Some Railroad News

[davesnow]

‘Pollutants’ from BNSF locomotives in rail yard called ‘outrageous’ by Lincoln neighborhood residents

Smoke and steam billowing from locomotives parked at BNSF Railway’s maintenance yard near West 39th Street has some residents worried about what’s ending up in their air.

www.columbian.com

 

[Forester1]

Yeah, it's a little bit tougher to notice the hundreds of trucks rolling by on Interstate 5 every day between Seattle-Tacoma and Portland. It would be interesting to actually do a study and compare tonnages. That and this is in the area of the Columbia Gorge, where the prevailing winds should dissipate things fairly quickly. And, between Portland and Vancouver/Seattle I am sure there is a fair bit of automotive pollution as well. But the guy you see is the guy you blame. And try starting a mile-long train out of the yard without blowing a little exhaust.

 

[pware]

And try starting a mile-long train out of the yard without blowing a little exhaust.

You can do that with EV locos - and better still, do it with power coming from renewable energy sources, even solar panels mounted on the loco roof - see solar-powered-train-makes-its-first-run

 

[Forester1]

Well, yes, but what is the range? Out west it could be a while between charging stations and a mile-long train is going to take how many locos? Over how many passes? I know, once the infrastructure is built out it should not be much different from Diesel stops, but I don't think they are there yet.

 

[OddRails]

I like your thinking pware. The more a vehicle can sit in the sun and recharge, would help a lot. It's really difficult to generate high levels of power with panels over a vehicle.

I'm familiar with some 44" x 68" panels that generate 420 watts under normal conditions. Let's cheat a little and say our loco is 11' x 99.3'. That's 51 of these fairly efficient panels. So 51 x 420 = 21,420 watts.
Online sources say a horsepower is 745.7 watts. So 21,420 / 745.7 = 28.72 horsepower.

That number is far below what we'd hope for. You'd have to cover every car in a train, but I don't know how well that would work.

I keep scheming about equipping supertankers with solar. Even perhaps pontoon boats on a lake. I've never tried to work the numbers. It's a lovely idea, but the numbers are difficult.

 

[JCitron]

It's NIMBYs. If this was a truck lot, there would be no complaints about it. Up over the New Hampshire border, residents in Atkinson came out against a proposed train stop 2 miles away in Plaistow. The reason? The trains might smell and make noise. The residents didn't want to hear the diesel locomotives idle between trips and put some barely visible or stinky exhaust into the air.

If people were so concerned about locomotives spewing soot, then the railroads should be encouraged to electrify their lines as they are in other countries. The problem is the government and big corporations don't want to put a penny into that kind of infrastructure and when we did have that it was removed. Conrail did that to the Pennsylvania and New Haven by killing off the electric locomotives in favor of diesels. We can still see empty catenary poles on parts of the Pennsy lines around Philadelphia and Trenton on the Trenton cutoff as well as in the many yards along the railroads.

The thing is, even when offered the chance to keep electric service in place, management balked as was done by the Milwaukee Road in the 70s when there came a time when the old electric service was in need of upgrading and replacing. Instead of taking the government up on an offer to assist the company with upgrading and connecting the two disparate sections together, along with GEs offer for special deals on locomotives, the company scoffed at it and ripped the wires down, and replaced the electrics with diesels.

 

[pware]

I keep scheming about equipping supertankers with solar. Even perhaps pontoon boats on a lake. I've never tried to work the numbers. It's a lovely idea, but the numbers are difficult.

Here in Sydney we had a solar powered ferry running on the harbour about 10 years ago. It was a small ferry and the roof and sides were covered with solar panels. I don't know why it was withdrawn from service but back then solar panels were more expensive and less efficient that those we can get today.

 

[pware]

The more a vehicle can sit in the sun and recharge, would help a lot. It's really difficult to generate high levels of power with panels over a vehicle.

Your post reminded me of an article in the April 2024 edition of a railway journal I subscribe to (Railway Digest published by the Australian Railway Historical Society). Despite its origin (an historical society) it covers all the latest news in the Australian railway industry. One article touched on this topic:-

On Friday 8 March Aurizon [a major freight rail operator] announced that it had secured a $9.4 million grant from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) to develop, test and trial a battery electric tender to be used in conjunction with a modified locomotive. The tender – essentially a big battery-pack on wheels – will couple with a modified locomotive to operate as a hybrid unit using both diesel and battery-electric power sources. The tender’s battery will also harness re-generative energy captured as the train travels down grades and brakes as part of normal operation.

So progress towards totally renewable power in the rail industry is being made.

 

[Bob_Ross]

Some things I noticed while reading...

The article isn't very good, is it? The person being interviewed was not the right choice to present this problem. I could see how the conditions around tacoma/seattle might create soot that gets on homes or creates a sort of smog effect, like in Los Angeles. But using words like outrageous to describe locomotive exhaust and pretending it's mysterious when in reality it actually isn't, pushes the whole issue into the realm of ridiculous.

The word is egregious, by the way, not outrageous. It's a locomotive, not a clown car.

Anyway, about the hp/wattage discussion, what if they decided to use yard space to do it? I'm thinking along the lines of large solar panel awnings, like what you see in newer parking lots and parking garages.

They're technically already hybrid engines, it's just a matter of engineering, isn't it? Can't be that hard to slap a Pantagraph on a SD70ace.

I'll see myself out.

 

[JCitron]

Some things I noticed while reading...

The article isn't very good, is it? The person being interviewed was not the right choice to present this problem. I could see how the conditions around tacoma/seattle might create soot that gets on homes or creates a sort of smog effect, like in Los Angeles. But using words like outrageous to describe locomotive exhaust and pretending it's mysterious when in reality it actually isn't, pushes the whole issue into the realm of ridiculous.

The word is egregious, by the way, not outrageous. It's a locomotive, not a clown car.

Anyway, about the hp/wattage discussion, what if they decided to use yard space to do it? I'm thinking along the lines of large solar panel awnings, like what you see in newer parking lots and parking garages.

They're technically already hybrid engines, it's just a matter of engineering, isn't it? Can't be that hard to slap a Pantagraph on a SD70ace.

I'll see myself out.

I don't think it's difficult to do. The New Haven Railroad did it in the early 1950s with an F9 to create the FL9. Instead of pantograph going up, the engine put a shoe on top of the third rail.

The article... of course, they're going to use sensational egregious wording to report something on railroads. If this was a truck depot, not a word would be said about it. As I said, NIMBYs came out and complained that commuter trains might smell and make noise and came out in numbers to stop the service. The residents would rather spend 3 hours each way in horrific traffic commuting rather than relax on the train.