North Yorkshire Moors Railway General Discussion

But, what really matters is how many passengers its use prevent from walking away - unfortunately, a metric that is very hard to measure.....

 

Grosmont coaling tower was largely built in house under the direction of Peter Smeaton. It is a valuable piece of kit; locos can receive several tons of coal in less than a minute, whereas coaling a tender with a bucket loader is a time consuming job. It comes into its own with tank locos that have to come on shed for a top up during the day as it has a minimal effect on the T/T. Although operation of the tower is usually done by the duty fitter, if needs be the crew can do the job.

 

The tender as converted to carry oil.
There isn't much available data for cold pressed oil consumption, however comparable oil data and the bulk cp rapeseed prices suggest a cost per mile considerably more than your quoted figure, as I understand it future resilience and summer use are the justification rather than pure cost per mile. Standard heavy fuel is cheaper.
NYMR conundrum as ever.

 

In general it seems undesirable to use any kind of oil as fuel that could be used as food. Used cooking oil is another matter. Even if you are going to use fresh rapeseed oil, why cold pressed?

 

Basic thermodynamics. Whilst heat transfer in the boiler is reasonably efficient the open steam cycle used in a locomotive is horribly inefficient. A diesel engine has an efficiency in the order of 30% to 40% then there are transmission losses. A steam locomotive is lucky to make 4% on a good day. In simple terms 96% of the heat generated from the fuel goes straight up the chimney. Oil was burned in steam locos where it could be obtained cheaply. The Festiniog burned old motor oil. Environmental regulations no longer allow this. The NYMR is burning oil so steam can be run in hot, dry weather without burning down the National Park. The cost differentials and benefits will have been number-crunched before the job started but the reality will not be apparent until running data is available. Perhaps a paper will be read to the Institute of Locomotive Engineers on the subject. ( Are they still in being?)

 

From the Science Museum website:

 

Using diesel may cost, idk, £500 more per day but if the result is a guaranteed steam journey with 2253, the trip it will pay for itself. Using a class 37 could put off 50 to 100 or more people a day.

 

The hard bit is quantifying how many people actually are put off by specifically that (as opposed to just conditionally complaining (ie "I was never going to go, but if I was, I would be put off by it"), people who didn't go on that day for other reasons (like it being stupidly hot)).

Cost of any product when a minority user is often skewed by general availability. I read somewhere (so potentially not true) that HMS Belfast was running on diesel at the end as there was nothing else using the bunker oil it could run on, so the cost of maintaining the infrastructure wasn't worth it.

Perhaps there needs to be a chippy at Grosmont and a pump from there into the oil-fired loco.

 

It would have to be an industrial-sized chippy! - but then, someone would probably competing to turn the waste into biodiesel?

 

[Insert stereotypical scotsperson's diet joke here]
Yes, spent cooking oil from your own resources isn't going to do all of it, but if it costs nothing, I'd imagine keeping it probably net cheaper than selling it and buying the equivalent fuel oil in.

 

According to AI reading the telegraph
"A typical British fish and chip shop (chippy) discards about 100 to 200 litres (roughly 20 to 40 gallons) of waste cooking oil per week."

Assume you burn oil 6 weeks a year, and the chippy runs all year, then that's say 4,600 litres (920 gallons) of oil that could be accrued. A non-trivial ammount.

 

How do you think 34081's middle valve gear got lubricated?

 

Obviously it will use more but there is the learning curve to consider anyone who has spent time on the footplate of a decent size oil burner in traffic cannot help but be impressed with the amount of skill involved.
It would not be surprising if the factor of 4 also applies to the coal comparison in terms of cost.

 

Bearing in mind the tender capacity that is on the trivial side surely ? without considering the need to treat the waste oil and the additive required to facilitate its use which even then is not a quality fuel oil.

 

RFAs were still running on what the MOD called "FFO" (Furnace Fuel Oil) in the 1980s - we bunkered several of them, including motorships, in the Falklands up until 1986 from the ship I was serving in, m.v."Scottish Eagle", and probably for several years after that. So it was still available well after HMS Belfast was retired.

Having said that, you can always run engines & boilers designed for black oils on diesel/MGO, just not the other way round...

Mark

 

How is it marketed though? My mother absolutely loves 821, 1013,15 and 62 at the SVR because she remembers them as a kid going through West Bromwich when they were Red, she was asking me about 20048 the other day and as soon as I gave her a bit of history she was rather intrigued. I’ve found that when you explain to people this is loco X built in Y and it’s an older than Evening Star built in 1960 people will understand the difference.
FFS! Front of house staff really need /should be able to give a potted history about what’s on the front of the train.

Nobody's expecting Chapter and Verse but a little bit of something like ‘this is 37688 built in 1964 and it’s currently in the livery of when it used to haul stone trains from Buxton in the Peak District’
When you explain little bits and pieces like that, people to be a bit more understanding.

 

The last ship in the navy to use FFO was the Royal Yacht. It was converted to MGO (Marine Gas Oil)/ F76 ( NATO Standard Distillate Diesel) during a refit in Late 82/Early 83.

 

Is the Esk Valley Line and Grosmont Tunnel able to accept standard ISO containers? I understand our coal in Kent is mostly imported via Immingham