Waste oils are cleaned to various standards depending on what is required by the end users. A centrifuge removes some of the metals then heating will drive out some of the water and water borne chemicals. centrifuges are built by delaval, alpha Laval and can be found for about 1000$. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FS2zy-0ujoc

Not only can it be done, it can be done so well that there's a brisk resale market in the stuff. Even used cooking oil, which home biodiesel hobbyists used to source for free, now averages (according to two reliable sources here in town) $1.50-1.75 a gallon to the seller, assuming certain conditions are met. And this is before any processing, refining, transport, etc.

So why go through all this work to avoid stopping at the diesel fuel racks, unless you're specifically using "green fuel" or "smell the French fries!" as a marketing hype/gimmick?

What we seem to have here is a solution in search of a problem.

I laid out earlier how UP handled their fuel issues. How it worked well until someone tried to "fix" the non-existant "problem", and as predicted, caused problems. Returning to what worked for 25 years solved the new problems. The moral is, if it's working well, LEAVE IT ALONE.

UP has available to it the people and tech information to convert any steam loco from coal to oil or oil to coal. They need only make use of it, rather than run around searching for "solutions" The people who converted 3985 are still around, if kicked the curb.

The 2100 was a great object lesson that shows what can happen when some nimrod
gets what he thinks is a better idea and is determined to show everyone else how much smarter he is than they are.

UP experimented for a while with a new exhaust system on 3985, and gave it enough of a chance and made enough tweaks and adjustments to it that in the end, they had to throw up their hands and admit it was never going to live up to the endless hype that surrounds it. On a smaller locomotive or on a large one that had been engineered from the ashpans up for this system, it might be great. But in this case it wasn't, and it didn't cost much to give it a try. No steam engines were harmed in these tests.

This is not rocket science. There is no need to make it more complicated than it is. The very idea of new, exotic designs to allow the locomotive top burn diesel is a non-starter for a number of reasons.

In the first place, these things run only a handful of times a year. Withe testing and tweaking that would be required, how many years would it take to get something as good as you have now?

Second, why would you want to convert to a more expensive fuel in the first place?

Third, how long would it take for this exercise to generate any kind of ROI? I'm betting it never would.

Fourth, everyone seems to have lost sight of the fact this is 2014, not 1954. The engines are not going to run every day. They are not going to be pulling heavy trains on steep grades. Nobody has anything to prove. They are in a VERY low-demand service now, not only in terms of how often they run, but how hard they have to work when they do run. Which, in reality, is seldom very hard or for very long periods.

The 4005 was expected to run every day, pulling fast but heavy freight. That ain't going to happen today. 4014 will never pull anything heavier than about 20 passenger cars.
4005 was also handicapped by the lack of oil facilities at proper intervals for such service.
4014 will always have a truckload of oil just a cell phone call away. And it will always (under the steam current management, anyway) have at least one diesel. Probably two.
Whether necessary or not. There will be no putting the train away and cutting and running for fuel.

Diesel, propane or distilled moonbeams work fine where they are available and where the locomotives are small enough and the demands are such that those fuels fit the bill. I'm not criticizing those operations. But there is a huge difference in what those engines do and what a huge, engine running on highly congested main lines MUST do.

Its about like the Little Joe at IRM, it ran on 600 volts, just half speed...

You have to ask the ultimate question, do you want the engine to perform at its rated specs as is was meant to tackle sherman hill? This would guarantee the engine is in ship shape and the oil burner is not at issue. You might want to give the engine some freight tests, this was done with 765. 765 passed with flying colors (not an oil burner).

You could easily have a secondary tender to hold the fuel oil or a tank car, (or an oil tank using its water bunker for more water)
and or maybe the coal bunker outfitted with an oil tank (leaving the coal mechanisms intact -just in case-) maybe place fake coal on top...hardee har

[quote="mjanssen"][quote

"the pistons/rings/cylinders were in poor condition, likely attributable to the lay-up fluid placed in the superheaters which continually bled-out over the winter and actually seized the engines up on more than one occasion "

Could you tell us about your quoted statement. What lay up fluid was put into the units. How did it leak out of the units and into the cylinders. If this is an anti corrosive placed into the units then how did it seize the pistons and rings?

3985 has Type E superheater units, which are hard to layup. They were unsuccessful their dry layup method and tried a wet layup on the units using a chemical in barrels - don't remember what it was. They removed the throttle valves to put it in, and filled it to the top. Every time it got warm in the shop, the fluid would spill over in the throttle box, and dribble through the valves & cylinders. It acted like floor cleaner - I don't know what it was - washed the oil out of the valves and cylinders and flash-rusted them. The locomotive would sit in place most of the time through the winter. On a number of occasions they had to bang into it pretty hard with the 96 and another occasion when the rods were off had to pull the heads and stab the pistons loose with a forklift. My take from it was the need to do a more aggressive blow-out when it was hotter and lay the units up dry - but there are crew/ hours of service constraints that make this difficult. Anyway, oil-arounds before a move were not done so the valve/cylinder conditions would get worse every year and the superheater layup fluid accelerated it.

Bob,
I don't know what they used, but if you have ever spilled automotive type antifreeze on steel you get that same flash rust effect, yet antifreeze is a corrosion inhibitor in a fully filled system with an expansion tank(little or no exposure to air).

Mike Tillger

Then I would suspect that the wrong additive is being used. There is no way to not have oxygen present in a superheater.throttle unless a nitrogen blanket were applied. if there is leakage then the units were overfilled allowing the liquid into the throttle and then down into the delivery pipes. There are other preservatives that will work better.

Some years ago I heard that the units were pumped full of diesel oil. Don't know how true this was or how it would be reclaimed prior to steaming the locomotive.

They were reportedly using a soluble oil, which would mix with water trapped in the units and not separate, as would putting diesel fuel into the units, where trapped water would simply stay in the units.

Type E units are impossible to completely dry out, unless you can bake them dry with low heat applied for weeks. That was one of the downfalls of E unit equipped locomotives when they were in regular service. If a traffic downturn forced locomotive into storage for any significant amount of time, they would almost always need unit repairs befoe they could be put back in service.

Others use water treated with the same products used to treat the cooling water in diesel locomotives, which has plenty of corrosion inhibitors in it. As long as the locomotive spends it's winters inside where there is no chance of freezeup, that should work.

Type E units had other troubles as well, the L&N ended up shortening them on their M1 class 2-8-4s, as they had a tendency to develop leaks at the bends in the firebox end of the locomotive.

The second order of UP 4-8-8-4s had Type A units, if I remember correctly.

As did the 5th order for 4-6-6-4's and the 3rd order of 4-8-4's.

I have a copy of the UPHS DVD of the UP drawings for these locomotives, and you can clearly see where they had to shorten the Type E units on the 4-8-8-4 1s not once, but several times to counteract the same problem L&N had.

IMO, Type E's were supposed to increase superheat temps, superheat capacity, and efficiency, usually meaning saving coal, water, or both. One has to wonder, when the higher first cost of E over the A type is considered, plus the higher maintenance costs and greater downtime on the E is considered, the cost of the unique fixtures and jigs to repair them and the extra labor required to simply manhandle the things in and out of a locomotive, if the small savings in coal was worth it.

The corrosion inhibitors in Auto antifreeze are activated when mixed with water. Straight antifreeze should never be used. I think the freeze point may be lower in a mix even. I know the heat transfer is improved mixed.

Bob D.

The UP converted 4005 to burn oil in 1946. At the start there were problems due to spot heating of the burner. It was adjusted. The SP&S 4-6-6-4 and the WP 2-8-8-2 had a firebox that was the same size as the UP 4-8-8-4. They had no problems burning oil and the SP&S challengers were very efficient. The UP did adjust the burner and tinkered with the locomotive until it worked well. If it had not then it would not have been an oil burner for two years.