Don’t know if wood pellets work with flash boilers. I’ll have to look into that.
The last steam cars produced could get up to working pressure from cold in about five minutes. They seemed like impressive machines to me. You refueled at the gas station just like with the internal-combustion cars because they mostly burned gasoline as fuel. No transmission (just valve gear), but you had a lot of low-end torque and could accelerate pretty rapidly from a stop.
From what I have read, they simply let the pilot on all night and kept the thing warm It could even be quick coupled to your heat in the house to supplement the heat. Simple as there was only about a few moving parts since the thing was nearly direct drive. The engine was the brake etc.
“In 1906 the Land Speed Record was broken by a Stanley ... record for a steam vehicle set by a Stanley Steamer in 1906, setting a new speed record of 139.843 ..”
“The last steam cars produced could get up to working pressure from cold in about five minutes.”
Before he died Lear had one in a bus that went from Reno to Tahoe and warm up time was 20 seconds.
If he had of increased the acceptable warm up to 30 seconds he would have eliminated the boiler, condenser problem that he had.
My partner in the speed shop knew him and tried to buy the engine from his wife after he died but she wouldn’t let go of it so it died with him.