But there's no evidence whatsoever that use of coal in steam locomotives would EVER be made illegal. This is a wild, raving flight of fancy from foaming wing-nut conservatives.

Obviously, banning historic steam would be senseless. It's not hard to sell that to a legislator. It would be one thing if this discussion was about rallying political support, getting the right letters written to the right people. But it's not.



True. But just because I drive a Ford doesn't mean I long for the destruction of GM. I love the Mac, that doesn't mean I hate Microsoft. The railroads loved diesels, that doesn't mean they were out to destroy steam. There's a big difference between ceasing interest in a thing, and actively aiming to destroy it.

Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. The action here is the coal industry's claims of "clean coal". The equal and opposite reaction is the greenies calling it bunk.

I was under the impression that historic steam operators used specialty coal from small-run mines, not the endless sea of commodity Powder River or West Virginia coal that moves by the unit-train. Maybe I'm wrong about that?

I agree that nobody is proposing the banning of historical locomotives from burning coal, but these things move incrementally, and it would seem prudent to expect some pressure on all users of coal whether it is power plants, steam locomotives, or even home heating. The historic preservation argument will be a decent defense, but I think it will pay to get ahead of the issue before it arrives. In following the D&S smoke issue, it seemed like it began as a simple nuisance complaint from some Durango residents, and evolved to larger dimensions of regional environmental air quality, and on to measures to offset the CO2 produced by the locomotives.

I have noticed that coal interests seem to use the term, "clean coal" merely as a slogan referring to just plain coal in order to defend their image, and environmentalists say there is no such thing as clean coal. I thought clean coal was actually coal that has been processed in some way to make it burn without emissions other than CO2. If that is true, then the claim that there is no such thing as clean coal is false. Although it may be true that there is no such thing as clean coal being produced and used commercially in power plants.

So I have a couple questions:

Whether clean coal is or is not being used commercially, is the processing concept possible? And if so how is it done?

If a power plant could burn coal either with pre-processing the coal or processing it during combustion in a way that the combustion yields no emissions other than CO2, would that constitute clean coal?

If it did not emit anything but CO2, and was still not considered to be clean coal by the anti-coal people, would the 100% sequestration of CO2 render the combustion process such that everybody would agree that it constitutes clean coal?

Calling us wing nuts and the various other names you have tried only makes you feel better. We are witnessing an attempt to tear down and rebuild American society in a way not dreamed of since the likes of William Jennings Bryan. No one here said specifically the plan is to make the use of coal in steam locomotives illegal. The goal is to ban it period. We can assume that if coal use is banned there is little likelyhood an exception would be made for tourist railroads. President Obama has on at least three occasions either said he wants to ban the use of coal or quite cutely said he wants to make the mining of coal so taxed and penalized that anyone trying to do it would go bankrupt.

I think the notion behind "clean coal" is that it is burned in the latest state of the art plants wherein the emissions are lower than they have historically ever been. Carbon sequestration is a companion technology (not commercially proven yet--I think) to make this possible.

The sad thing is that technology has made electricity from coal probably far cleaner than the current petroleum/individual car model. A state of the art clean coal power plant was going to be built near Great Falls Montana, but continued environmental challenges in the court system drove the operators to redesign the plant to burn natural gas. Mind you, the same amount of CO2 will be generated, and possibly a little less mercury and fly ash, but my heating bills will rise significantly. I guess I should start burning coal at home?

I concur with the idea of developing renewable energies and pulling away from the carbon base fuels platform, but the political and cultural frenzy that comes with it (perpetuated by people who do not understand technology) is unsettling.

The best way to not be a target of this movement is to simply keep your stacks clean. Nothing would frustrate a potential protester than to find there is no "fire", and if they complain of invisible emissions--point at the car/bus they arrived in.

Michael Seitz
Missoula MT

All of this clap trap about green fuel technology that the current regime puts forth as an economic stimulator really steams me...all that the left wing proposes in this area is what an economist would recognize as overhead. I am well and truly frightened, never in the history of the world has there been such a movement of misinformed that desires out comes that are not only realistic, but patenly un needed.

The problem with industrial preservation, and operating artifacts of the industrial age, is it is a reminder of the time when Americans were actually productive, producing and transporting things that improved people's lives. Has some of this technology led to unintended consequences...yup...that same asbestos that isulates and protects from fire can also lead to all sorts of illness (but usually in conjuction with a tobacco habit). In other words, the cotton mill that made clothing truly affordable is emphasized as an enslaver of the proletariat, and the steel and steam of the railroads that allowed the mass modernization/habitation of the continent, transforming the very earth itself into a producer of sustanance and a standard of living unimagined is also seen as the exterminator of aboriginal people.

The foul automobile, to which we really HAVE become a slave to, made cities habitable...can anyone imagine if New York or San Fransisco were exclusively served by equine drayage...forget about garbage, where would the manure go? Every body forgets that one of the big benefits of electric lights is getting all of those small fires that candles and lamps have out of the home...How many lives have been saved because the lamp didn't set the house on fire?

It has always seemed a great irony to me that those who want to do away with the basic ingredients of non stone age life (fossil fuels, chemically enhanced agriculture, ect.) are always the ones the most ill equipped to live in a world so denuded.

Have no doubt, there are those that do indeed want coal outlawed, not for particulate emissions, but the same CO2 that you and I put out, and sooner or later, the protesters may come for us. I am enough of a historian to recall that the National Socialists came to power in a democracy, and were duly elected.

You are wrong about that.

There are no "boutique" coal mines, although bituminous coal from the Pocahantas region in West Virginia is highly regarded. Every body I know that burns coal use what ever is close at hand and/or affordable.

Is a lot of coal still burned in the Bay Area, or is there enough combustable material provided by the ignition of Bibles and American Flags to service the public need, as the Right Wing would have us believe?

To answer some of the questions of clean coal. The company I work for makes a slew of equipment, for the coal plants we make scrubbers (to remove sulfur), baghouses (to remove particulate), and carbon injection systems to remove mercury. Today these systems working in tandem can reduce flue gas to basically nitrogen and CO2. We also will be testing a CO2 scrubber later this year which will remove the CO2 from flue gas to be sent for enhanced oil recovery where they'll sell the CO2 to oil fields. CO2 goes down the ground, oil pops up!

My company also makes state of the art turbines for nuke plants, wind mills, and hydro turbines for the renewable markets. We will make and sell anything that makes a profit.

If you want to know what this country is in for look at europe's CO2 taxes and the damage they have done their industries. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 58_pf.html

If this country wanted to over night reduce CO2 production by 20% I bet we could do so simply by outsourcing the rest of our mfg to CHINA. The damage outsourcing big steel, cement industries, foundries and other industries would do to this nations railroads and economy can't be understated but that is what the powers to be want!

What scares me is that the current administration seems to be on a war against industry lobbiests and they think this is a good thing. Pardon me but who in Washington DC has ever run a power grid? What does Obama know about power plants?

Working in the power industry if this country wanted to we could really reduce CO2 by doing 3 things. First new nukes! Second replace antiquated coal plants with new ultra supercritical steam plants. Third use wind solar and renewables when we have them. But the first two things are too politically incorrect. The average plant I work in was built in 1950 or 1960 and they are producing the majority of the country's electricity. They are obsolete and if replaced we would recognize a 50% reduction in CO2 overnight! But that is too politically incorrect right now. So instead with out suitable renewables available environmentalists push for bogus solutions such as ethanol which are feel goods while outsourcing more and more of our nation's industry and preserving these dinosaur plants as they can't physically be taken off the system.

A few years ago Alcoa wanted to expand their production facilities. Anyone who knows aluminum knows that the majority of the cost is based on electricity. Well Alcoa needed to build a new coal fired unit but Al Gore and friends said no. So Alcoa took the plant and the jobs, from the mines, to to the plant to the railroad with it to China. We still get the global warming gases if global warming exists.

It really gives me laughs to see that tomorrow on a day when it is snowing in Alabama and one of the biggest snow storms in a while is hitting the nation's capitol that Gore's group will be holding one of the biggest global warming protests in recent years.

I am not against renewables where they make sense but what investor invests all his money in one stock? What nation should put all their eggs in one energy source? I think that in the end Wind will prove to be one of the most overrated sources of energy simply because of the numbers. An article I read in the NY times said a new 1000MW wind farm cost about $1.5- $2billion. Well that is about what a new 1000MW coal plant runs you. Except that in a coal plant 20% of your costs are the cost of construction, 5% of your costs over the life of the plant is operations and maintenance, while the last 75% of your costs are fuel. So that 1000MW plant really costs more like $8billion as compared to a $2billion wind farm which gets its fuel for free. With windfarms being so much cheaper than coal plants the free markets have subsidized them enough and yet still we are not building them? Must mean we don't have the wind we think we do.

Adam

highspeedrailnow wrote:

Superheater......remember the railroads were taken over by the government during WW1 and ww2. The service was better!

It was previously pointed out that the railroads were NOT taken over by the government during WW2. In addition, if you are going to make the dubious claim that "service" was better as the result of the nationalization, (it wasn't, which is why it was dumped), you need to LOOK at the whole record of federal interference in railroads. I'll refer you to the inane attempt to "standardize" locomotives during that time, the use of rate regulation to favor politically powerful constituencies (primarily the grange) and the stubborn refusal to allow track structures to be depreciated and unprofitable service routes to be abandoned (the latter two being the principal causes for the decline of the northeast roads). Service IMPROVED with the passage of the Staggers act. Albro Martin has detailed the effects of federal regulation in "Enterprise Denied" and "Railroads Triumphant"

I'm assuming from your tagname, you're a political activist. It might be great to go "yeah, rail", but its even better when they are economically viable and vibrant and not the result of being slaves to the bunglers in Washington.

"If you want to really get PO'd at the rich, note this: Among the areas with the highest percentage of incomes in excess of $200,000 is in Washington DC-where do think that comes from? You think its from all the troll lobbyists? Goog.le up former "public servant" and disgraced withdrawn nominee Tom Daschle. He's hardly alone

The development and placement of wind energy power generation also has its problems and political battles, as the residents of coastal communities are now finding out. There are groups now pushing for rezoning to change the status of residential and agricultural land in coastal zones to allow siting wind turbines closely adjacent to residential neighborhoods. Curiously this is developing with virtually no mention at all of the great scare campaign of a few years ago that proximity to high voltage transmission lines contributes to causing cancer.

But maybe there is an up-side to all of this. If coal use is banned and commercial wind energy subsequently becomes abundant and cheap (if you think it ever will be) there may be a new business opportunity putting resistor grids in the fireboxes of steam locomotives and pantographs on top of the boilers. "Steam-electric" anyone? Or is it more properly called "electric-steam"?

PC

As I feared, this discussion has swung far away from this forum's intended topics. Indeed, I think this is the first time Godwin's Law has been invoked here--and correctly, I may add.

PLEASE bring this topic back to actual rail preservation. Discussion of where steam railroads actually get their fuel: good. Discussing how to handle potential activist protests in the future: Okay. Discussing the merits of wind farms and their placement: Off topic here.

Without being the least bit snide here, let's remember that in 1993, Bill and Hilary Clinton were determined to see to it that we had nationalized health care as soon as possible. The net result of that effort was primarily the election of a Republican majority in Congress a mere year or so later. I find it hard to believe that a president that professes to be a student of history could be so clueless as to ignore the ramifications of such recent history, and would thus try so hard to rock the boat. (The further issue, which I will not address here, is whether or not Obama has enough clout to keep in check such motions by the likes of Reid and Pelosi.)

I think most of us would agree this is a non-issue for small tourist railroads IF we hadn't seen GCR just eliminate steam in the name of being "green". Granted these locomotives weren't coal-fired, but it's the same mindset. It wouldn't be hard to imagine these folks in Massachusetts sending a contingent up to nearby tourist railways like Mt. Washington to demand they shut down their coal-fired steamers (which they seem to be already on the way to doing).


We do have a model for this from Switzerland: http://www.dself.dsl.pipex.com/MUSEUM/L ... isselc.htm

For that matter, an outfit has proposed a solar powered thermal storage steam locomotive for commuter service as a demonstration project in California: http://solarsteamtrain.com/cms/

For either of these, someone needs to market coal-scented smoke fluid like we used in our Lionel and American Flyer toy locomotives in 55 gallon drums. ;-)

I trust that most of these comments are meant to be satirical?

Please, not everyone agrees with most of them and in fact many of these so called 'facts' are not only wrong but offensive and disappointing, such as the dig at the citizens of Massachusetts.

If anyone wants to experience what a society looks like without health and safety regulations and lots of burning coal, please make a trip to China. You'll enjoy yourself.

There, does that get us far enough off the topic of railway preservation news?

The Mt Washington Cog Railway did not build a diesel to appease the greenies. (And despite being one those crazy residents of the People's Republic of Massachusetts that some of you have commented on, I too think they're nuts.)

That John Deere diesel abomination they built gets to the top much faster than a steam loco, burns less fuel on the way, and gets there with one crew member in the cab. I have not heard "green" cited by the Cog itself as a reason for building diesels - I have only heard unfounded innuendos here and elsewhere that "the Greenies made the Cog go diesel!" The only green involved here was the kind with the pictures of dead presidents on it.