Livio Dante Porta (March 21, 1922 – June 10, 2003) was an Argentine steam locomotive engineer. He is particularly remembered for his innovative modifications to existing locomotive systems in order to obtain higher performance, energy efficiency and reduced pollution. He developed the Kylpor and Lempor exhaust systems. The Lemprex was under development at the time of his death.
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Porta was born in Rosario, Santa Fé Province and studied civil engineering, concluding his studies in 1946, at a time when steam was already giving way to diesel and electric locomotives in Europe and North America.
Naturally Porta's first projects were in Argentina. Taking the work of Andre Chapelon in France as his starting point he set out to show that the steam locomotive was far from reaching its maximum potential. His first locomotive project in 1948 took the remains of a metre gauge 4-6-2 converting it into a 4 cylinder compound 4-8-0 named 'Presidente Peron'/'Argentina'. This machine, Porta's first project, still holds a number of locomotive efficiency records.
Porta moved to Patagonia in 1957 as general manager of the Río Turbio coal railway; his work allowed the steam locomotive fleet to remain in service for another 40 years. In 1960 he returned to Buenos Aires to become head of thermodynamics at the Argentinian National Institute of Technology (INTI).[1] His writings on steam technology are of considerable volume, mostly unpublished. [1]
In the 1980s Porta and his family moved to the USA to work on steam locomotive development for the American Coal Enterprises project.[2] This was the only time in his life he lived outside of Argentina for any length of time. The collapse of this project saw his return to Argentina with further work being undertaken in that country as well as Brazil and Paraguay.
Porta continued advancing steam technology right up to the time of his death: from the mid-1990s he worked for the Cuban Sugar Ministry (Minaz) on locomotives using new fuels such as bagasse; he also considerably influenced most if not all of the more recent steam projects worldwide, notably those of David Wardale[3] [4] and the 5AT Project[5], Phil Girdlestone, Roger Waller[6], Shaun McMahon, and Nigel Day.[7]
In 2001 he helped to refurbish a 500mm-gauge Garratt for the Southern Fuegian Railway that had been produced in Argentina in 1994. By his efforts, including larger cross section for tubing, insulation of the boiler and improved front end, the economy of this modern steam engine was improved vastly, more than doubling train length. Accordingly a second Garratt was built in 2006.
In the 1970s, his daughter disappeared during Argentina's Dirty War, having been taken at gunpoint from the family home.