Railway urged to go green

Railway bosses are urged to go green - Local News - Matlock Mercury

...and put little wind turbines on top of signal posts?

 

And steam locos to burn biomass (logs):fencing:

 

all I can say is...
******
You can guess

 

Bloody hippies....

 

Watermelons. (Green on the outside, red in the middle.)

So .... we have a fuel (bio-diesel) that will probably damage your engine if you use it neat. So we want you to use 5% mix at first, then if that doesn't do any harm move to 10%, and keep increasing the mix until it does damage your engine. Yeah, right.

 

Well why I agree this does sound very much some interfering ar#e, preseved railway will proberley get asked to do this more and more...

Whats produces more CO2 by the way? Steam loco or diesel?

 

As I recall, one of the problems with using bio-mass fuel in a heritage railway context is that it deteriorates quite rapidly when stored. On a heritage railway - even one like the EVR where diesel traction is used regularly - fuel is going to sit, in loco, DMU and storage tanks, for far longer than say in a Bus depot or ordinary household car.

This, as I see it, would be the main reason against using such a fuel on a heritage railway. Green is good PR these days and can (sometimes, only sometimes) work out cheaper. But I think the problems outweigh such benefits in this instance.

 

Hmm, how about putting a nice little nuclear reactor in the firebox and using the tender water tank to cool the spent fuel rods.
no more nasty greenhouse gasses, nice and Eco friendly and all the neighbours fields will be glowing green at night saving the need for street lights.

 

I wonder how true that really is? I wonder, for instance, how many people visit an attraction because it claims to be "green" who would not have visited otherwise? Yes, "green" ticks some officialdom boxes but out in the real world I'm not so sure. In fact I personally am put off by claims of greenness and sustainability, I equate them with "more expensive" and/or "doesn't work".

It also seems to me that if recycling is green then re-using must be greener, and you can't get much greener than preserving ancient locos etc - much better surely than building new leisure parks etc. Our "carbon footprint" (another off-putting term in my case) as a hobby must be pretty low compared to some.

 

I don't know the specifics of whether biodiesel is suitable for us, but my preferred approach to the wider issue is to acknowledge that heritage railways do cause some pollution, but point out that so do many other leisure activities, and that we are a tiny proportion of the total. (One is entitled to one's own opinion, but not to one's own facts. How much pollution a given activity emits is a fact; whether it should be allowed to take place despite that pollution is an opinion.)

Some estimates I made in an earlier thread:

(Those estimates didn't include diesels, but given their higher efficiency their contribution is probably several times lower still.)

 

I'm thinking more about the sort of people that you will find at the younger end of the visitor spectrum - young families and suchlike, which make up a substantial proportion of visitor numbers to all attractions. Amongst the younger generation - my generation - green is still 'in' and generally carries a respect. You only have to look at the success of places such as the Centre for Alternative Technology near Machynlleth - which the Corris is pushing toward to boost visitor numbers - and the Eden project, for example. Whilst I agree that the green credentials will move only a tiny percentage of people to visit or not visit especially, they will engender in those who do choose to visit a respect, I think. Looking at it the other way - if an attraction were proudly advertising that it never recycles, never uses sustainable sources, takes a pleasure in wasting things - its visitor numbers would undoubtedly drop!

 

Green is good. Lined Brunswick, for preference.

I'll get my coat...

Roger

 

Dont you mean Dark Green?

 

Biofuels aren't energy efficient. It costs more energy to grow the crop in terms of (a) fertiliser and (b) various transport costs than you get out at the end.

 

If you regard CO2 as a pollutant than every animal on the planet is polluting it by being alive. I don't think running a few dozen steam engines on any given day adds much to the mix.

 

What has yet to be noted on this thread is the compatability issue between biodiesel (more correctly known as Fatty-acid methyl ester or FAME) and the fuel system on most older vehicles. In particular, copper or copper alloys (eg Tugnum) will act as a catalyst for the oxidation of the fuel. The upshot of this oxidation is a nasty black sludge which blocks fuel filters in very short order. The degree of toleration a system has for FAME is linked to how much copper is present. For example, a Class 67 has been run on 100% FAME - which is a modern loco with a modern fuel system. Try running (say) a conventional DMU with a fuel system largely plumbed in copper on FAME and trouble will quickly follow. There is also the matter of differing levels of lubricity between mineral diesel and FAME - it is little appreciated how important this is in diesels. I am sure Ecclesbourne's expert appreciates all of this and has advised them acordingly.

 

I wonder if F1 is urged to go green...

Or how about football.. What happened to the days of footexs ? Instead of hundreds of coach loads.

 

Of course they are. F1 is developing green tech like KERS, heat-energy recovery, and from memory, the forthcoming engine changes are environmentally based (re-introduction of turbos etc.).

They've apparently also aggressively reducing carbon emissions from the supporting shenanigans (travel, research etc. - a quick Google suggests that only 0.3% of carbon emissions from F1 are from the actual racing).

Simon

 

Still there's rather a large DHL carbon footprint from the 40 odd in and outbound freighter flights associated with each race.. It's not new planes used for these either.