FMW Solutions provides skilled and cost-effective mechanical work and strategic railroad consulting services for our clients in the railroad industry, offering mechanical and engineering design, diesel locomotive servicing and repair, rail operations, strategic planning support, marketing, public relations, safety compliance administration, and training, as well as alternative fuel technology and research. FMW is also an accomplished rail preservation resource, with expertise in the restoration and operation of historic equipment and steam locomotives.
The amount of coal preserved engines use isn't great surely if they all got together and bought in bulk and had a central depot where they could draw their fuel. It would be more cost effective. The engines that run on the main line there is more of a case for oil fired .
If I might though, we have more coal then Oil, so how much longer would it last, I know mines are closing and its not the best for the environment and its a hard way of life and dangerous for those that have to mine it but wont we run out of oil before coal? Unless we use non petrolem oils, like plant or veggie oils? I belive they do run an engine in the grand canyon off veggie oil? I am listening a bit though to experts and leaders here, its important for the future of living history
The Coalition for Sustainable Steam in the US has been researching torrefied biomass. (Basically heating giant wood pellets into something like grill charcoal.) Their test results have been encouraging. You fire it similar to coal, but it's basically burning waste wood products.
Yesterday I stood in front of Mallard at the UK national railway museum and thought I dare anyone to beat that, now I have found your site In some ways I hope you do!
Having spent years as a teenager polishing brass and feeding copious amounts of coal, with a love of steam trains this is great to see! Heritage railways in the uk taking this all so seriously, so strategically, incredibly forward thinking. Very best of luck with the project!
Wow, it's amazing how this net zero - Co2 lie / psych-op is used to hijack and distort people's perception of reality and how people twist themselves inside out to conform to this nonsense. Everything in moderation, open up a welsh coal mine to supply the heritage railways in the Uk.
As an avid railroad fan and ethusiast and current history student, the steam locomotive has an appeal that is unmatched by most anything the human race has developed. The many different American railroads that not represented through the steam preservation era is saddening. The PRR specifically really had the draw from many of their classes of steam engines and the most iconic outside of the T1 is the K4. Seeing that the work on 1361 is continuing is encouraging that there is still a demand for the presence and preservation of the railroad. Recent examples of this include N&W 611, the Big Boy 4014, WMSR (ex. C&O) 1309, CP 2816, PRR 5550 (built from scratch), the rebuild of PM 1225, and now PRR 1361. To the hard working people of FMW, keep up the good work and cant wait to see that engine run in the future!
Clearly these people have not noticed crude oil is running out WW1 & WW2 used HUGE amounts ( France alone used 300 millions litres of fuel a month 😲😲 ) our planet still has huge amounts of coal use that instead!!!!
Great video and good luck to the NYMR. I loved the odd puzzlwd look on the US guys trying hard to follow Piglets Yorkshire accent ? As a lad from Darlington where it all started in 1825 our area is steeped into the history and a lot is going on at the moment getting ready for the 200th aniversary of the Stockton & Darlington Railway and building new locomotives.
I’m sick of this anti coal movement and conversion to oil! 100% against it and if you do it I’m not visiting your railway anymore. Not riding behind a diesel water cooker!
@@chooch1764 coal ash doesn’t hurt anything in fact it makes the garden grow very nicely. Excellent fertilizer. The coal smoke even makes plants grow larger. They love the carbon they need to grow.
@@steamgent4592 I’m sorry but that is the stupidest thing I have ever heard. The summers are getting dryer in certain areas, which increase the risk of wildfires. Do you seriously not believe in that? 😳
id love a steam group to come and save the steam locomotive in my vetrains park cause it been there fro a long time and sure there a roof on it but its just sitting there not moving and id love to see it gget restored and ran again doesnt matter how far it gets run but as long as they fire it up 1 time and film it
I have experience of pressure jet burners fitted to oil fired boilers, curious to see the type of burner used on this. Disappointed there was now drawings or diagrams😂. It’s still a steam engine regardless of the fuel type, not a coal engine!! Good forward thinking to keep the show on the road or rails rather. With that attitude you could be fitting and electric boiler and a tender full of batteries in 20 years time. All the best.
Absolutely fascinating to me as a 33 year old British Steam Enthusiast 😁🚂 One thing I am going to miss with oil fired Steam locomotives is that gorgeous smell of coal smoke, oil and water vapour mixed, there's nothing else like it. I read in the news that Bio Coal was being developed and tested and had been successfully used in one heritage railways locomotive, and I believe it preserves the classic steam smell that many Steam enthusiasts like myself love, could Bio Coal also be an alternative to traditional fossil coal and oil firing? Although oil firing makes sense as an alternative if coal is hard to find and is getting crazy expensive, the world only has 47 years of oil left, so what's going to happen once the world runs out of oil? Meanwhile it is estimated that the world has 133 years worth of coal left, yet all our coal mines have closed and heritage railways are now forced to import coal and also look for alternatives as coal becomes harder to find and more expensive, doesn't make sense to me. I'm really glad that alternative fuels are being explored so that our absolutely stunning Steam Locomotives can keep running, hopefully forever, sacrificing the steam smell with oil firing will be sad but a small price to pay it if it keeps them running, potentially forever.
The decision between electricity and diesel or steam is easy. To service a steam engine after ten years in Germany you must open the steam boiler and control all boiler tubes for wasting. Mostly they are replaced by removing all over the defective tubes and weld in new pipes, boring and aligning all boreholes included. The Locomotive factory in Meiningen is suffering for orders and their headcount is constantly reducing. It’s a question of time, till the factory will close. But England and America because of coal and oil abundance overslept the electrification era and a lot of track ways went closed and forgotten. Here in🇨🇭we have the Stadler and they are delivering the all over best train compositions and🇨🇭is totally electrificated with abt 30‘000km railway tracks in two different gauges. And our trains are running from Zurich to Munich in 3.31 hours. And Diesel? Think about the environmental burden and the oil prices and you find the answers by yourself …
Paul: Have you considered the use of anthracite coal? The Reading Blue Mountain & Northern which has two steam loco's and use anthracite which has much less clag. You should Google Phoebe Snow.
R766 in NSW Australia was gegauged from 5' to 4' 8 1/2" to run on NSW track. It was also converted to oil fuel. This was done so that loco could keep mainline speeds without being sidelined if steam was low. Loco 5917 remains coal fired along with other NSW heritage locos. Good coal still available in NSW. Common here to include a diesel in the consist to ease coal consumption and to provide dynamic braking that eases wear on loco brakes.
Nothing new under the Sun, re converting established coal fired locomotives to using oil as a fuel. E.g. just before nationalisation, the GWR had a pop at it, if you look for ‘GWR oil-fired locomotives’. However, it fell foul of the UK Treasury in 1948, due to the shortage of foreign currency, & exchange rates at the time, so the Western Region had to revert to traditional coal. Around the same period, a large slice of the SNCF class 141R fleet went the other way, due to difficulties in the availability of suitable coal domestically, being converted to heavy fuel oil. They could produce a lot of black smoke from time to time - especially when the cleaning technique was used en route, using sand as a cleaning agent.
You'd have to modify them to switch from coal to oil but i don't see what options there are as coal is increasingly hard to aquire.More people are interested in vintage diesel now,and electric but obviously the NYMR can't run them!,so there is probably less steam needed.
If coal can’t be purchased then oil is probably the only answer to the problem,it shouldn’t be too difficult to fit an oil tank in place of the coal space on the tender and carry out fire box modifications to burn oil.
While coal firing is preferable to get around the high cost of coal at present if it means converting to oil keeps locomotives running on the mainline then surely this should be investigated to preserve the enjoyment for all
I think i would prefer the smell of coal smoke to oil but i appreciate the time /cost savings. Incidentally i wonder if the new rules on mk1 carriage doors affect NYMR?
has a member of the NYMR And a Marine engineer I am all up for this and I bleave a new build would benafit the NYMR that uses to run no that line bavk in there hight days of steam Like a Class A8 tanks or the D20 or B16 raven the class A8 were well loved by crews and a A8 oil fired will be good and its will be special in this area And I just happen to have the design blue prints
Thank you very much. This is an amazing video about converison of all coal firre locomotives in US and UK. As a 7 1/2 gauge 1/8 scale steam modeler this is an amazing discussion of what is going on in UK to convert steam heritage railroads. Did not realize the impact of "global warming" on the closure of coal in UK. This is catastrauphic to British Rail History.
Doesn't look like any of you are old enough to remember British railways in the steam days and the glorious smell of smoke and tar that the assailed you when you came out of the underground into a London Terminus - particularly Paddington from the western region locomotives using Welsh Steam coal. It may be inevitable but I for one would seriously regret exchanging that smell for Heathrow Airport. And please don't judge us by American standards - authenticity has never mattered much to them. Anyway their locomotives belched out black smoke even when coal fired.
I already know this comment is like piss in Cheerios but here goes....ultimately, if you pay attention and you're not sleepwalking, you realize the governments and non-government bodies such as the World Economic Forum and the various activist groups want NO fuels being used period. They want this Green World where the wind and sunshine ultimately powers everything. Lets not kid ourselves. Carbon Zero is the phrase we hear over and over again. I am a trainspotter and railfan and I love seeing these machines move. If you pay attention to the phrasing and the activist/lobbyist groups they want all natural resources abolished. That spells the end of oil-firing as well as lubrication in the form of oils. Pay attention! Wake up if you think these governmental and non-governmental bodies actually care about the railroads, let alone the tourist railroads.
35:00 Is an excellent description of one of the benefits of oil. I'm a Fireman, but I have a screwed up back and pelvis after serving in the Army which makes shoveling difficult/impossible most days. Oil is what allowed me to become a fireman in the first place. Along with all the other benefits such as fire danger, cleaning, fuel saving etc. about 99% of the passengers that ride behind our steam locomotives dont actually care if the engine is coal or oil fired, and out of those people most assume they are coal burners anyways and aren't able to tell the difference.
Anything burnable has been used in steam loco's . Esholt sewerage works (Bradford England) had "Nellie" burning scum off the top of the stuff. I'm not sure visitors would tolerate the smell !
That was absolutely fascinating. Thank you! I do hope it all works out successfully. Clearly there will be a steep learning curve for the English side and that means there is scope for misunderstanding and errors.
