The Cost Savings of Steam Today.

[NW Mailing List]

Group:

I have just finished a 2+ year project comparing the economics of the diesel
locomotive and the modern steam locomotive.  The following is an excerpt
from my paper:

"A coal-fueled locomotive could achieve a 64.2% average cost savings over
the
current petroleum diesel-fueled locomotive. This comparison is based on
ton-miles per
dollar of fuel consumed in calendar year 2006. US Class I railroads burned
4.2 billion
gallons of diesel fuel in 2006, costing $8.1 billion. The dollar value of
coal that would
accomplish the same amount of "work" is only $3.0 billion, according to
calculations.
This is a cost savings of $5.1 billion in the single year of 2006. That is
an incredible
cost savings over the use of diesel fuel, which is largely imported,
compared to coal,
which is mined locally in the US. Those 4.2 billion gallons of diesel fuel
comprise 6.6%
of the nation's diesel fuel use. That quantity of diesel fuel could be
replaced by 72.3
million tons of coal, equivalent to only 6.2% of the 1.16 billion ton yearly
production
of coal."

This modern steam locomotive would be powered by coal and be environmentally
responsible, low maintenance and conform to the needs of railroads today.

If anyone is interested in reading the paper (it is a 100+ page PDF).  I can
ask the moderator to post it for the group.

I hope you find this interesting,

John Rhodes
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://six.pairlist.net/pipermail/nw-mailing-list/attachments/20080110/e1ee87b2/attachment.htm>