The Cost Savings of Steam Today.

[NW Mailing List]

John - good for you and I would also like to see the paper.  
 
How do you address the emissions issue?  When we look at those old photos of J's and A's and Y-6B's there is a whole lot of smoke that was certainly OK in the 50's but today would possibly be looked at more critically by some.
 
Anything that reduces our dependance on foreign oil would be a big plus in my book.
 
Thanks very much for your email!
 
Ed Svitil


Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2008 13:49:33 -0500To: nw-mailing-list at nwhs.orgSubject: The Cost Savings of Steam Today.From: nw-mailing-list at nwhs.orgGroup: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 thecurrent petroleum diesel-fueled locomotive. This comparison is based on ton-miles perdollar of fuel consumed in calendar year 2006. US Class I railroads burned 4.2 billiongallons 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 incrediblecost 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 72.3million tons of coal, equivalent to only 6.2% of the 1.16 billion ton yearly productionof 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
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