.

That and the Italians were idiots. Some historians argue that the Italian military was so inept that they consider them to have been on the side of the allies.

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Steam doesn't just appear. It has to be made by burning something.

Nuclear power plants are still just a complicated way to make steam.