What really will happen is this. The warming trend will continue, but instead of adapting to it, govts. the world over will take draconian measures in a vain attempt to reverse it and in the process strip the wealth of everyone who is not in the top 1%. So far nobody has been able to prove that stopping the use of carbon will have any effect, but we know for a fact that even trying to cut back usage is doing more damage than climate change itself is causing. The riots in Sri Lanka and protests in the Netherlands were not caused by climate change, but by the RESPONSE to it.

So we could either have warming and our wealth, or warming without any wealth. We are running full bore toward option two and doing it to thunderous applause from those who are about to lose forever the standard of living that we deserve.

The second part is basically about coal smoke. Could some environmentalist in DC decide that steam locomotives should be banned because that person is an environmentalist who wants to virtue signal, and happened to be passing through SW PA on a day that the 611 crew is putting on one of their "blacken the skies" shows?

It is a serious issue, but as is the usual here, I just get jokes and snide remarks instead of any real concern. I pay attention to politics and know that what they do has a lot more to do with emotional reactions than it does thought and reason. Our ability to run steam at all has a lot to do with laws written back before the virtue signaling climate extremists took over the EPA. So be careful with those smoke shows.

But yeah Rick is just a crackpot... Until it happens.

Why is this a thread instead of a Flimsies link? It could be posted with an introductory warning against the potential for government overreach, if that’s really what you find most unsettling.

You all seem to be forgetting that steam locomotives have already been banned in some places in this country. That's why all the lines into NYC and the Northeast Corridor are electrified; all the steam engines in high density like that created a nightmare for anyone wanting to breathe clean air.
Of course, that was when steam was the best thing you could use, but don't think for a moment that someone might realize this and decide to expand the idea after seeing 4014 putting out smoke on it's next run past an environmentally-sensitive politician. If that happened and people started leaning on UP to stop polluting with steam engines that aren't actually needed for daily operations, it's no leap in imagination to see that UP might drop the fires.

You guys can make fun of Rick (or anyone else on the forum) all you want, but he clearly does have a point here.
This is a forum dedicated to preservation and operation of old trains. Railroads were (and some can argue still are) some of the worst polluters this nation ever saw. You don't think someone in government, wanting a 'feel good legislation moment' because they hadn't had a political win in a while, might happen to drive past a restored steam locomotive (or a older diesel belching out exhaust) and think, "Hey, here's something that'll get my name in headlines"?
We've seen it to a small degree with the lawsuits against the Durango and Silverton; they're scared to run coal-fire steam now.

And the constructive approach is to be... constructive.

Don't go on fear mongering about "wiping out the wealth of those not in the 1%", but instead work to make sure that your representatives and their staffs are aware of what you're doing and why it matters to their constituents.

Rick, have you ever invited any of your Ohio reps to your operation? You know folks like that LOVE junkets. Have them over. Give them a ride. Let them blow the whistle. Feed em some BBQ (and make sure to include something vegan). Form memories so that next time someone might wipe you out with a throw away paragraph someone goes "oh wait, what would that do to that place we were at?".

That's going to get you a LOT more traction than parroting whatever lines provocateurs have slipped into your slice of media with the hope of burning it all down here.

1) Somebody still reads the Flimsies section? It still exists?

2) I simply posted the link, with factual background information lest most readers didn't hear the news from the UK. We really don't have common "national news" with international coverage anymore, for better and worse. (But the UK fires fit the "if it bleeds, it leads" cliche.) I don't editorialize when sharing news--that's not a "journalist's" job (no matter what currently passes as "news media" may do otherwise).

3) The specific and "big-picture" discussion spurred, however acrimonious, is necessary if this avocation is to have a future. Otherwise, let's just give up, park all the locos and cars, and dig ourselves underground bunkers in hopes of cooling off.

Steam is back for now:

https://www.edp24.co.uk/things-to-do/da ... ay-9176542

Big steam has essentially existed at the tolerance of the Government since around 1970. Very clearly to me, any then-operating big steam would have been subjected to the same smoke rules that spawned all those overfire 'guns' in the late '40s... that wouldn't work as expected on most road power.

Remember that this is a government that intentionally maintained an arbitrary NOx number in Tier 4 final that EMD couldn't quite reach... in about 3% at most at the extreme edge cases in the EPA test cycle, and by something like a fraction of a percent, translating into an actual emission of nitrogen oxides that could probably be measured in pounds per year. The group of bureaucrats who worked out that part of the Tier had said quite prominently that one of their goals was to compel use of SCR/DEF on locomotives. They would not either revise the numbers the slight amount required, nor grant a waiver, and EMD lost many millions of revenue as a direct result.

At almost any time, an activist-supported EPA could impose either pollution or carbon restrictions on operating steam locomotives that would make them inpractically expensive, or impossible, to run. I can't predict when, or if, that will happen, but the kind of activists that would favor it are also those ascendant in affecting democratic voting that would empower them. That's not a political question, it's a heads-up for operating steam preservationists.

The original publicist for the T1 Trust quit cold when he found out about coal-fired emissions from the locomotive. Apparently no one had told him that even the cleanest approach to cofiring with 'torrefied biomass' wasn't going to take the lavish carbon tonnage away. Meanwhile, we now have a ban on axles without visible-rotating-cap AP roller bearings on them... ruling out inside-bearing lead trucks, driver axles, and trailing trucks with doors, if it were consistently applied. There MIGHT be waus to telemeter inside-bearing condition to wayside tracking... but it would have to be negotiated, and there's utterly no guarantee either that permission would be given or that permission, once granted, would persist indefinitely.

I suspect your 'elected officials' either have little concern in these matters or have already 'made up their minds' on how to proceed concerning them. There is also the issue that legislators or Senators in other jurisdictions from yours may not give you the time of day unless you are a voting constituent... or have contributed notably to their war chests.

By now there should be nobody left in this country that still operates under the illusion that the Federal government places any real thought into the laws and regulations that it enacts. We are now firmly in the era of legislating by emotion, ideology and radicalism. When the original Clean Air Act was enacted there still were rational people in government who while wanting to clean the environment, knew that there was a balance to be struck between the environment, the economy and the law of diminishing returns. Those people are now gone, replaced by those who are steeped in ideology, undereducated in the workings of the real world and utterly uninterested in the downstream negative impacts of what they do. Stuck in the middle are those of us who are still trying to do things with three dimensional objects but who do not have the financial wherewithal to ignore physics and reality with the application of cubic dollars.

Our only hope is that we stay far enough in the shadows that we do not attract the attention of some ideologically possessed legislator/bureaucrat and they do not think to slip a wholesale steam locomotive ban into some future rulemaking. The end of coal fired steam in the US may actually come more from a blanket ban of coal use in toto than from something targeting us directly. We could all switch to oil, which may buy us a few more years, but they have their sights on eliminating that as an option as well.

On the brightside, we did a successful steam up of 58 almost entirely on wood a couple of weeks ago. So if need be we can just start clearcutting land to keep running, just like our ancestors did!

And it's statements like that that will prevent you from convincing those people who are in charge that what you're doing deserves a carve out from future regulation.

Why would someone working at the EPA, who you just called "steeped in ideology and undereducated", want to come listen to anything you have to say after you insult them?

In all fairness, the state of our national discussion, or lack thereof, revolves in large part around those temporarily in power repeatedly denigrating and ridiculing approximately half of the electorate in condescending terms, and a corresponding mentality of "Thou shalt, on our orders. . . " instead of "We need to . . ."

Promoting "tribalism" in all walks of society and life has replaced litigation, which itself replaced baseball as the "National Pastime" in America.

I invite you to provide evidence to show that what I said is incorrect.

Pretending that the world is something other than what it truly is will not serve us, and I don't like pretending.

Leaving the qualifications of regulators aside, I see an opportunity here to join forces with other industrial history and preservation entities to collectively carve out a place for us all. Steamboat fans may not care about railways, blacksmiths may not care about traction engines, but we're all affected together by restrictive legislation, and the broadest base of supporters would help us all.

Fortunately England has weather rather than a climate, and while the reservoirs are emptying, we have had enough rain to damp down the fire risk for the time being.

I have had to deal with our local authorities and their environmental officers over here occasionally, so I wish you guys all the luck in dealing with your own regulators. I suspect it is a different political climate, but the councillors appreciate the business we bring into town and the environmental people have other things to do - provided we can marshall a case to show we are being reasonable and working with them, but if someone makes a complaint then they have a job to do. A little gentle education perhaps on both sides, is appreciated.

I have to admit there was an occasion when we overstepped the mark, someone fired up a smokey diesel on a winter morning and blotted out the neighborhood, and we make sure not to do that again....the general attitude of the complainers, and there are not many, is that they don't like diesels, but they do like steam engines, which smell much nicer. We also promised not to use angle grinders on Sunday afternoons unless it was unavoidable and everyone who mattered was satisfied.

There is one chap who would like the railway to be ripped up and made into a footpath; nothing we ever do will please him, but we own the railway freehold, and operate under parliamentary authority. He remains in a minority of one, touch wood.

Some time ago I posted that the total UK heritage railway coal consumption is 25,000 tons per year. Add in all the other heritage steam and the total is 35,000 tons, about 0.02 percent of UK carbon emission. To put it another way, the total coal consumption on our railway is about 125 tons per year, I am told this is the equivalent of one return holiday jet flight from London to Miami. However, UK barbecue charcoal production is 90,000 tons per year, and charcoal is a much dirtier fuel, made by cutting down trees. I never heard of anyone trying to ban charcoal; what are the equivalent US figures? You might like to have them to hand.

At the risk of creating screaming and yelling, I have to say I'm seeing climate change as real.

I've been living in the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia for over 40 years. I can tell you things have changed.

We don't get winters like we used to--and we don't get snowfall like we did, either. (That's a serious matter for the people around here who rely on groundwater--wells, and we still have a lot who do). Some years we never see snow at all, just rain.

I'm seeing windstorms that are stronger and longer than they used to be.

I'm not seeing as many flying bugs as I used to. That's in some ways a relief--car windshields here often looked pretty bad even after short trips--but also realize other animals, such as birds and bats, live on those bugs. Their disappearance means something is changing, and it's not likely to be all that good.

Finally, I'm getting daffodils coming up in February.

I'm not sure I'd take this lightly--either as a general issue that we need to face, nor the possibility that someone will make a big stink about steam engines that are essentially no problem because they are so few.

****************************************************
At the risk of drifting this thread, I'll add something else that I don't see too often.

Right now we've had some issues with high oil prices, and as a result high gasoline prices.

What boils my brain and raises my blood pressure to where it should blow a safety valve with a roar like that from 611 is the lack of historical perspective. This is only the fourth time we've been in this fix in just under 50 years.

The other times were 1973 (first Arab-OPEC--Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries--oil embargo because we supported Israel in the Yom Kippur war), 1979 (a second Arab-OPEC oil embargo), 2007-2008 (I don't think the cause of this was actually determined, but it was the gust of wind that blew down the house of cards that was the housing business), and today, 2022 (which is partially caused by us supporting another country in a war against a larger oil country which doesn't particularly like us).

I think it's safe to say we have had and still have a national security issue on our hands, and it hasn't been dealt with for almost 50 years.

And it hasn't been dealt with because too many of us didn't want to get serious about it in 1973, 1979, 2007-2008, and still not in 2022.

There are different ways to do so. We had a lowered national speed limit which helped, we made big improvements in cars that wouldn't have happened without things like a fuel economy standard (and now we have electric cars that will help).

And we could use an alternative to driving so damned much, like passenger trains.

Don't let some tell you we can't do that, that America is too big. The European Union isn't small, and a lot of its rail traffic is international (which, given the size of the countries, would be the equivalent of interstate here). We have multiple corridors in this country that have population densities per mile at least as high as anything in Europe.

I would even say those 1973 and 1979 oil crunches are part of why we still have Amtrak. Those two events made people start looking at passenger trains as alternatives to driving and flying.

What does all this have to do with rail preservation?

Well, it might help keep some routes open, it might make rail travel more acceptable, and some of that could even be with heritage railways. I can't help but think of how Durango & Silverton, White Pass & Yukon and others are the only way into some parts of the country. I'm reminded of how Strasburg is also a freight hauler, sometimes behind steam.

We do need some overhaul of our capitalist system, which has been dumbed down to being about money only; I think we may want to start calling it "Potterism," for the villain of "It's a Wonderful Life."

It wasn't always like that. There was a time when a factory would be built in brick and the name would be set in stone in the front wall. A smokestack may have had the company name in white tiles set into the red brick--something else that wasn't going anywhere as long as the stack was there.

Business owners, for all their ferocity, also saw themselves as being part of the community, and wanted to be in good standing, or at least look like they were.

We saw this in our industry, in the big stations that were meant to impress. It wasn't necessary to spend that money, but it was done. The reasons cited, and others, are why. No large company will do anything like that today.

Today a business might be in a pole barn with tin siding and a plastic sign. The plastic sign is the most important part, because the names change. You might start out five years back with ABC Inc., and two year ago you'd be looking at XYC Co., and last week the plant was sold to PFFFTT, LLC, which is closing up shop and moving everything to China.

Lower labor cost, you know. Gotta keep the stockholders happy. Everybody else--employees, the public, even customers--are second class citizens.

And it's not limited to the hedge fund and Wall Street dominated managements of the rail industry. It's about anything of any size these days with the same bunch of short sighted, profits at all costs moneymen who dominate our system today.

The Chinese have a proverb, that "Fire is a good servant but a bad master." I think we will find the same thing about money.

Sorry about the rant, but I've had this stuff on my mind for some time now. . .and it's what I see.

Hopefully we'll still be able to celebrate railroading's past as well as a viable future.