Al, thank you for sharing the information on the WRM exhibit. I hope you will let us know how it turns out and how your visitors react to seeing it.

PC

And that thinking is wrong. Because it presumes that TODAY's power mix will remain the same for the service life of the investment. That is astonishingly unlikely.

Just look at 20 years at Rio Vista Junction. In 1991, UP was holding the Sacramento Northern track for a planned coal plant to be built at Montezuma. Flash forward 20 years. The rail line is surrounded by windmills, 300 megawatts just in two farms alone, and that's nearly the size of a coal plant. And many more wind farms in the wind resource area. Today coal is 2% of northern California's power mix. No misprint. 47% is natural gas, 20% nuke, 16% large hydro and 15% renewable other than large hydro.

What's the service life of an electrification project? 100 years? We can't even guess at where power will come from then; no more than a man from 1911 could foresee nuclear and geothermal.

It is funny many compare a 1940's steam locomotive to a 2010 diesel-electric.

The primary difference between locomotives is if one chooses to make power on-site or off-site.

Locomotives which are propelled by off-site energy conversion are often coal-fired steam electric. Nuclear, biomass, whatever is still steam electric. Hydro electric is well established.

All but the later can be applied on-site - the question is economics and practicality - the hardware already exists.

The diesel engine is an interesting one in that much energy has already been used in creating and delivering the fuel for it. If one considers all the skills, labor processes, and infrastructure required for its creation it is not that impressive a result. Would you rather harvest food from your garden to eat or go to a fast food restaurant. The contemporary answer is the later, but it is not likely the healthy and sustainable one.

A secondary difference is whether electric propulsion is used. I think there are enough advantages to justify it in a steam application as it narrows the RPM range and cushions the load on the prime mover.

A steam locomotive design that trumps the diesel electric will be no more similar to its 1940's version than the current diesel to its 1940's version.

I have come to the conclusion that in not too many years, most preserved steam operations (and probably many diesel ones) are going to have to find ways to burn some kind of bio-fuel, just because of local political and residential demand. I would strongly suggest that your local non-profit museum or tourist operation look into locking up the waste cooking oil resources in your surrounding area. Xterra had it right with the Grand Canyon RR. It may smell like french fries going down the tracks, but at least the steam still occasionally runs.

Going back to the question about electric locomotives....
We have a hands-on exhibit about generating electricity as part of a larger exhibit on the impact of electric power and street railways in the development of communities. Looking at the original question we have also shown the GE 1950s promotional film "Going Places", which stressed the fact that even in the 1950s transportation planning focused on moving automobiles (roads and highways) and not on moving people (mass transportation). But nothing yet on the efficiency of electricity vs oil as a source of power.

Wesley

I just posted this as an idea to consider for how museums can help achieve the "educational" portion of their mission by relating the experiences of the past to current energy and environmental issues. It seems appropriate with the discussion of the GG1 that is currently running. Future increases in the price of oil fuels have been a consideration in recent locomotive procurements by some commuter agencies, and I understand the issue was studied by NJ Transit as one of the factors in their decision to pursue dual mode locomotives.

PC

Seriously. Most museums I know already collect(ed) used motor oil, for oiling switches, using in oil-fired steamers etc. So why not do the same with collecting oil from every restaurant and turkey fryer in their region. For one thing, YOU GET MORE OIL because the typical car takes 5 quarts and the typical fryer takes 5 gallons.

Besides, used motor oil is toxic as hell, and the air quality/water quality people got wind of how you used it, you'd have a lawsuit faster than you could say Jack Robinson. environmental people would brit shicks if they knew what you were doing with it. Whereas, using fryer oil for the same thing, they just would not care at all.

Just as a biofuel primer, the typical junk fryer oil from the bin behind the restaurant has four key differences from diesel fuel:
1. Particulates (bits of french fry).
2. Viscosity. Straight vegetable oil resembles bunker, not diesel.
3. Acidity. Can corrode fuel system parts if they are not acid-resistant.
4. Water content (see: acidity).

For diesel-automobile application (which is pretty fastidious) there are well-understood "gold standard" ways of dealing with each difference. Those may not be necessary, or important, in your application. But if they are, the curatives are (in corresponedence):

1. Filtering
4. Preheating, dual-fuel start-stop, or transesterification, a simple chemical process involving methanol as reactant (making water an issue) and lye (making acidity an issue).
3. Titrate and wash, flowing water through it.
4. Separate, or heat or pull vacuum to boil off water.

Electricity is not a primary source of energy - it is a secondary source, and as such, can come from many different primary sources of energy. A secondary source of energy has gone through a transformation which has an efficiency in itself.

Oil is also a secondary source of energy, and can come from virgin crude or reclaimed materials.

I don't see how generalizations of oil vs electricity as a source of power (for a locomotive?) can be drawn. It requires complex analysis as the SNCF did in the 1950's or South African Railways did in the 1980's. It is a matter of the energy source, the equipment, and the location to be used (transportation/transmission efficiencies) among many other factors.

The complex analysis you claim is required is actually impossible. There are too many variables that we can't predict over 20 years, let alone over the service life of an electrification. Can you say how these things will be working 20 years hence? Price of oil, stability in the middle east, China, Africa, algae-biofuel, dispatching load, nukes. Too many questions and uncertainties. At the end of the day, you can run a diesel under wire, but you can't run an electric under no wire.

I believe an operating electric locomotive with no wire is known as a "slug."

These studies have been done with success- sometimes with a weighing political factor making the decision.

Business management is all about modeling, and most models are dynamic in that they move forward through time as real data is added to the model. Railroads certainly use this in track maintenance and capacity planning, etc. When they are right, it results in economic profits.

What we are faced with today is that people take it as an act of God that a form of motive power has certain unchangeable attributes, when in-fact the only set variable for conventional rail locomotives is the flanged wheel.

There is advocacy for electrifying U.S. freight railroads as a publicly financed endeavor for the purpose of pursuing a non-oil society. This would be an entirely different economic model than the private sector model that is continually evaluating electrification.

The objective of the public sector electrification would be to take most (80%) long haul trucking off of the highways and put it on rail. Another part of the objective is to generate all the needed electricity by renewable energy and use many of the railroad right of ways as transmission line corridors.

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/4301

I still think it would easier to move the current diesel transportation like railroads and trucks to biofuels,as there are less of them by a wide margin than gasoline powered cars and light trucks.. If the cost of maintenance wasn't an issue, the amount of coal reserves in the USA would make going back to steam engines a non issue where peak oil is concerned, especially if oil is priced so high that the labor to maintain the steam engines was cheaper than burning oil in a diesel.

The greens would have fits though...

We could save almost as much oil by simply putting the truck traffic on diesel electric hauled trains......while we then contemplate the best prospects for overhead electrification.

dave

What I have referenced above is not a free market economic decision to electrify. Cost reduction would not be the motive. The motive is the reduction of greenhouse gases and the creation of a “non-oil” society. The scope of the project would be transformational and require unutterable cost for new investment in power generation and distribution infrastructure.

This would be publicly funded in the national interest. Perhaps this investment would reduce the cost of transportation over time, but surely not at the outset. But, in any event, cost reduction is not the point. To be clear, this proposal is the “compact fluorescent light bulb” of transportation. Trains magazine ran an article in their 11/2009 issue called Wired Up by Scott Lothes.

Here is another link to the national transportation proposal by Rail Solutions:

http://www.railsolution.org/

This may become a "hot" issue relatively soon with the current friction between the US and Iran. Some economists are predicting gas prices could be in excess of $5 a gallon early this summer.

PC