Here's a fun fact! Did you know that annually, BBQ's in the UK produce double the amount of carbon emissions as heritage railways? Also, on a side note with regards to wood burning, check out the Mackwell Locomotive company, some very interesting work being done there with regards to sustainable steam engines.
I’m still slightly surprised that with the UK no longer mining coal that railroads haven’t taken a page from US railroads. Multiple steam engines burn oil with more being converted to it. With engines as oil it burns a lot cleaner plus it doesn’t have to be regular oil. The railroad I volunteer on burns used motor oil in our locomotive. Other steam railroads around here use recycled cooking oil from restaurants.
Wow both yourself and JayEmm doing features on environmental issues on a Sunday. We are currently using the Russian coal at the Severn Valley Railway and partnered up with the North Yorks and Gloucester Warwickshire railway and the supplier on getting it imported. I know the bio coal is being trialled on road steam and narrow gauge loco's as those steam engines smokeboxes are small enough to take it. Over lockdown I got involved with some green solutions for the Severn Valley Railway including adding solar panels to the larger buildings on the line like the workshops and carriage shed, swapping some of the P way petrol tools like hedge cutters with battery or run the existing petrol tools onto cleaner Alkalyte based fuels.
The UK is a unique situation. In the US we have a wide range with our wide nation. For a small example the locomotive i am restoring can only operate on Anthractie coal. This coal is found in few places in the world and only in 3 regions in my home state of Pennsylvania. The nearest source less here is a lower grade from wales. The engine was tested on various fuels along with its sisters in the 1940s nothing else worked. So, our locomotive is dependent on solely Anthractie mined here. Some will say its dirty but those who say had only seen bituminous or low grade. In reality the Anthractie coal is smokeless and completes full combustion due to the design of the engine leaving a 99 percent water emissions. Even in its service live you would not see smoke rather exhaust water vapor in the winter. And nothing but a stack of heat in the summer. But with more mines closing and so few left. My only hope is still a 2 hour drive way.
I have a fun fact. Diesel, the man who developed the high compression engine, originally ment for it to run on vegetable oil. Also any 1960s or earlier Diesel engine can run on a mixture of 25:1 gasoline to 10w30 motor oil without any damage or loss of power.
Heating oil works better than most of the stuff out the pumps the bio diesel even at 7% has a habit of collecting mildew and water and kills the injector pump
Sorry, although it's a nice idea, I'm afraid it isn't financially viable. Coal is incredibly expensive to extract, and to maintain cost-effectiveness, it needs to be sold in gargantuan quantities, not enough for all heritage railways to cover.
Fun fact: steam locomotives can burn a very wide variety of fuels and can be "tuned" to burn them very very cleanly! Steam can be sustainable if more folks are wiling to modernize it. Mackwell Locomtive Works is on the right track towards this!
You could always convert the steam locomotives to oil firing, basically burning things like waste oil (whatever is left over after the oil is used for whatever it's used for). Otherwise there's Electric Steam Locomotives but that's only ever really existed once and it's as useful as it sounds. There's indeed a problem with the UK wanting to stop mining coal, with steel and blacksmithing having to work around importing the coal which means burning more the get it, whether from Europe or elsewhere.
The Welsh Highland Garratts were oil fired converted when they came from south Africa but were converted back to coal fired when the Welsh Highland took them on but I don't think it was hugely practical. The bio coal idea will work but it requires larger sizes and quantities for larger loco's running on lines like the Severn Valley Railway, North Yorkshire Moors and mainline excursions. Currently the mainline heritage rail and larger lines have secured a supplier who have urged other railways with larger steam loco's to sign up to be supplied with Russian coal which has been tested and burns cleaner than the current welsh coal and if they can get enough orders they will buy the coal in one huge bulk order rather than order in separate orders. There are ways of minimising burning coal one of which has been discussed at the SVR modifying either the loco's with tenders or my idea I forwarded to them retro fit certain carriages or build a new carriage with batteries and wheel motors to help push the loco's up steep inclines reducing the need to keep putting loads coal into the firebox to build pressure up, the carriage idea would work with all of the various steam locomotives on home fleets and visiting loco's.
Oh i fully expect there to be a push against oil burning the second that the environmentalists feel they have 'won' against coal, at least if some of the ones I have had the displeasure of dealing with are anything to go by. There are loonies who just want all planes grounded, all vehicles stopped and all Co2 production ceased entirely regardless of the consequences and sadly they are the ones who seem to be leading the push to go green at the moment, at least here in Australia.
A nice topic a enjoyable watch. I know that the bure valley has done a successful trail using ecocoal/biomass showing one brand was basically the same as coal and as you said actually ended up cleaner. A lot of lines I have visited are moving to use biodegradable food containers in cafes. I guess you have heard of the talyllyn railway doing the carbon offsetting by planting tree which will one day become a forest in Ireland I think it is.
The trouble is getting the hydrogen in the first place takes a lot of energy. Hydrogen is actually a very inefficient fuel when you take the hydrogen production into account.
You're reminding me of Percy French: "There's a grand clamp of turf on the bog there." Have you heard his song about the West Claire Railway? He was actually sued by the operator.
Excellent, well considered presentation covering many aspects. The fuel situation is probably going to be the biggest technical problem, because as you said, the locos were designed for coal. This problem is not solely that of heritage railways, but also affect enthusiasts of other old vehicles that were designed for particular fuels, coal, petrol, diesel, TVO (tractor vaporising oil) etc. If suitable fuels become unobtainable, then the cherished vehicles end up as static museum pieces or scrap. Aside from the technical problems, I think that the most serious problems are likely to come from eco-freaks like Extinction Rebellion who think whatever damage they do is justified- they have already attacked electric trains, so they would probably consider a steam loco as fair game, no matter how little pollution it actually causes.
I completely agree with what you have said in this your current environmental railway video. I will always support as many railways as possible, I even recycle model trains when I visit a preserved railway in Manchester as I know that the Volunteers who run a little model shop always enjoy when I go as to what I bring them & then what I bring home for my own model railway.
I love how you put some of new Zealand railways in this RUclips video the train class shown is an f class No:13 peveril based in ferrymeed Christchurch, well worth visiting.
You are fast! A video of Eureka and Glenbrook that’s only a day or two old when you post this? Awesome. I’ve seen some tests of biomass pellets, which are designed to act like coal lumps, and hope to see a large scale test in the next few years.
When Oliver Bullied was hired by CIE (equivalent of BR in Ireland) he built a working mainline turf burner. However Ireland had one of the earliest diesalisation processes in Europe. Meaning mainline steam was gone by 1963
CC1 never ran any mainline services, only ever running tests. And suffered from alot of the issues his leader class suffered from. Dieselisation in Ireland was largely due to the coal shortages of the Emergency and the inadequacies of alternatives. Only in the republic though, mainline steam in the North continued into 1970, the last mainline steam in the British Isles. Though as late as 2005 No.3 R. H. Smyth was hired out to contractors for NIR.
Thanks for mentioning Eureka & Glenbrook, they are perhaps the greenest locomotives on the west coast. I've seen coal burners run successfully on wood but you cannot cheep out, High quality and most Importantly DRY hardwoods like oak or almond (in abundance here in California because orchards replant there trees every few years). I burn almond in my 1.5" scale Little Engines American and It produces plenty of steam even with a great area of around 4"x5".
I volunteer at the Great central Railway (GCR) and I do know that they do reliy alot on paid staff because they would struggle otherwise and not get anywhere. I GCR is Great place to visit and work at either as a volunteer work or paid worker. I know thatcthe North Yorkshire Morrs Railway is looking at off setting to help deal with the carbon footprint by planting trees. The 'Heritage Railway Association' is looking at ways to deal with the coal crisis and looking at trying to get the UK government on side and find UK sources of coal.
another interesting thing when you were talking about the green corridor, not only does it foster wildlife, it also aids in carbon capture. You'd have to do the math, but it's entirely likely that some railways are carbon neutral because they are preserving the plants as well as the trains.
Heritage coal mining. Like a railroad but only just for Welshman. Really though a mine set up as part of a heritage network and contracts with the rail, marine and lord knows what else organizations. It should work out fine.
I would love to provide volunteer labor but there are no heritage railroads within a reasonable travel distance. You are lucky to have these opportunities!
There are some preserved railroads and engines that have been converted to burn oil, they even managed to convert 4014 to burn oil and that says something
Supposedly it is recycled motor oil from the diesel engines and employ owned cars on the UP system. All they do is run it through a siv to remove large impurities.
What if more heritage railways introduced actual freight and passenger services? Not only will steam engines doing ACTUAL work attract more visitors, but it will also help the local towns and industries even more.
True sustainability is also in keeping something going as long as possible and not replacing it every xx months. Even a coal burning Steam loco when it's kept going for multiple decades/best part of a century or more is better for the environment than building a new one every couple of decades. Top Gear presented a piece once on the Toyota Prius, technically second generation but it's the first known for 'eco'. What it took to manufacture once of them had the same impact over full life span as a Land Rover Discovery 3. The longer you keep a car running, same with any other equipment, the better it is for the environment. No matter how much they want to call the manufacture of EVs 'carbon neutral', if they're built to last barely a decade then they'll be no less damaging for the environment than any diesel on the road and worse than anyone using a classic car daily, even without catalytic converters and lean burning injection systems. Manufacture, scrapping and recycling are where the biggest negative environmental impacts are. Manufacture requires the mining of materials, refining, and much more, recycling requires huge amounts of energy and regardless of statistics still sends huge amounts of stuff to landfill or simply burns off unwanted material. Materials from cars for example are only 60% recycled by volume, all plastics, cloth/leather interiors etc are crushed in the body and are simply burned off when the metal is melted down.
There are a handful of cases where this does happen. Wensleydale Railway was I think intended from the start to provide a usable passenger service rather than being just a heritage attraction. The Ribble Steam railway is used for Bitumen trains, and I think the West Somerset was used for stone trains to Minehead for a sea defence project at one point. And then there was the well-known case of the Leadhills & Wanlockhead Railway running a "Bus replacement train service" when the B797 road was closed a few years ago.
theres a reason electric kettles arent a thing in america, they use an insane amount of electricity, getting a battery of that size would be even worse for the environment
its shipping consumers goods from china to europa and america that is the problem not trains mix woodchips with vegi-oil and press them into brickettes like the ones i use in my woodstove , that will get the temperature up when burning them in steam engines :)
Now the question I have for LMM about steam engines is why keep the engines are coal fired? Why the fuel source entirely. You talked about wood and the Eco-coal possibly. However, what about oil/gas/propane burning instead. Granted the whole engine would have to be rebuilt to some degree, but it can be done. Example are the UP4014 Big Boy, all of the engines on the WDW RR and on the Disneyland Railroad. I would really love to hear your opinion on this. Because my guess is in the USA we would go with that option. Personally I see it as a bad idea because those are also bon renewable compared to Eco-coal. Not to mention the the visible changes like no smoke and the smell changes.
We all need to do our bit to help the environment. We can all help. Indeed Boris Johnson's Brexit alone has taken 100k HGV lorries off the road so reducing pollution massively.
Do you have more information about the eco coal for me? In the Netherlands we are importing the black gold for some time now... but the quality of the coal is pretty bad actually so it might me interesting to do some tests with that stuff :)
Its not the soot which warms the earth. One Natural gas heated street will emmit more Carbon dioxide in a year than this railway club. It is just way more perceivable.
Most likely yes, with modern technology and a lot of money for R&D, you could vuild a steam locomotive that is more efficient. It would not be "heritage" though.
The CO2 theory falls on the fact that the gas is a poor absorber of infra red radiation. Every science student ought to know that. There is a good case, however, for burning light oil in old machines that have been restored at great trouble and expense. Coal produces a lot damaging substances, as Lawrie hints at.
Thankyou very much for helping to provide another logical and practical piece of discussion into the mix not just allowing the woke left media and governments to hoodwink us all
Can't we design electric water heating, to keep the historic steam running way into the future???? Also methanol is currently much cheaper than hydrogen.
we could but heating water with electricity (using batteries) is not sustainable and would probably be worse for the environment in the long run with the power consumption
why cant it be wood burning ore wood coal burning ore maybe change the coal cearige would house a batery that could be recharged and that could boil steam?
Sadly I think the long term future for heritage railways is bleak. . . . The changing future majority demographic of the nation brings an influx who will have absolutely no interest in any of our national heritage or supporting it; probably the opposite in fact. . . . Additionally there is danger from those within who would rewrite and erase our heritage and culture on various grounds and indoctrinate younger generations against all that went before in our history. . . With the ascendance in numbers of these types there will be a totally different national attitude with no interest whatsoever in heritage railways. . . . Unfortunately I feel the future will be that heritage railways, museums and the like will wither on the vine, as it were.
You cannot beat Welsh Steam Coal its the best and probably more efficient but is anyone digging it up these days? Trouble is whatever you burn puts carbon in the atmosphere. But heritage railways are nowhere as bad as air liners they burn over 5000 litres of fuel to do about 1000 miles! It is not as if a heritage loco is using a whole tender full of coal like top links used to use.
I was told by a driver on the Kent and East Sussex that all the heritage railways in Britain produce annually the same amount of emissions that a power station does in 5 minutes.
@@rhobatbrynjones7374 Drax power station (The station he mentioned) produces about 19.4 Million tonnes of CO2 per year, Or 184 tonnes every five minutes. If what he said was loosely correct, that means that all the heritage railways in Britain are 525600 times less polluting than a single power station.
@@rhobatbrynjones7374 Grab your calculator and divide five by the amount of minutes in a year and you'll have your precious figure. Then turn it into a PowerPoint presentation and serve with decaf soy latte. OR stick your head outside and think how teeny weeny the entire steam locomotive population is in the scheme of the big earth. Then go and look at how the five biggest cargo ships produce more CO2 than all the cars on the planet.
shows stupidly as a whole. Heritage railways are a tiny source of pollution; they're used sparingly (i.e. steam trains aren't hauling every passenger/freight train on the network). Everything has been refurbished, reconditioned, not made from new and thrown away. Arguably electric cars are worse that steam trains, throwaway construction, use of nasty materials. The likes of Elon demonstrate regularly they are devoid of a moral compass; so you can bet used EV batteries will end up polluting the water table. EV's aren't zero emission; toxic particulate matter from brakes and tyres. Just because there's smoke coming out the steam train doesn't make it the environmental devil. Heritage railways don't need to fix too much, compared to wider consumer society.
Here's a fun fact! Did you know that annually, BBQ's in the UK produce double the amount of carbon emissions as heritage railways? Also, on a side note with regards to wood burning, check out the Mackwell Locomotive company, some very interesting work being done there with regards to sustainable steam engines.
We need Eco BBQs then!
@@TB76Returns George Foreman Grill running on wind power!
plenty o wood burning loco's over here in the Pacifc northwest and most of the loco's that don't burn wood burn oil instid
More like 3 times of people used a. BBQ. Like my dad doses
Depends on what you use on the bbq charcoal or gas
Loveing this little series, a great way to raise awareness!
I’m still slightly surprised that with the UK no longer mining coal that railroads haven’t taken a page from US railroads.
Multiple steam engines burn oil with more being converted to it. With engines as oil it burns a lot cleaner plus it doesn’t have to be regular oil. The railroad I volunteer on burns used motor oil in our locomotive. Other steam railroads around here use recycled cooking oil from restaurants.
that will be an impossible move
this is uk england.
Interesting idea, but it kind of goes against the idea of preserving the locomotives in full
How would that be impossible
The UK uses oil just like any other country so there is access to used motor oil or used cooking oil
Wow both yourself and JayEmm doing features on environmental issues on a Sunday.
We are currently using the Russian coal at the Severn Valley Railway and partnered up with the North Yorks and Gloucester Warwickshire railway and the supplier on getting it imported. I know the bio coal is being trialled on road steam and narrow gauge loco's as those steam engines smokeboxes are small enough to take it.
Over lockdown I got involved with some green solutions for the Severn Valley Railway including adding solar panels to the larger buildings on the line like the workshops and carriage shed, swapping some of the P way petrol tools like hedge cutters with battery or run the existing petrol tools onto cleaner Alkalyte based fuels.
The UK is a unique situation. In the US we have a wide range with our wide nation. For a small example the locomotive i am restoring can only operate on Anthractie coal. This coal is found in few places in the world and only in 3 regions in my home state of Pennsylvania. The nearest source less here is a lower grade from wales. The engine was tested on various fuels along with its sisters in the 1940s nothing else worked. So, our locomotive is dependent on solely Anthractie mined here. Some will say its dirty but those who say had only seen bituminous or low grade. In reality the Anthractie coal is smokeless and completes full combustion due to the design of the engine leaving a 99 percent water emissions. Even in its service live you would not see smoke rather exhaust water vapor in the winter. And nothing but a stack of heat in the summer. But with more mines closing and so few left. My only hope is still a 2 hour drive way.
I have a fun fact. Diesel, the man who developed the high compression engine, originally ment for it to run on vegetable oil. Also any 1960s or earlier Diesel engine can run on a mixture of 25:1 gasoline to 10w30 motor oil without any damage or loss of power.
Heating oil works better than most of the stuff out the pumps the bio diesel even at 7% has a habit of collecting mildew and water and kills the injector pump
someone should campaign for a heritage colliery, worked by heritage steam engines, that shares it's coal with other heritage railways.
Sorry, although it's a nice idea, I'm afraid it isn't financially viable. Coal is incredibly expensive to extract, and to maintain cost-effectiveness, it needs to be sold in gargantuan quantities, not enough for all heritage railways to cover.
would the uk go that way
doubt it
Fun fact: steam locomotives can burn a very wide variety of fuels and can be "tuned" to burn them very very cleanly!
Steam can be sustainable if more folks are wiling to modernize it.
Mackwell Locomtive Works is on the right track towards this!
You could always convert the steam locomotives to oil firing, basically burning things like waste oil (whatever is left over after the oil is used for whatever it's used for). Otherwise there's Electric Steam Locomotives but that's only ever really existed once and it's as useful as it sounds.
There's indeed a problem with the UK wanting to stop mining coal, with steel and blacksmithing having to work around importing the coal which means burning more the get it, whether from Europe or elsewhere.
The Welsh Highland Garratts were oil fired converted when they came from south Africa but were converted back to coal fired when the Welsh Highland took them on but I don't think it was hugely practical. The bio coal idea will work but it requires larger sizes and quantities for larger loco's running on lines like the Severn Valley Railway, North Yorkshire Moors and mainline excursions. Currently the mainline heritage rail and larger lines have secured a supplier who have urged other railways with larger steam loco's to sign up to be supplied with Russian coal which has been tested and burns cleaner than the current welsh coal and if they can get enough orders they will buy the coal in one huge bulk order rather than order in separate orders.
There are ways of minimising burning coal one of which has been discussed at the SVR modifying either the loco's with tenders or my idea I forwarded to them retro fit certain carriages or build a new carriage with batteries and wheel motors to help push the loco's up steep inclines reducing the need to keep putting loads coal into the firebox to build pressure up, the carriage idea would work with all of the various steam locomotives on home fleets and visiting loco's.
Oh i fully expect there to be a push against oil burning the second that the environmentalists feel they have 'won' against coal, at least if some of the ones I have had the displeasure of dealing with are anything to go by. There are loonies who just want all planes grounded, all vehicles stopped and all Co2 production ceased entirely regardless of the consequences and sadly they are the ones who seem to be leading the push to go green at the moment, at least here in Australia.
A nice topic a enjoyable watch. I know that the bure valley has done a successful trail using ecocoal/biomass showing one brand was basically the same as coal and as you said actually ended up cleaner. A lot of lines I have visited are moving to use biodegradable food containers in cafes. I guess you have heard of the talyllyn railway doing the carbon offsetting by planting tree which will one day become a forest in Ireland I think it is.
Great video Lawrie, this is something we need to keep talking about and developing. Well explained.
Thank you very much!
Loved this video
You could theoretically convert a boiler to use a Hydrogen burner to heat the water.
The trouble is getting the hydrogen in the first place takes a lot of energy. Hydrogen is actually a very inefficient fuel when you take the hydrogen production into account.
You're reminding me of Percy French: "There's a grand clamp of turf on the bog there." Have you heard his song about the West Claire Railway? He was actually sued by the operator.
You'll never make it to Kilkee.
Are you right there, Michael, are you right?
Excellent, well considered presentation covering many aspects.
The fuel situation is probably going to be the biggest technical problem, because as you said, the locos were designed for coal. This problem is not solely that of heritage railways, but also affect enthusiasts of other old vehicles that were designed for particular fuels, coal, petrol, diesel, TVO (tractor vaporising oil) etc. If suitable fuels become unobtainable, then the cherished vehicles end up as static museum pieces or scrap.
Aside from the technical problems, I think that the most serious problems are likely to come from eco-freaks like Extinction Rebellion who think whatever damage they do is justified- they have already attacked electric trains, so they would probably consider a steam loco as fair game, no matter how little pollution it actually causes.
I completely agree with what you have said in this your current environmental railway video. I will always support as many railways as possible, I even recycle model trains when I visit a preserved railway in Manchester as I know that the Volunteers who run a little model shop always enjoy when I go as to what I bring them & then what I bring home for my own model railway.
Pour yourself a large one mate, you deserve it! 🤜🏻🤛🏻🍻
Lawrie,well said, youre thinking is right, should make people think hard about the future. Well done,
You talk great sense Lawrie
We’re trialling plastic sleepers 👍🏻 you raise some excellent points. Keep making content
Thank you very much! We'd love to do some filming with you guys!
I love how you put some of new Zealand railways in this RUclips video the train class shown is an f class No:13 peveril based in ferrymeed Christchurch, well worth visiting.
You are fast! A video of Eureka and Glenbrook that’s only a day or two old when you post this? Awesome.
I’ve seen some tests of biomass pellets, which are designed to act like coal lumps, and hope to see a large scale test in the next few years.
Very nice movie! Cheers, Fabrizio
You make a very valid point....
When Oliver Bullied was hired by CIE (equivalent of BR in Ireland) he built a working mainline turf burner. However Ireland had one of the earliest diesalisation processes in Europe. Meaning mainline steam was gone by 1963
CC1 never ran any mainline services, only ever running tests. And suffered from alot of the issues his leader class suffered from. Dieselisation in Ireland was largely due to the coal shortages of the Emergency and the inadequacies of alternatives. Only in the republic though, mainline steam in the North continued into 1970, the last mainline steam in the British Isles. Though as late as 2005 No.3 R. H. Smyth was hired out to contractors for NIR.
A well argued case in favour of the continuation of heritage lines - there is hope indeed.
3:09 Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railroad Victorian Special!!!! Oh I wish I was there.
Thanks for mentioning Eureka & Glenbrook, they are perhaps the greenest locomotives on the west coast. I've seen coal burners run successfully on wood but you cannot cheep out, High quality and most Importantly DRY hardwoods like oak or almond (in abundance here in California because orchards replant there trees every few years). I burn almond in my 1.5" scale Little Engines American and It produces plenty of steam even with a great area of around 4"x5".
I went to the mid Suffolk in 2019 and found Lawries channel a week later.
It's a very nice railway.
My dad worked at biomass power plant and it was one of the most eco friendly power plants in Alberta
Coal is a 24 x 7 x 365 day generator. Maybe it is dirtier but generators can keep going when other generators can not only nuclear can better it.
Another excellent video.
I volunteer at the Great central Railway (GCR) and I do know that they do reliy alot on paid staff because they would struggle otherwise and not get anywhere.
I GCR is Great place to visit and work at either as a volunteer work or paid worker.
I know thatcthe North Yorkshire Morrs Railway is looking at off setting to help deal with the carbon footprint by planting trees.
The 'Heritage Railway Association' is looking at ways to deal with the coal crisis and looking at trying to get the UK government on side and find UK sources of coal.
another interesting thing when you were talking about the green corridor, not only does it foster wildlife, it also aids in carbon capture. You'd have to do the math, but it's entirely likely that some railways are carbon neutral because they are preserving the plants as well as the trains.
Heritage coal mining. Like a railroad but only just for Welshman. Really though a mine set up as part of a heritage network and contracts with the rail, marine and lord knows what else organizations. It should work out fine.
I would love to provide volunteer labor but there are no heritage railroads within a reasonable travel distance. You are lucky to have these opportunities!
There are some preserved railroads and engines that have been converted to burn oil, they even managed to convert 4014 to burn oil and that says something
Supposedly it is recycled motor oil from the diesel engines and employ owned cars on the UP system. All they do is run it through a siv to remove large impurities.
ethanol injection could assist as well in the fire boxes, not a very large amount, just enough to offset some biomass
What if more heritage railways introduced actual freight and passenger services? Not only will steam engines doing ACTUAL work attract more visitors, but it will also help the local towns and industries even more.
True sustainability is also in keeping something going as long as possible and not replacing it every xx months. Even a coal burning Steam loco when it's kept going for multiple decades/best part of a century or more is better for the environment than building a new one every couple of decades. Top Gear presented a piece once on the Toyota Prius, technically second generation but it's the first known for 'eco'. What it took to manufacture once of them had the same impact over full life span as a Land Rover Discovery 3. The longer you keep a car running, same with any other equipment, the better it is for the environment. No matter how much they want to call the manufacture of EVs 'carbon neutral', if they're built to last barely a decade then they'll be no less damaging for the environment than any diesel on the road and worse than anyone using a classic car daily, even without catalytic converters and lean burning injection systems. Manufacture, scrapping and recycling are where the biggest negative environmental impacts are. Manufacture requires the mining of materials, refining, and much more, recycling requires huge amounts of energy and regardless of statistics still sends huge amounts of stuff to landfill or simply burns off unwanted material. Materials from cars for example are only 60% recycled by volume, all plastics, cloth/leather interiors etc are crushed in the body and are simply burned off when the metal is melted down.
There are a handful of cases where this does happen. Wensleydale Railway was I think intended from the start to provide a usable passenger service rather than being just a heritage attraction. The Ribble Steam railway is used for Bitumen trains, and I think the West Somerset was used for stone trains to Minehead for a sea defence project at one point. And then there was the well-known case of the Leadhills & Wanlockhead Railway running a "Bus replacement train service" when the B797 road was closed a few years ago.
Another way is a electric heating element with a battery which powers them like a kettle boiling because a steam engine is a giant kettle
theres a reason electric kettles arent a thing in america, they use an insane amount of electricity, getting a battery of that size would be even worse for the environment
its shipping consumers goods from china to europa and america that is the problem not trains
mix woodchips with vegi-oil and press them into brickettes like the ones i use in my woodstove , that will get the temperature up when burning them in steam engines :)
Yes
Yes
Yes
@Nathaniel Aberdein yes
Honestly, Im fine with heritage railways still using coal and regular diesel. This is because only 100 companies produce 70% of carbon emissions.
Now the question I have for LMM about steam engines is why keep the engines are coal fired? Why the fuel source entirely. You talked about wood and the Eco-coal possibly. However, what about oil/gas/propane burning instead.
Granted the whole engine would have to be rebuilt to some degree, but it can be done. Example are the UP4014 Big Boy, all of the engines on the WDW RR and on the Disneyland Railroad.
I would really love to hear your opinion on this. Because my guess is in the USA we would go with that option. Personally I see it as a bad idea because those are also bon renewable compared to Eco-coal. Not to mention the the visible changes like no smoke and the smell changes.
We all need to do our bit to help the environment. We can all help. Indeed Boris Johnson's Brexit alone has taken 100k HGV lorries off the road so reducing pollution massively.
I completely agree
Need coal alternatives as well imported coal (depends on quality)if not might aswell stuff all steam uncovered museums
You can add hydropower steam engines dad says they use the same mechanic and are eco friendly
Do you have more information about the eco coal for me? In the Netherlands we are importing the black gold for some time now... but the quality of the coal is pretty bad actually so it might me interesting to do some tests with that stuff :)
always wondered why coal was used since wood is a semi renewable resource
There is a steam engine that runs on diesel here in the U S
Its not the soot which warms the earth. One Natural gas heated street will emmit more Carbon dioxide in a year than this railway club. It is just way more perceivable.
Sure there are ways to refine/make more efficient a steam engine. Stopped getting developed when fuel/oil took over.
Most likely yes, with modern technology and a lot of money for R&D, you could vuild a steam locomotive that is more efficient.
It would not be "heritage" though.
The CO2 theory falls on the fact that the gas is a poor absorber of infra red radiation. Every science student ought to know that.
There is a good case, however, for burning light oil in old machines that have been restored at great trouble and expense. Coal produces a lot damaging substances, as Lawrie hints at.
plenty o wood burning loco's over here in the Pacifc northwest and most of the loco's that don't burn wood burn oil instid
Thankyou very much for helping to provide another logical and practical piece of discussion into the mix not just allowing the woke left media and governments to hoodwink us all
I'd think the cars driving to see a steam train are much worse than the train itself.
Use Oak wood chip
0:52 do i smell Wolsztyn in here?
i guess we shouldn't bring up the subject of clothes on washing lines being covered in smuts from a passing steam engine
Now we need a fuel cars can run on because I’m not going to electric.
Hydrogen has always had great potential
When’s the next what’s broken now?
Can't we design electric water heating, to keep the historic steam running way into the future???? Also methanol is currently much cheaper than hydrogen.
we could but heating water with electricity (using batteries) is not sustainable and would probably be worse for the environment in the long run with the power consumption
The Swiss tried that once, but normal electric locomotives are more efficient.
why cant it be wood burning ore wood coal burning ore maybe change the coal cearige would house a batery that could be recharged and that could boil steam?
Sadly I think the long term future for heritage railways is bleak. . . . The changing future majority demographic of the nation brings an influx who will have absolutely no interest in any of our national heritage or supporting it; probably the opposite in fact. . . . Additionally there is danger from those within who would rewrite and erase our heritage and culture on various grounds and indoctrinate younger generations against all that went before in our history. . . With the ascendance in numbers of these types there will be a totally different national attitude with no interest whatsoever in heritage railways. . . . Unfortunately I feel the future will be that heritage railways, museums and the like will wither on the vine, as it were.
00:50 is that a Polish symbol behind your bum?
You cannot beat Welsh Steam Coal its the best and probably more efficient but is anyone digging it up these days? Trouble is whatever you burn puts carbon in the atmosphere. But heritage railways are nowhere as bad as air liners they burn over 5000 litres of fuel to do about 1000 miles! It is not as if a heritage loco is using a whole tender full of coal like top links used to use.
It's more like over 10000l for 1000km
Which is still better that the pollution created by a large ship with heavy oil engines.
@@lmm Agreed
Last i heard there is still 1 mine running to get the stuff. Although it's been having several issues.
You say it's not that bad but you need to talk figures to be persuasive.
I was told by a driver on the Kent and East Sussex that all the heritage railways in Britain produce annually the same amount of emissions that a power station does in 5 minutes.
@@o.m.b.demolitionenterprise5398 That's an interesting comparison but we still need figures.
@@rhobatbrynjones7374 Drax power station (The station he mentioned) produces about 19.4 Million tonnes of CO2 per year, Or 184 tonnes every five minutes. If what he said was loosely correct, that means that all the heritage railways in Britain are 525600 times less polluting than a single power station.
@@rhobatbrynjones7374 Grab your calculator and divide five by the amount of minutes in a year and you'll have your precious figure. Then turn it into a PowerPoint presentation and serve with decaf soy latte.
OR stick your head outside and think how teeny weeny the entire steam locomotive population is in the scheme of the big earth. Then go and look at how the five biggest cargo ships produce more CO2 than all the cars on the planet.
@@CathodeRayNipplez Or alternatively you could grow up.
Eco shite has no place anywhere let alone where you expect sentient humans to collect
Unfortunately it's got a huge role to play in our combined futures.
shows stupidly as a whole. Heritage railways are a tiny source of pollution; they're used sparingly (i.e. steam trains aren't hauling every passenger/freight train on the network). Everything has been refurbished, reconditioned, not made from new and thrown away. Arguably electric cars are worse that steam trains, throwaway construction, use of nasty materials. The likes of Elon demonstrate regularly they are devoid of a moral compass; so you can bet used EV batteries will end up polluting the water table. EV's aren't zero emission; toxic particulate matter from brakes and tyres. Just because there's smoke coming out the steam train doesn't make it the environmental devil.
Heritage railways don't need to fix too much, compared to wider consumer society.