tom, this would make an excellent thread all by itself.
Personally, I don’t think there is any one ‘technological’ magic bullet that’s capable of giving you that quantum drop. Note that while the effect of alternative fuels may be positive in the future, when conventional oil fuel is pricier or less available, this is irrelevant to present operation – subtract the cost of fuel entirely from OC and you’ll only see about a 5% reduction (I invite anyone to use an exact percentage based on current numbers!). We’ve just lived through a period with sustained low interest/cost of capital rates, but haven’t seen any meaningful investment in innovative locomotive technology for road service.
Part of the issue is that the business of actually moving goods for a purpose isn’t that amenable to ‘cheapening’ in the ways that technology can make possible. It might, therefore, be better to ask if there is anything that could result in a quantum rise in the effectiveness of moving goods over land, or in satisfaction of shippers or customers with the service provided – and in their willingness to provide more in profits than cost-cutting would otherwise yield.
I am assuming that no technology better than a somewhat improved metal-wheel-on-metal-rail one will give a more effective mix of speed, loading, and low energy requirements. Some of the potential “improvement” areas might be classed as follows:
Cheaper or more capable/flexible motive power (including locomotives with cheaper fuel, or which can exert high sustained ‘overload’ power economically on demand; in both cases these are well-established characteristics of external-combustion locomotives)
The ability to marshal and run longer trains, quickly enough to keep scheduling and community ‘disturbance’ at present levels or better – this allows a given crew working a given number of hours to move more paying freight.
The ability to run trains quicker end-to-end – this gives a possibility
[quote] Originally posted by Overmod
Extension of PTC to semiautomatic train operation, thereby reducing crew size. I personally don’t like the idea of this, but it does have to be said that the fastest way to eliminate problems with 8-hour crew laws is not to require that the crew be ‘in the field’ on the train… and there is little need for pair driving of trains that are all being attended remotely from central facilities (has the potential advantage that a given engineer could walk upstairs in JAX and sock a whiz-kid dispatcher if the latter screws him up too often ;-})
I think dispatchers would wind up in the hospital way too often.[swg]
I’ll take some time soon to weigh these lengthy technical arguments. But my snap judgement is that if you’re aiming for a greener locomotive that uses less imported oil and belches out less pollutants, the answer is at hand. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel, or the diesel-electric concept. Just change the fuel. I run my VW on a 20-50% seasonal mix of biodiesel with dino diesel. I get cleaner, quieter engine operation this way. I make every gallon of imported petrodiesel in the mix go the equivalent of 40-60 mpg. And with the other half of the mix, I consume the harvest of some red, white & blue Midwestern bean farmer. My net cost is about equal to premium gas, $2.20 around here.
No, it’s not a bargain. It’s part of the solution. Yes, regular rotgut high-sulphur diesel is cheaper. If you buy it in quantity like the UP does, you might dread that higher price. But UP, taking just one example, rakes in plenty of profits hauling low-sulphur coal from the West over to distant markets that demand it. The moral: we tend to get whaeer we pay for, or demand by law, or subsidize by taxation. That’s all it would take to convert the RRs to biodiesel, and that could happen a lot more quickly thanthe sort of distant (but intriguing) technical innovations most respondents have been searching for here.
DF, that’s right on.
in my earlier post that’s what I hoped to imply when I said that even though I had crowed about steam on some other threads, I had heard something about coal slurry for diesels.
One thing about most forms of biodiesel I’ve seen is that the supply rapidly gets constricted with higher demand. It is, of course, theoretically possible to develop an effective producing economy for the ‘vegetable’ precursors, and plants to accompli***he necessary treatment of the “biological” product into a proper cetane-rated hydrocarbon.
You couldn’t, for example, meaningfully adapt the ‘biodiesel’ that uses waste frying oil with preheat. Not because it wouldn’t work… because both the transportation and production logistics just can’t get that much old frying oil in circulation!
As I have said (probably generating severe and frequent cases of MEGO syndrome in the process!) I think that increasing dino oil prices will rather briskly produce a market for Fischer-Tropsch (etc.) derived synthetic liquid fuel, as well as straight biodiesel and other ‘natural’ liquid fractions. (There are now at least two biological gene pathways that can produce methanol metabolically, as yeast does for ethanol; a little of the dreaded recombinant experimentation might easily produce organisms that could ferment meaningful amounts of methanol and not be poisoned thereby…) Where the equilibrium price ‘per barrel’ would be for this is not entirely clear… but I think we’re already pushing the envelope at $45 a barrel or so, at least for some of the ‘boutique’ niches.
Coal slurry in locomotives… drop it. There are better things you can do with all-ceramic-coated locomotive motors, which you’d need for the additional wear. Sulfur problems, clogging problems, fuel-oxidation-in-storage problems, etc. etc. etc. etc. etc.
Ask UP about coal slurry in turbines built of very good alloys, and whether modern hard coatings would solve all the critical issues they observed… the situation is worse in just about all respects if you propose to burn the coal slurry in converted locomotive IC engines (and believe me, you don’t want to go back to using converted ship-diesel technol
As for supply sources of biodiesel raw material, I agree that the waste cooking oil angle is mostly hype to amuse bored & simplistic journalists. My biodiesel comes from Blue Sun, a Colorado company that trucks soybeans from the midwest to its production plant here. Its goal is to make the fuel from locally grown mustard seed that’s planted in the fallow years between wheat crops. So we’re still talking about going fast with food, but it’s not the fry oil, but a common condiment!
What was that the Bible said about ‘faith as small as a grain of mustard seed…’ ;-}
I, of course, fail to see why the folks that support ethanol subsidies don’t also support quick and immediate biodiesel subsidies, at least in key ‘farm’ states that see significant interstate truck traffic. It’s not too long ago that a whole little complex of truck stops cropped up in Arkansas, right across the river from Memphis, because the diesel price was so much lower… it was sufficiently cheaper that I could save money by driving 40 miles each way to fill my Suburban. Of course, the revenue boys killed that golden calf by raising the tax rate when they ‘realized they were leaving money on the table’. Something that re-established an effective price break on fuel… or promoted domestic fuel independence and resistance to ‘price shock’ fuel cost increases… would almost certainly go over well with truckers. One would think that refining and supply infrastructure improvements for motor fuel would have a positive effect on their counterparts for locomotive fuel…
I believe that the great IKB did some work on an engine called the GAZ engine, but that he gave up the idea, due to the necessity of providing a pressure vessel capable of withstanding enormous pressures produced by the mixture of certain chemicals - I guess 19th century technology just wasn’t good enough - perhaps he was afraid of blowing himself and his neighbourhood to kingdom come ! Could have been the 19th.century equivalent of the atom bomb. I also believe that the *** did something similar during WW2 with a chemically powered rocket plane which blew up a lot of their pilots ! What I am trying to say is, has anyone else tried to progress this idea now that we have better tecnology in the field of high pressure vessels, and the controlled release of high pressures?
I rather see a AE Staley, MCP, or ADM gas station than ones own by Shell, Esso and Sunoco. Ethanol would likely be cheaper to use as places like ADM require train service; a small but mutual agreement could be made. One hand washes the other.
Of course, if you put up overhead on selected main lines, it wouldn’t matter what you burned, would it??? This is, of course, entirely price-driven and the numbers don’t work in most places–yet. We went through this convulsion 20 years ago and they almost worked, provided the utility owned, operated and maintained the overhead (which they do better, anyway) and the RR paid by kW/kWH at the substation with primary metering. Leaves a lot of room to massage the coal rate equation. If you can get some relief on some of the capital costs.
Electrification would solve noise and pollution problems, but the second seems on its way to solution by stiffer requirements that the two builders are meeting and the first problem can be solved by careful design. The Stadler (Swiss) diesel electric light rail cars on the new Camden Trenton New Jersey line (a true diesel interurban line by the way, on the original Camden and Ambay route with diesel freight service still in operation) are reputed to be quieter than any current bus. I’d be interested in knowing how they are on fuel economy.
The crowd-pleaser selling points are noise and pollution, but in many respects those are just window-dressing solvable to a great extent in engine-driven technologies, as is correctly pointed out. The real reason for electrification is you are not tied to any specific fuel or fuel type. But, as I say, it’s not for everybody-at least not yet. Price drives the equation, and you have to be able to absorb the capital costs. And the price for the overhead and associated equipment has gone down with technology improvements and is even lower at 60 Hz, because the utility is delivering commercial frequency power (no conversion) at standard distribution or, at worst, subtransmission voltage. That’s why they can do the power side of a modern system a whole lot better than the RR can.