Does anyone wish to quote the price their operation is paying for diesel fuel ?

All industries that use large amounts of fossil fuels employ elaborate mechanisms to protect against price escalation on fuel oil. These include long-term contracts, hedge funds and all sorts of other nonsense.

Has anyone come across a cheap and dirty way to hedge against diesel fuel price increases on a smaller scale ?

Dave

Institute an agressive shutdown policy. One thing to keep in mind is that you need good starting batteries if you go this route. You'll be surprised to see how much lube oil you save as an additional benefit.

EBL

How "aggressive"? If there is a 15-20 minute layover between excursion trains, does it make sense to shut the unit down? Certainly, anything longer than a 1/2 hour layover would be worthwhile for shut down and restart.

Approximate Fuel consumption rates for EMD engines at idle:

12-567: 2.8 Gallons per hour
16-567: 3.7 Gallons per hour
16-645 Turbo: 5.1 Gallons per hour (4.1 at low idle)

For more confusion, Nigel Day should be testing his biodiesel fired steam locomotive even as we email. Ought to make for some interesting comparisons.

dave

TYBR paid $2.579 plus 2.4 cents tax per gal. to have 516.9 gals. of high sulfur off road fuel delivered to the locomotives on May 2.