Ron -

I think the fact that the locomotive in this discussion is AT&SF Hudson #3463 makes it rail preservation relevant, and well within the limits for discussion herein. But, the moderators might see it differently.

Les

I thought it was about both. In reading the mission statement, there is talk about improving locomotive performance for modern railroad application. In fact, it almost sounded like the other purpose of applying the fuel to boilers in developing countries is a secondary objective.

You never know, this program may result in a new fuel for steam running in museums and tourist railways too, not just high speed mainline Hudsons with special boiler/ firebox modifications.

It will be interesting to see how it pans out. I wonder if it would work in a smaller steamer working at lower speeds with lower steam output requirements, with either no modifications or just different grates?

Getting rid of those huge black clouds of smoke might upset the railfans, but would be a good thing to avoid future (and present) trouble with the "greenies". Cost would surely be a big consideration, but reducing the "fossil fuel" stigma and political backlash would be worth some additional expense.

Very interesting project on many levels.

Steve Hunter

I strongly suspect that's the answer right there. A reasonably candidate at the right price.



It will most likely never be applied to rail service. Why? Because it's too different.

Quite a few locomotives have failed, at least in part, because the mechanics couldn't fix them and parts were hard to come by. Railroad won't send their shop crews to school and stock an entire parts inventory just so they can run this thing. Oh, and you also need an entirely new infrastructure as well. It's like the electric car or the LNG car. Fuel stations are few and far between since there aren't many of them, so there aren't many of them since fuel stations are few and far between.

This could possibly gain ground in unique situations. Tourist railways of course, and possibly a commuter service where green is uber-important. (Hey that means we'll get them in Seattle, Cool!) But you won't see them on BNSF stack trains any time soon.

I have now received a 2mb PDF showing a team of four guys working on the cosmetic restoration....images show cars parked in front of the loco, pressure washing, painting and detailing. Last image shows same four guys all dressed in the same tee-shirts posing on the front of the loco. A PM to me with a real name and personal e-mail address will get you a copy.

TH

All,

Same images that are on the PDF, can now be seen on Facebook at:

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set= ... 130&type=1

TH

Defective. Try again.

RYPN error not I.....working fine here.

Try going to http://www.facebook.com/csrail and drilling down

TH

They will if you pass environmental regulations that ram these requirements down their throats. I highly doubt that the railroads, notorious for running locomotives until they are 50-60 years old and are thoroughly "clapped out," would be ordering barely-proven (by railroad standards) GenSets, "Green Goats," LNG-fueled switchers, and Tier 3 rebuilds while scuttling several classes of not-very-old diesels if certain environmental emissions laws weren't in effect in, say, a certain West Coast state.

This may ultimately have little or nothing to do with this proposed Minnesota project. But, in my experience, it only takes one good set of lobbyists waving a study or two proclaiming certain benefits at a bunch of politicians to get them to pass sweeping laws having a massive impact on the way a particular industry operates. And it's also that degree of "salesmanship" to the inexperienced that might garner this project cubic dollars of "other people's money," for better or worse.

In many ways, though and please pardon the pun, the green energy thing is losing steam. NPR did an interesting piece recently on how the wind power folks are busy this year and so are the solar folks, but come next year there is a lot of uncertainty about funding. The main reason for the decrease in emphasis on green energy is the Marcellus Shale natural gas boom. With natural gas so cheap, nobody is really interested in this stuff...especially the power plants. As far as railroading is concerned, wouldn't the gen-sets be much more likely the wave of the future than this project? I believe that in many ways this will be Winter 1985 West Virginia all over again.

The cynic in me (who, me?) would suggest that an additional reason that "alternative energy" promoters of all sorts are laying low is to avoid the numerous controversies arising from certain Federally-assisted projects (for example, the Solyndra bankruptcy, the Chevy Volt's poor sales and catching fire, etc.) from becoming controversial election issues, and potentially defeating huge proponents of such projects while electing a president and Congressional members whose party mantra, rightly or wrongly, is lampooned/cited as "drill, baby, drill."

A small part of my initial reaction to the original press release, indeed, was on the order of "these guys MUST have some form of private backing as seed money and a long-term timetable. If these folks are going to suggest a publicly-funded effort to break the world steam railway speed record so close to a national election, this is going to give the 'greenie' opposition a gift from heaven....."

PLEASE NOTE: I am not debating the merits or lack thereof of Federal involvement in energy and alt-energy policy here, and this is NOT the place to debate it. The issue come up only with the presumption (and a fair one it is) that this project's backers will go trolling for government grants, underwriting, and whatnot. We could be proven wrong.

(And as an aside, I notice that I have yet to hear anyone suggest that railfans should be backing this effort with their dollars, though I haven't gone looking in the "wrong" places for said rabble-rousing.)

I'll start putting more attention into green stuff when I see solar powered passenger airplanes flying.
Until then, I think we need to continue to depend on oil (not just for fuels you know) and coal for energy generation and transportation use.
I wonder what the greenies would think if we turned back the clock to about 1939 and checked the air quality? St. Louis was so bad that the street lights were on during the day because of the smog and coal smoke. Nearly everything burned coal back then for heat, power, railroads, industry and the automobiles were smoke generators.
This of course was before Al Gore invented the internet to spread the word.
(Sarcastic key locked back up)

We may not be in Minnesota, but there's definite and growing interest on processing wood fiber into some kind of higher-tech coal substitute around here. I'm also hearing that never mind the domestic naysayers, there's the primary market in exporting this stuff. So you aren't necessarily at the whims of the domestic political situation. Regionally, the fallout in paper consumption has a lot of idled wood fiber capacity.

So within that discussion, this is just 'one more' I've heard about. It's part of something bigger than you see here. Whether you understand the CO2 logic or not, others not only buy into it but buy it.

As far as for using 3463, as a card-carrying ATSF nut I'm probably more upset at Topeka for neglecting it rather than this proposed attempt to use it. Just sayin'. Mixed emotions and I'll hold my guns for a bit.

"If" this works in practice, it may have an unintentional shakeout as being the politically acceptable solution to coal for our excursion operations in the next generation that has become intolerant of coal smoke. Remember that wood pellets have effectively 'saved' the DSNG in Durango by an approach by Wastach's John Rimmasch that was politically acceptable. So it's actually not a first in that respect either.

Working a lot with streetcars, I've been very much aware that streetcar museums have been the perhaps unitentional DNA preservers of a techonology that is once again very relevant for both transportation and urban development. We certainly did a major re-do of a Melbourne car in here for Savannah to a state-of-the-art hybrid system wrapped in vintage bones. Because of that established success I would like to think that the external combustion steam world may also have a role in preserving the technological DNA, even if all logic, physics and emotion would seem to state otherwise at the moment.

And I hoping that we hear firsthand from some of the principals, particularly on the steam team, some at least have posted here before. This forum is unique from many of the railfan forums that people that actually KNOW SOMETHING show up here on a regular basis.

I'm away from home this week and have had limited access to the internet, so I haven't been able to comment before now. In an earlier related thread I came across as more skeptical of the project than I am now after learning more details. A lot of people seem to be very skeptical about the performance claims for this locomotive (references to solving dynamic augment problems, the locomotive being more powerful than diesel-electric passenger locomotives, top speed, etc.). A few points:

I've never seen published performance data for this class of locomotives, but it's reasonable that a "modern" (using the N&W 1940's definition of the term) heavy 4-6-4 should be capable of achieving around 4000 DBHP at speed in stock condition, so that already puts it close to, if not ahead of current diesel-electric passenger locomotives.

As far as dynamic augment, it's never going to be eliminated with a 2-cylinder locomotive without adding some fairly complex mechanisms, but it really wasn't a problem even in steam days for locomotives that were built using then-available alloys and which were balanced correctly.

As far as top speed, 84 inch drivered 4-6-4's were fairly well documented to have routinely exceeded 120 MPH on the Milwaukee Road, so there's no reason that this engine shouldn't be able to achieve this performance in stock condition. This locomotive seems like a perfect candidate for a documented run to take back the steam locomotive speed record from the British, who currently hold the steam automobile top speed record as well.

Now the above statements are based on a 1930's 4-6-4 in stock condition. If well-documented Porta style improvements are applied to the locomotive, which seems to be the intent of this project, it is completely reasonably that significantly better performance can be achieved.

I didn't see anything in the press release that indicated that this locomotive was intended as anything more than a demonstrator. I.E.- there is no intent to build more locomotives like this to replace existing diesels in routine service, which I agree would be a near-impossible goal to achieve. "Exceeds the performance of existing diesel-electrics" does not necessarily mean "and we intend to start selling them to Amtrak next year".

I hope they're able to procure funding for the project and I look forward to following their progress.

Ron Travis,

Green technologies are a passion of mine, the point John made is accurat. While the wood has a minimal foot print (though not neutral as it does have to be harvested and processed) the other component of the fuel is coal. Last I checked coal is a fossil fuel. Thus this is an environmentally "green" bio fuel using a renewable resource as well as fossil fuel.

Cheers, Jason