On top of that - don't forget China had no problem building and using obsolete technology for very short gain. Remember all those steam locomotives built in the 1980s? China will have no problem building coal electric plants, using them for 10 years, and then tearing them down. Even in China, coal is not the long term plan.

I don't understand your post. Is it an attempt at sarcasm or??

Re. the 489's conversion to oil.

Love the smell of coal smoke in the morning, but as many have said,
those days are rapidly drawing to a close.

I'm told conversion to oil involves modifying the tender to hold an oil tank in the coal space.
Including the tender/engine connections.

The ashpan is replaced by a different setup to properly feed air to the oil flame.

A burner is installed. Could be front burner or rear burner.
There are different burners for different fuels. Is it Bunker C, or peanut oil.

Then the firebox has to be converted to handle the flame thrower effect of the burner.

When CPR rebuilt their 2816 'Empress', it was converted from coal to oil.
Firebrick walls were built inside the firebox, to lengthen the flame path.
And, just as important...shield the tube sheet.

When it's done...life is much easier for everyone....and, best of all, the cab stays clean..

This is just my two cents worth, but if we don't get out ahead of this,
there are lots of people who'd be more than happy to shut down each and every steam operation.
So maybe, what's happening with 489, to ensure the continuance of the industry,
isn't such a bad idea.

Cool pics of 2816. CP just followed the blueprints for oil fired 2800s. It was set up identical to the 2860.

M Austin
re. CPR drawings.
Pretty much.

It is not sarcasm at all. In fact, I hear if you use Christmas snow in the boiler for coal steam, Frosty the Snow Man not only appears but he grants you a special wish and a ride to see Santa.
Yes it is Sarcasm. But the problem is Railfans do not seem to study history or the technology of railroading. Today they argue over paint and what locomotive they want to see operate so they can take pictures. They have no clue that railroads could convert steam locomotives between fuel types in a matter of days. They look at a locomotive from the Harriman Era and think the boilers are the same because the grate areas are the same never mind that one locomotive has Crown Bars and the Non Harriman Line Locomotive has Staybolts. If you think about the history of railroading and the different fuels used, it should be painfully obvious to anyone that the use of oil can be done successfully. If one does not understand the issues of the conversion the Question to ask is what needs to be done to make the conversion a success.

Robby Peartree

I spent 7 months in Downtown Wuhan China (2 transit stops from the main 3-way interchange) in 2014 on various projects. One was assessing a 1 million bottle per day factory for thermal efficiency. In the photo, you can see a square grid on the left smokestack. After the first walk through, ending up between the 2 stacks, I saw the left stack surrounded by a structural steel grid. With everything I had seen I asked the vintage of the plant, "1950s, 60s...?" No. 1 on the left was built in 2007 and no. 2 in 2009. The factory had gas producer furnaces they were running about 400F to cold for maximum CO production. I could have saved about 10% on their fuel bill, but since once you touch one aspect and all the other aspects are similarly compromised, when does everything start to fall apart?

This as a prelude to slight perception modification "10 years, and then they fall down..."

Rail content: CHR 4 HIGH SPEED meets in 12 minutes @ 300 kph(186mph)

I don't understand why they don't convert an engine to GPCS, which reduces smoke and cinder ejection. I think it's worth a trial in an effort to retain coal as a fuel.

Tom Hamilton

This was the first issue we were hit by with the County ( we are in County territory not City limits ) and we have what they like to call a fire trap. 160 acres of rolling grass land with very large California oak trees. If the grass takes off it will move very fast and hot, not for long but it will burn fast. So we did not even mention wood or coal fired but first said diesel fuel, heavy or light and said, well gee that is the same fuel they use in bulldozers and tractors and such. OH Ok. Would be insane to have any trail of burning embers falling out of the firebox or worse a spark ash. So I am throwing in extra bonus to them, like saying fuel oil has no sparks and we will run an ( we know not necessary ) screen on the smoke stack. Here we are required to have a screen on any fireplace chimney or outside fireplace. I say this FIRST to cut them off at the pass so to say. Another issue is air pollution. New fireplaces are now required to have catalytic converters so no smoke comes out. Try to explain to them, 100 year old locomotives don't have air pollution control devices. We are dealing with social justice warriors here, bullshit brains. They start asking how many milligrams of carbon dioxide they produce per mile ! ! ! ! Quick answer to shut up the crazies, they were built before 1975 so did not come with air pollution control equipment. WOW what dumbfuuks.

In one of our places we heat the house with used engine oil. Until it gets up to temperature it is extremely cruddy and oily smoke. The fireplace box gets a bad gunky deposit so we know unless used oil gets up to the right temperature and vaporizes, it condenses out and covers everything. I've used it in heating oil burners and it clogs lots of ways those who use it know if done wrong in a vaporizer it can be explosive. Still considering diesel, less BTU but not as messy and we really are not running a business train, just old guys and childhood memories.

Better to have a wood or coal burner running on oil than a static display of what used to be and will never be again. One nice thing about oil, turn it off and the temperature drops right along with it VS a bed of coals.

Just my opinion.

.

Question, how well do the fire bricks stand up to thermal cycling and the vibrations from movement down the track ? I've seen firebricks creep and scatter, while the job looks beautiful, how long before the bricks have to be rebuilt in place ? ?

.

The heat of the fire glazes the surface and it holds together very well, thank you. You can always glue them together with thin set mortar if you want to be very careful.

On the 2816, is the burner under the fire door pointed forward or at the front of the firebox pointed back ?

.

More on GPCS: it is a large-scale chemical reaction, not the kind of combustion familiar to boiler designers, and there is one important distinction in the quality of the flame that it produces -- it is the transparent production of gas from transparent reactants, which does not have the same emission spectrum characteristics of luminous carbon as found in typical coal or oil firing.

Where GPCS can be successful is in long runs at high steady power, where little change is required and the thermal uptake in the radiant and convection sections will produce adequate reasonably steady-state steam mass flow at adequate superheat. Throttling up and down, or any particular sustained period of drifting without stable draft, can produce all sorts of problems. I suspect a good computer-assisted firing system would help with many of the system's issues -- but the money to pay for that might buy a very large amount of more suitable fuel and equipment.

As one of the major 'gases' that is 'produced' in the system is carbon monoxide, it is wise not to use Porta's many small hollow-staybolt "secondary air tuyeres" from the cab into the backhead and rear water leg area. They work just fine on usual negative-draft firing conditions, but as soon as the throttle is closed fun can start.

Presumably enough primary air can be admitted to the windbox under the grate to allow the engine to be safely hostled and kept in enclosed spaces when not running under GPCS.

In my opinion another possible fuel would be a briquette mix of torrefied wood and coarsely-ground coal (with the right admixture of ash and fluxing agents to knock down any major pollutants in either fuel material). This is NOT the material used in pellet stoves, and it does NOT behave like charcoal briquettes, but it can be hand-fired and burned as coal is. (This is probably what the CSR "Project 130" fuel would have turned out to be like in practice.) One part of this is to avoid fuel friability, so that fines can't be levitated in reducing combustion-gas conditions through the tubes and out the front end to re-ignite in the atmosphere.

I'd also look into using a comparatively small baseline fire of similar material in the same way that the 'flameholding' bed in the earliest oil-fired locomotives was provided, and then superfire one of the oil 'alternatives' to match variable demand when necessary. A number of locomotives have used a similar approach, I believe with some success where tried.

No, I have no idea whether either of these actually produces sparks that make it out of the stack to lineside or not -- although a great deal of experimentation with torrified wood/coal cofuels has been done, most of it has been in the context of pulverized firing (which I do NOT consider suited to locomotive service for reasons I don't think I need to list ;-}) and therefore only tangentially applicable to locomotive service. It might, however, be desirable to set up a pilot program somewhere to test this in ... let's say, a narrow-gauge coal-fired 2-8-2 under certain controllable conditions ... to see how well it does.

US practice was under the throat or towards the forward end of the firepan pointing back, no brick arch. Canadian practice is burner under the door pointing forward, with brick arch. The small Welsh conversions used a central burner pointing out in a ciircle. SLM/ Sulzer has a cluster of burners surrounding a pilot burner. I hear the 3 Rivers Rambler is using some form of multiple burner arrangement, wish I knew more about it.