Is it possible to avoid an oil heater entirely by limiting the fuel specification to diesel or home heating oil?

I believe the Disney engines use diesel oil exclusively. Are they even equipped with oil heaters?

At Texas State RR, we never had to heat off road diesel, but we never had to winterize anything. In extreme cold, truckers have had trouble with diesel thickening, and may have to use additives. AT&SF 3751 uses diesel, but preheats to 160 degrees, if I recall correctly.

If you use dirty motor oil, it contains additives so it won't thicken in winter, which would keep internal combustion engines from starting. I've always heard that you don't have to preheat it.

my experience is the #2 diesel fuel does not need heating to burn properly. Waste oils will burn without heat, but prefer to be at least room temperature to burn properly.

When I was at Texas State we changed to waste oil. That required us to install tank heaters to get the oil to 75-90 degrees, especially in the colder months during Polar Express.

An old coil out of a steam cleaner makes a good tank heater. Install the coil around the outlet for the fuel, and away you go.

Denmark? Might want to have one up there. Disneyland operates in the LA area so temperatures not an issue. Heat to warm, not hot, BTW. All this is kind of meaningless without taking the design of the oil firing system from tender tank through the exhaust out the stack into consideration.

Most of the design of the 'steam system' forward of the burner seems to me to be of little relevance to this specific discussion.

In my opinion, some kind of fuel heating, possibly including tracer lines for the feed to the burner, would be as appropriate for steam-locomotive firing under Scandinavian winter conditions as it would be for OTR diesel trucks using essentially the same fuel. This is particularly true if the burner is designed to fire #2 gas oil; while the characteristics of #1 may be suitable for compression-ignition engines, they would be less so for continuous bulk firing -- for example, increased potential issues with 'puffs' and gassing due to higher volatile content.

In a sense, this would involve two distinct heating functions: a bulk system to prevent gelling in the tank, and a second system to bring the fuel up to optimal firing viscosity and preheat. The former would likely be served with a couple of SP-style exhaust-steam coils in the bottom of the bunker; the latter with tracer lines of progressively higher thermostatic setting up to the burner, combined with the aforementioned exhaust-steam coil around the approach to the burner, and perhaps around the burner if it is purely mechanical and does not use steam for atomization or entrainment of primary air.

hello,
why would dirty motor oil contain additives?

Clean motor oil has additives for a variety of reasons, including controlling the viscosity of the oil.

Brian

There's all kinds of reasons for motor oil to have additives which are beyond the comprehension of a simpleton like me. The one reason I DO understand is that during really cold weather, oil in the crankcase of gas or diesel engines would tend to thicken or even congeal to the point where turning the motor over to start it becomes difficult or impossible. These anti coagulants are blended when the oil is prepared for distribution. When it gets dirty, of course THEN there's additives like sludge and assorted crud.

Dirty motor oil, as in crankcase oil, is just fine for firing locomotives so long as there is nothing else in it. WASTE OIL is different and can contain Lord knows what, but it is generally prepared by a process which may include centrifuging, filtration, having air bubbled up through it, etc, and often it is cut with diesel.

Motor oil contains many additives that may include Zinc and Molybdenum, detergents, etc. It usually has additives that help it's thickness remain more stable over a wide temp range, which is how you get grades like 10w-30, the goal is to allow it to flow and do it's job at very low temps, without thinning to uselessness at high temps. Straight 30w oil is about like putty at below freezing temps, but straight 10w oil is like water at engine temps. Used engine oil is going to contain at least trace engine metals and combustion by-products. It's probably also going to contain some coolant, fuel, and other automotive lubricants (transmission fluids or gear oil).

Where folks can get in trouble is if they have a collection tank for dirty motor oil, and somebody (who wasn't raised right) dumps something else in there. The stuff doesn't need processing UNLESS it contains, say, antifreeze, used two cycle mix, globs of used lubricating goo, etc, etc. The crap that won't burn can put your fire out, but much of the time it will settle to the bottom of the bunker and can be removed when you start work in the morning and you're draining out the water which is left over from blowing back through the fuel line after shutdown.

The real horror stories concern the thin stuff. if you've got your firing valve open fairly wide because your fuel is fairly thick, and suddenly you get a slug of, say, used paint thinner in there... the thin stuff goes into the firebox all at once and will most likely explode violently. There's an outfit I won't name that had the firedoor blown off the studs this way, and more than once at that. They had difficulty keeping firemen.

I would expect the solvents(fuels usually) to mix throughout the oil. There will almost always be some coolant, what do you do with the oil from a engine with a blown head gasket? And I've been told that some of the waste oil companies actually just put the oil and coolant in the same tank and let gravity sort things out.

That sounds reasonable, and it no doubt happens sometimes. But it doesn't always work out that way, just ask the firemen who quit the Brand X RR.

What does happen is that engines using refined heavy oil can top off with diesel, for example, and it mixes with no drama. Processed waste oil + diesel, likewise.

At TSRR, when we used off road diesel, our automotive mechanic used to dump every kind of waste in the tender thinking it would all mix naturally and burn. It didn't. Much of this I removed when I'd drain condensate out of my fuel line every morning, but my fire would usually go out several times as I started the day. Once the bricks were glowing red, if this happened, the fire would most often relight before I could even think about doing anything. And, as you say, sometimes whatever he dumped in there caused no problem.

I figured out what was going on because when I fired up any of these same four engines at the other end of the line, I didn't have any trouble. Once I wised up, I asked the guy to please dump that shit in the grease trap instead, and he did from then on. That was the end of that.

.

Excellent suggestion !! That would be a good idea for the water manhole, too. Using filter screens over their outlets, flotsam and jetsam such as dead leaves or dirty shop rags in the bottom of the tank can slide around as you move or stop. Of course it always blocks the water or fuel line at the worst possible time. THANK YOU SIR.

Yea, and not only is an ounce of prevention better than a pound of cure, but a manhole screen is going to be one Hell of a lot easier to clean than either an inline filter or a screen inside the tank. Now why didn't I think of that ?? THANKS AGAIN.

A shop I worked at for years generated a lot of waste oil. It consisted of oils drained from farm machinery, industrial machinery, highway tractors, and general automotive, so had everything. It included motor oils of varying viscosities, hydraulic oil, transmission oil, Varsol and other cleaners, heavier oils such as gear oils, and some gasoline or diesel drained from fuel tanks being serviced. We tried hard to keep water and antifreeze out, but that was not always possible. The recycler/refiner was happy with it and said so.
Because of the gear oils and heavier viscosity motor oils it contained, it could have needed some heating if burned in a boiler in cooler weather. If anyone was to use that oil in a locomotive, one would have to test it first and perhaps blend it with diesel. Certainly, whatever waste oil you got, it might help to defray the overall fuel cost.
Tank heaters should not be too hard to make. "Locomotive Operation" by the International Textbook Co., 1925 discusses oil burning. One system fed boiler steam into the oil "... in the vicinity of the oil outlet." The condensate was simply drained from the bottom of the tank. A simple heater coil could be assembled near the oil outlet, with the steam, or condensate exhausted out of the oil tank. That would not be too hard to make and install. That would give you the option of using heavier grades of oil.