Back-pressure would be a stationary specific Installation I guess - We produced steam at 600PSI(4200KPA) and 1200PSI (8400KPA) (lots of superheat) and dropped it to 180psi (extraction) and 80psi (exhaust) - the Backpressue streams were at mild superheat for "dry transfer" through the headers and desuperheated just prior to use (Plant process heating). Most plant heat consumers were our "condensers" and recovered condensate was sent back to us. The Radial STAL was an amazing machine despite being a dated design when I operated it.. Super reliable and rugged. Because of its design you could take it from initial Roll to full load in 15 minutes- from Speed (3600RPM) no load to full load in 5 minutes... In contrast the GE took 4 hours from roll to full load to heat soak properly.

It seems that unfortunately all technical training suffers from what you mentioned Bert - All that I have taken part in has in both aviation and power engineering has been plagued.. you learn the applied technology while working on it it seems.