An interesting concept, the weight of Diesels being the cause for failure of a national treasure. I would doubt the entire railway structure would be rebuilt to allow for the Diesels, nor would all the track be replaced. One might think the return to steam would be far more economically sound an idea.

It strikes me that the Mt. Washington Cog Railway would have been a great candidate for the state to purchase, the last time it was on the market a quarter century ago. A state-run operation, like the Cass Scenic or the Cumbres & Toltec would have ensured minimal compromise of the historic fabric of the place. Unfortunately, little New Hampshire, with no income tax and no sales tax, operates on a pretty frugal budget and probably could ill afford the operation.

The loss of regular steam is very unfortunate. Sure, we preservationists grieve the loss of any steam operation, but this place is special. It was the first mountain-climbing railway in the world, pioneering a number of technologies. It has 140 years of steam heritage and it really has no peer.

One would think that the operator could have come up with a more equitable compromise between steam and diesel that would have brought him the substantial cost reductions he desired, without completely changing the face of the railway. Perhaps running diesels on the weekdays when the load-factors are smaller and steam on the weekends with a reduced fleet of 3-5 machines would have been workable. As it stands, the current, daily "Steam Special" is probably a self-defeating strategy. Even for New Englanders such as myself, making an 0800 or 0900 departure at The Cog means getting out of bed at 0430. In fact, my last couple of 9AM trips (one-way to the summit) were all very lightly patronized with no more than a dozen people on a 70 passenger coach. And of course, if you ride it, you can't photograph it and if you photograph it, you can't ride it. In my estimation, few folks will make the trek to see one steam run a day.

If you haven't done the steam ride to the top and it's on your "bucket list", don't put it off. I'm not at all confident that what little steam still exists up there will be around very long.

/Kevin

Kevin hit the nail on the head. Once steam is gone, with the other expenses, I think the charm of Mt. Washington Cog Rwy. will be expended. Tourists will come, but the magic of the vistas coupled with the steam locomotives will be gone. ANother avenue needs to be investigated, and soon.

Check out this campaign piece against the cog railway:

http://www.thescarms.com/photos/mtwashington/CogRailRoad.htm

I can't promise which strategy is better, diesel to dispel these complaints, or steam to maintain the historic fabric. Under the previous argument, steam was grandfathered and continued as a historic institution. Now they have shown diesel is functional, I would imagine they might be under even more pressure to limit steam operations or apologize for their smoke when they do operate.

That is, when they were 100% steam, they could just argue "this is the way we operate because it is the only feasible way to operate this antique". Now they have opened the door to modern technology, every aspect of their operation will now be scrutinized for compliance with modern expectations.

Sometimes if you defend a practice as historic, and stay within those parameters, you can escape inquiry. But you have to adhere completely to the historic regiment. Example: native cultures allowed to hunt endangered species.

My fear is the current dieselization just opens the door to mission creep, and a complete reconstruction of the line with modern technology.

I went to the page mentioned...



Good heavens, he's right! Just think of what this smoke belching pollution factory will do to the mountain in just a few short years! The trees will all be dead in no time and it will look like a strip mine!

What's that you say? Running since '69? Well, these things take time, that's only 40 years....

Oh, wait? 1869? 140 years now? Well gee, how does the place look today? Let's see how much of an effect the railroad has had on it... How did he say that again?



So, it's been running for 140 years now and the place is still pristine?

OK, so remind me again, what is he whining about? Oh yea, how the railroad is going to ruin the pristine area it's been serving for 140 years now...

If they were truly worried about pollution, wouldn't you think electrics would be the best option? There's plenty of electric rack railways around the world, so it's not like it's an unproven technology.

Or is the "green" they're worried about the kind you put in you wallet?

*chuckle* Just because someone has an opinion and a web page, does not mean it's a majority opinion. Frankly, their page reads to my eyes like a "wing nut minority". What is wrong with that guy? Bashing those historic little steamers? That's like bashing Thomas. I don't think the public is going to be with him...

The battle between The Cog and the hiker/tree hugger community has actually been around for a good while. Hikers have been known to do everything from mooning the trains to throwing rocks at them. The round trip price on that particular link pretty well dates it. It has been several years since the price was that low. The current round trip fare is $59 for adults.

Whether or not the current dieselization program was motivated by the desire to placate these folks is debatable. The owner also owns a stake in a biodiesel fuel production company, so the folks on that side of the table have some ammunition. On the other hand, my personal opinion is that the economics are driving the changes in power. If you read my post at the beginning of this thread, you'll know why I subscribe to this theory.

For those who are interested in learning more about the line's owner, here's an article with some detail: http://nhbr.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?A ... /307039998

As for permanent damage to the environment, the only thing I can see are the cinders in the vicinity of the ROW. Yes, after 140 years, the cinder layer is pretty deep. The only other issues folks might cite are 140 years worth of debris from trestle repairs. Like most railroads, The Cog used to just toss the stuff aside. Now, folks up there tell me that they carry more material down the mountain than they bring up. The lower reaches of the ROW are already pretty clean in that regard. I believe the intent is for that effort to continue.

New England and upstate NY is a rail preservation battlefield with trail lobbyists and environmentalists seeking to defeat tourist rail operations, and in some cases, freight operation.

While they have yet to shut down an active rail line, they did win the battle to save the St. Johnsbury & Lake Champlain.

Eco tourists and snowmobilers may seem to be diametrically opposed, but when it comes to railroads they often share the same goal - suspend operations. That's where the similarity ends, as the snowmobilers are obviously arguing to replace one form of recreational carbon use with another.

IMHO this is another reminder that the rail preservation community needs to band together and figure out a collective defense. When the call to limit recreational carbon output (non-essential vehicles), who is going to go first? NASCAR? Snowmobilers? Tourist railroads? The later are easy prey as of now, though that can change through organization and cooperation.

First step: stop eating our own.

Rob

In my mind there is not much debate over the motivation. Nigel Day converted a steam locomotive to burn bio-diesel, which to my knowledge was quite successful. I can say that it ran with a fairly light grey haze out the stack and the performance was at least as good as the coal fired locomotives. The best of both worlds, historic locomotives and minimal pollution.

The problem is that there is a large price difference per BTU between coal and bio-diesel and it cost more to send the bio loco up the mountain. No matter how you slice it, the cog steamers are inefficient locomotives that eat huge amounts of BTU's. The solution was to quickly convert it back to coal firing and proclaim the diesels as the green solution.

Roger

OK, so is there a cheaply producable or waste byproduct vegetable oil not "good enough" to burn in an IC engine but suitable for firebox use being unused out there? Maybe some sort of cellusosic mash of fiberous spent plant solids resulting from the biodiesel production process that could be pelleted for firebox use?

Either would be "green". Neither would divert resources from other more economic uses.

dave

I suspect that processing and filtering technology is so advanced that there no longer is such a thing as "worthless" liquid fuel of any kind. There used to be news stories about individuals fueling their vegetable oil cars with "free" oil from restaurants, but I believe this oil is no longer free.

I feel sorry for all involved if this is really the motivating factor. They did not have to actually build the engine to find this out. All you have to do is calculate the price/btu for the two fuels, and then estimate the bio consumption according to the coal btu. Unless perhaps the owner misjudged their own price for bio fuel?

I am surprised that after what appears to be a few years of modifications, all they have accomplished is the addition of feedwater heaters. No expansive working?

Nothing was done to take advantage of expansive working, but quite a but more than the addition of a feedwater heater was done. Check out Martyn Bane's web site for details http://www.martynbane.co.uk/modernsteam/nday/mw/ndaymwhome.htm

This work did gain some noticeable gains in economy and performance. It is interesting that the modified locomotive appears to be the go to steamer now.

From what Nigel has said, the basic design of those locomotives could never be made to be truly efficient. A new rails up design would be needed for that.

Roger

There are some aspects of this topic which I still wont talk about but alot of what is happening is some of the reasons why I came home.

These are some technical facts for you.

The feed water heater was installed before I got there. I did alot of refinements to it for reliablity and to make it work with the rest of the modifications.

I had a long term stage by stage plan of modifications. We only got to about 2 out of the posible? 5. Items such as Roger mentions like cylinder insulation was on the list after redesign of the cylinders. If we had got a second loco to modify I would have pushed for #3

The basic Lempor gave about a 50% saving or gain on fuel and power. A feed water heater will give about 10% but I dont have an acurate figure for the heater.

I did nothing to the basic eficentcy of the steam cycle of the loco. Yes we did things to the pipe work, mostly the exhaust system to improve that. Alot of small things where done to genraly up grade the engineering on the loco.

A fuel conversion dose not mean a saving of fuel. The loco will consume the same btu of steam regardless and an oil convision another 5 % for atomizing. I was using up to 100% soya oil at times but it was tolerent of what ever mixtaure it was given.

I was asked if the steamer could be made to go faster. The answer is a little and on quite a few ocations she left the following train behind. No the current steamers could not run at twice the speed and only a new loco would make that posible. The track and tressel is what the steamers required. That even has been pushed to the limmits as the size and wieghts incresed.

The boiler are certainly not the best I have seen and heavily scaled. This resulted in a loss of heat transfer of around 60% and an equivently high fuel consuption. One loco #6 was retubed and instantly its fuel consuption fell by that amount. The bottom line as far as I am concerned relates to this problem of boiler condition and a limmit to what I could achive.

I went there to improve the steam loco within the perameters allowed and that I did. Some of the words by others about other reasons for the other machines are both acurate and also inacurate. I never have and do not want to get into a war of steam v diesel. That is why I came away. I have strong fealings about the special nature of cog railways and why they should be steam. Just maybe one day I pray I can finish the job of building the ultimate steam cog loco but at the moment I am glad to be home for I did not want to whatch the current events happen.
Nigel