Hi. I’m a member of a tourist railway with coal fired locos, but I’ve never seen an oil fired steam loco up close (except an incomplete one in a restoration line) and was wondering exactly what they burn.
Do some use the bunker oil they were designed for? Is it less expensive than diesel fuel? I’ve heard of some that burn waste oil, but don’t know whether the firing arrangement differs between fuels.
Mick
Welcome to the forums. I can’t speak for all operating oil burners - but the ones I am familiar with burn used engine oil. That includes Union Pacific’s 844 and 3985. Unless special arrangements (ie. long-term contracts) have been made getting heavier oils on a retail basis has become more difficult
dd
I think we get our bunker oil in the form of waste oil from cruise ships … I think. I could be very wrong though. Several oil burners are now burning diesel as there is always a reliable ready supply around.
On Royal Hudson #2860 we use diesel as it is easier to obtain & flows better , also we do not have a shore steam supply necessary to heat bunker oil before use .
Oil-burning steam locomotives were mostly designed to use, IIRC, “Bunker C”, which is a fairly low-grade, heavy fuel oil.
These days we use mostly donated used motor oil. It’s just stuff from oil change places, mechanics, and fleet operators. You do of course want to test what you get, and be careful about what you use.
You can buy used oil, ostensibly filtered and tested, I think at around $2.50/gal. I’m sure you can buy new bunker oil, but it may well be more expensive yet. I am told we could use garden-variety automotive-type Diesel fuel, but last I checked, that was over $3.00/gal.
Thanks for the replies, they answer my question nicely!
Mick
In the late steam era in Western Canada, CN had a lot of oil burning steamers and the earlier posts are correct about the use of bunker oil.
CP has a restored Hudson, #2816 that was converted to burn fuel oil the same as its diesels simply for the convenience. It smells like a diesel too which is a little wierd.
CN Charlie
I can confirm to some extent what another individual posted in this thread. Here in the Black Hills of South Dakota we have the Black Hills Central Railroad, otherwise known as the “1880 Train”, and the last time I had ridden it in the fall of 1998, they told us that they burn recycled motor oil in all three of their steam locomotives. And it would not surprise me that the UP would burn the same in 844 and the 3985.
CANADIANPACIFIC2816
SVRR No. 19 burns waste oil now, but when I was learning to fire, we took donations of whatever someone wanted to give us. One day my trainer was explaining what a “white flame” was, and looked into the firebox. She was surprised to see a green tinge to the fire, and told me so. Later, we surmised that there was antifreeze in the mix. Shortly after, SVRR started restricting donations of mixed waste, and buys filtered waste oil.
Another thing we would sometimes get was bunker C, which is much thicker. Getting it started is not easy, until there is enough heat to put steam into the tank heater. Once, I was conductor, and the engineer kept stopping the train to ask me how to get the fire to burn hotter, because he and the fireman had done everything they could think of, including turning off the tank heater, to conserve what steam they could generate. It took half the day to convince them that we had a larger-than-usual amount of bunker C, which required much more heat to get flowing to the atomizer, so they needed to run the tank heater until the temperature reached at least 140 degrees, and 180 would be better, before they shut it down some.
I understand that used motor oil can contain traces of some interesting things – among others cadmium. It is used in bearings and thus can end up in used motor oil. Although a useful metal, it is very toxic to humans. Am I misinformed or is the amount insigificant in the in the steamer exhaust?
Just got a copy of Steam Today, and they mention CP 2816 is a “clean” machine because of the fuel it burns.
Originally it was coal, but that isn’t easy to get. So they converted the engine to oil. Problem was getting bunker oil once you left the coast. There are not too many ships inland burning bunker oil. So they tried diesel fuel, and it works.
They have the advantage of being able to take fuel at the same facilities that handle diesels. They don’t have to call a local oil supplier to bring a tank truck to meet the locomotive and fuel it with furnace oil or diesel fuel.
probably the most frequent contaminant in used motor oil is antifreeze. The glycol can gell in the oil and plug up things. It doesn’t burn well either. I wouldn’t worry about the trace amount of cadmium.
dd