The Grand Canyon Railway poured tens of thousands of dollars into a landscape remodel last year that was watered with city taps. This year, the company had to gather that water from other sources, bringing in three rails cars to store it onsite.
The Grand Canyon Railway, which shuttles tourists from Williams to the national park, is using water recycled from rainfall, drained from a hotel pool and wastewater purchased in nearby Flagstaff to irrigate its landscaping and run steam engines.
Rich
So? Nothing wrong with recycling it. It’s not like it has a huge amouny of solids, mud or alkalai. Might even be cheaper.
I don’t know if our OP approves or disapproves, but much of the SW USA is in a protracted drought situation. I would applaud any creative solutions to cleaning up what would otherwise be waste/d water and using it for leisure activities.
-Crandell
I think a landscape that doesn’t need lots of water would have warranted applause, myself.
All water get recycled - in one way or another. What goes off in steam will return later in rain and life goes on.
Unfortunately, what goes off in steam in Arizona will probably recycle as rain in Louisiana, which doesn’t need it.
A lot of people who visit Las Vegas bad-mouth the dancing fountains in front of the Bellagio - until some knowledgeable local tells them where the water comes from. It’s recycled internal drain water from the hotel and casino… Meanwhile, the local water authority occasionally sponsors a ‘grass to gravel’ campaign. The few lonely plants in my yard (which is gravel) get watered with the runoff from washing rice and veggies in the kitchen sink.
If you live in a desert, you learn to conserve water.
Incidentally, aren’t the owners of the GCRR noted for being green? Or do they think that only chlorophyll qualifies?
Chuck (Desert dweller)
Interesting topic, on several levels (my daughter lives in Phoenix, and is a Professional Geologist who until recently practiced in groundwater modeling).
For the moment, one might ask why the railroad doesn’t look into converting its steam locomotive into a condensing type ? They cool the exhaust steam to water again and and re-use it . They were common in Australia and South Africa, I believe - Trains had photos of them from time to time, and I believe Don Ball and Victor Hand has photos of them in several of their books (reminded me of UP’s 4-8-4 No. 844). See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condensing_steam_locomotive
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_African_Class_25_4-8-4
On this Forum, from about 2 years ago: http://cs.trains.com/ctr/f/3/t/210269.aspx
YouTube video (4:55 long) from June 1992 of “South African Railways Class 25 Condenser”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYEhFeFOeBs
I have a friend who lives in Phoenix, but grew up in Michigan. Heat notwithstanding, a walk into his back yard is like walking into a back yard in Michigan. All green. Some of the plants may be different, but it’s all green.
Then, again, one reason I would never move to AZ is because I get tired of all the brown even during short visits there…
And there’s the old saw about the northerner who subscribed to the Phoenix newspaper (by mail). When the paper reported that it had rained in Phoenix, etc, she watered her cactus…[:|]
I believe GCRR burns recycled vegetable oil in its steamer(s).
It should be noted that condensing tenders weren’t found anywhere outside of South Africa. Santa Fe never used them and in fact hauled water in tank cars to Hackberry AZ to support steam locomotive operations. This situation goes a long way in explaining why Santa Fe was an early convert to diesels.
UP (IIRC) experimented with a couple, but they didn’t last long. To be fair, they were a turbine/electric, not a piston locomotive.
Fly between East and West when visibility is good - the populated areas of the West stand out for their green in a sea of brown.
Perhaps a better reference than the ones given is the ACE 3000 patent itself, US 4,425,763. That locomotive relied extensively on full condensing, and very careful design attention was paid to the ways in which the system would be configured in operation.
I was never convinced that the locomotive as designed would ‘condense’ effectively in many summer weather conditions, even producing its relatively low effective power. In the design described in the patent discussion, any uncondensable steam would be ejected directly – you can imagine the result on the water rate and on the treatment required for the makeup water. A potential way to address this is to use greywater as an external spray on the condensing coils, as in the Reid-Ramsay locomotive; there are some fairly foreseeable issues with using that approach.
If you can stabilize the locomotive’s output-power delivery conditions, it becomes possible to use Holcroft-Anderson ‘recompression’ to reintroduce some proportion of the exhaust into the boiler in liquid phase, saving the latent heat of vaporization (which is substantial) and reducing the need for large plena and phase separation in a condenser (also substantial). A normal reciprocating locomotive does not easily allow such stabilization; a steam-electric connected to the power grid via catenary or other connection can do it seamlessly if given the right controls.