these loco’s shut off when idle for too long and save a ton of fuel
looks like it has only been fueled once from when they came in this may
I guess that the old units will have been refueled 2 times in the same time
I hear that the feds have paid for most of the cost
The vehicles run primarily on electricity, making them very quiet, and their engines turn off automatically when they are idling for too long, limiting the amount of fuel burned and fumes emitted, MBTA General Manager Daniel Grabauskas said
Currently the T is leasing one of the locomotives, known as NViroMotive, from the manufacturers, National Railway Equipment of Chicago. The locomotive is being used in the Readville rail yard transporting coaches that need to be repaired
Granted, I don’t know if I’ll ever break even in gas vs. cost/maintenance, but it’s nice not paying as much money to big oil as I used to.
I’m neither a fan of Hugo Chavez nor most of the Middle Eastern governments, so I’m more than happy to buy less gas. I’ll be glad to see railroads doing the same. As a meteorologist I’m also concerned about climate change.
I think railroading’s answer lies in more hybrids and broader use of biodiesel. I doubt that ethanol will ever be viable on a large enough scale (and yield the necessary efficiency) for trains, though it may work for cars.
I think our own automotive future lies in flex- and bio-fuel plug-in hybrids. They’ve done the research and it’s not a one-for-one swap of pollution to go from gas to the power grid. Per unit energy, it’s still cleaner to charge a battery from the grid than from a gasoline engine.
Ah, what a wonderful world it would be if the US were energy independent…!
I remember seeing pics of some yard switchers that ran on propane. But even that’s up there in price these days. It’s too bad they can’t make a car that runs on B.S.! THAT would solve all our problems![:D]
If they did, in pretty rapid order some conservationist would start complaining that we don’t have enough politicians…[:-^]
Actually, that unit looks like a genset, rather than a pure battery unit. (3 exhaust stacks, triple sets of hood louvers…) Still a lot more green than a standard unit.
And then there’s the mass converter, which (as the name implies) converts ANYTHING into simple electrical power at the voltage and frequency of choice. Since E=mC2, a box of kitty litter would be more than enough fuel to power a double stack from Long Beach to Chicago - and back. Unfortunately, while it has appeared in Science Fiction, nobody has invented it yet. (Imagine the consternation in certain politically undesirable states if someone did!)
You won’t. In 1975 I traded my 11.5 mpg Chevy Malibu in on a 25mpg Toyota Corolla Station Wagon. I must have had ‘sucker’ written all over my face but so anxious was I to get that better gas mileage that I took a $1000.00 shellacing and accepted $1650.00 trade-in leaving me with a $2450.00 balance due. I kept the car for 13 years and drove it 186000 miles and sold it for $500.00 and when I wrote up a program for the computer to do the figures I found that it had taken me over 76000 miles to make up for that $1000.00.
Conservation has to be viewed as a labor of love!; it seldom makes economic sense. I used to save aluminum cans; it took me the better part of a year to save enough cans to break even on the two dollar a gallon gasoline it took me to take them to a collection center. When I realized that I was never going to get rich letting aluminum cans stack up to the roof in my carport I got smart and let the dumpster divers have them; at least they are contributing to the profit and loss statement of Anheuser-Busch
We were; as late as 1952 we were still exporting oil!!! If you don’t believe me go over to your Economics Department and have them show you the figures for oil imports.
That hybrid loco looks like EMD’s take on an early ALCo RS unit. I’m going into Boston next Friday. If I take the commuter rail, I’ll see if I can spot it.
But the basics of it is that the engine, the IORE gives back as much energy as it uses when being run from Kiruna to Narvik. It have the ability to feed energy back into the grid when going down hills. So as the title says, it’s a perpetual machine, the way of the future.