The END of COAL in Durango - Does it matter? Coal vs. Oil Firing 101 

2 things worth noting. Oil firing isn't exactly instantaneous. yes you can get a bigger fire as soon as you open the valve, but it takes a few minutes for that heat to transfer through the firebrick and into the boiler itself. Taking off out of Elbe, you have to slightly over-fire the engine for the first few minutes of running before she's at running temperature. And when cresting a hill, you need to plan ahead with your water (temperature-wise) to keep the safeties from lifting because those bricks are going to be as hot as the fire was for quite a bit after you turn the fire down. Secondly, as someone who's only ridden behind oil-burners until last summer, I was surprised to find out just how not enjoyable being showered with soot 7 cars back from the 2102 actually was (Everything else about the day was absolutely spectacular and those folks deserve credit for running such a fine operation). It's worth noting that we as railroad people, fans and experts alike, represent a very small percentage of ridership that most tourist railroads will ever see. By and large, most of the folks paying for tickets on these trains won't notice a difference (other than a lack of black dust on their clothes afterwards) or they won't really care. I'd be interested to see how D&S's online reviews look in the next few years as compared to pre-2020.

The whole reason 3985 was converted to oil was, when they first got it running, they ran it around a couple places and burned down half of Wyoming.

A running Engine that burns oil is better than a coal burner that can't run at all. As a guy who's been running and firing oil burners for 6 years now, I think you hit the nail on the head pretty well here Mark.

In the end, preservation societies/companies/clubs need to do what they have to do to stay 'alive' - whether us who are enthusiasts like it or not. Most of the general public would not even care or know the difference. As always Hyce, this is a well-rounded fair assessment of both methods. Awesome video.

The thing about oil burners is that they are actually more environmentally friendly in the fuel as they can actually use used cooking oil as fuel from restaurants

Big Diehl is a hugely underrated channel that deserves more subs. Amazing captures and sounds!

honesty kinda happy since 481 wasted all of her time sitting in the roundhouse all summer to get used in winter. They didn’t want to start another fire so they didn’t run her when it was warm and dry. Coal is also corrosive and dangerous to breathe but I love collecting whatever coal I can find on the track side. I got the newspaper announcing the last coal run hung on my wall. A nice artifact that will remind me of when the mikados were so dirty but still full of personality. After the conversion she can run all year now.

As a Californian who’s from the more predominately oil-burning part of the country, seeing more/converted oil burners doesn’t seem awful at all. However, the “romance” of changing something that always was is the hard part. You hit the nail on the head.

Glad we're still going to run King Coal Mine coal at CRRM for the foreseeable future.

I rode this train to a back-country wilderness access. After de-training in the middle of nowhere, first, rinse tiny cinders out of my eyes. My dad fired steam, and one of their post-work rituals was for my mom to rinse cinders out of his eyes. I am sure Hyce must have the type of googles that I remember playing with as a child. The differences between late 19th Century and now might be trees, as I imagine much of the primary forest wound up as mine timbers, rail-ties and as mine and town buildings. After hearing that comparison, I think it amazing that the eastern roads used coal till the end. A matter of availability. I was part of moving millions of tons or so of Appalachian coal onto ships at Curtis Bay, Maryland. Can an oil-burner emit a 100 foot yellow flame out the stack? I saw a switch engine die when it did that in the middle of B&O Bayview yard on a hot, humid Baltimore night. Spectacular. Early 1970's, the engine being an Alco. Could there be a way to hand-load fine coal into a box that delivers the coal with a compressed air device? I believe that's how automatic stokers work. The Big Boy at Denver Forney Museum used compress air to blow the ground stoker-coal into the fire-box. Great video, as always.

I know that the Coalition for Sustainable Rail was working on biocoal research for a while, but progress stalled during the pandemic.

There are definitely benefits to oil over coal (although my experience tends to be oil vs wood). Not dumping loads of cinders in your passengers' eyes is definitely a plus for oil. After riding the coal-fired Cripple Creek & Victor I very quickly bought some sunglasses to wear on the Cumbres & Toltec. I'll add in a story I've heard about converting from WOOD to oil, on the Oregon Lumber Company in Eastern Oregon. The logging engines, as well as those on the common-carrier connection Sumpter Valley Railroad, had been wood burners for decades because they could use scrap wood from all the mills, which was free. When the SVRy got the Unitah articulateds, they converted them to oil (no one wanted to chuck wood into those). The Standard Oil salesman then pointed out to OLC that the "free wood" wasn't really so free when you accounted for the cost of men to split it to size (if needed), stack it, move it on a flatcar, unload and restack it, and then load it on the engine. Not to mention the cost of the firefighting apparatuses on the engines to avoid lighting all of Eastern Oregon on fire. The OLC shortly converted most if not all of their logging engines to oil. (Curiously, Shay 7, now at Hesston, was later converted back to wood by OLC after the mainlines were removed and it was relegated to backup switcher at Baker City). Even today, with the help of chainsaws and a hydraulic wood splitter, it can take several volunteers most of an hour to split a cord of wood for our Heisler, and it'll burn almost all of that wood on a single roundtrip.

I was on steam ships. If you lose the fire, usually when lighting off, the boiler has to be vented for a half hour before it's safe. Ship boilers are a lot bigger than those on locos and they're usually water tube rather than fire tube like locos.There are oil vapors in a boiler that just snuffed out its' fire that can explode. I was on 2 ships that relit a boiler within a few minutes. Both had an explosion. Both were USN destroyers. One, lighting off in Tacoma, blew a huge smoke cloud that mushroomed hundreds of feet in the air, but didn't hurt the boiler. But it scared the locals that sent most of the nearby fire stations trucks. They thought a magazine exploded. The other destroyer lighting off in a Canadian port a couple years earlier damaged the boiler. The water tube boiler didn't have a thick steel shell like a loco, but 3 drums. Very large pipes, 2 on the bottom and one on top with many rows of tubes connecting the bottom to the top. All surrounded by framework with bricks in the fire area plus insulation, more insulation above the bricks and covered with metal panels. Relighting gave a similar demonstration of smoke and sound, but puffed out all the panels, blowing some off. The brickwork was damaged and some of the piping. The ship returned home on its' other boilers, but because it was an older ship, the navy decided not to repair it. In WWI my father was a stoker on a coal fired troop transport and in WWII he was a chief engineer. So I picked up a lot. Nice video on the comparison of coal or gas fired boilers.

France did an oil fired locomotive test with Napoleon the third on the footplate on the 1860s. The locomotive they did the test on is still preserved!

"ah, there we go, another person saying oil is better than coal, I'm so sick of it" Hyce: "it's a HOTLY debated topic" Alright fine I'll watch

5:12 slight correction, there were 6 CB&Q O5Bs: 5614, 5620, 5626, 5627, 5629, and 5632. 5614 is also preserved in St. Joseph, Missouri.

Speaking of re-lighting an oil fire, I rode in the cab of Hammond no. 17 at the Mt Rainier Scenic several years ago. The engine crew said to try not to stand in front of the fire box door as she had a tendency to spit out fire when running.

I took a tour of the Durango shops in 2021 and the tour guide told us that the county was really on them after the fire that happened, and the residents were pretty mad about it. They had the SP #18 in town while we were there to train their engineers on oil burning locos while they were converting some of the coal burners. They also had received some of their new diesel locomotives and those were around the shop too. I definitely recommend taking a tour of the shops and yard in Durango if anyone ever is out that way.

I frequently chase the Ceres Rail oil burner 3322 here in Cape Town, south Africa. She's an oil burner burning recycled oil. Sometimes the oil is substandard and doesn't burn.

The bigest negative for oil is when it is time to put the loco to bed, the fire is extinguished and the fire box sheets are exposed to cold air ,where as with coal ,you leave it on the grate to go out and no cold air, is admitted ,so no thermal shock, have put the loco to bed on Sunday afternoon and it is just warm on thursday

Fantastic job, you are very knowledgable and well spoken.

I learned a lot, before this video when I heard "coal converted to oil" my visceral reaction was "damn EPA at it again". Honestly you didn't even mention the EPA or pollution really much, what I took away from this was saftey and preservation. When you boiled it down about the running gear not wearing out, and such I immediately thought "well if we want to preserve steam for a long time, it seems oil would be the answer to not wear the parts out so quickly." I'm like you, coal is nostalgic, I was really upset when I went to I think either Disney or Dollywood and found out the engines were oil fired. Up where I live in PA the East Broad Top uses coal, and boy when I smelled it, it completed the whole experience for me! In the case of Big Boy 4014, if they said "oil fired or nothing" I would 100% want Big Boy to roll again no matter what it took, so I would say oil fired, but would have loved to see Big Boy with coal! Great video sir!

Well put together Hyce.

Its like running a coal forge or a gas forge. Is the coal forge more "romantic"? Perhaps- the smell and the aesthetic certainly have their place. But does it take a lot longer to set up, tear down, etc? Oh yes. Gas is a lot simpler and more convenient. At the end of the day, shy of getting into forge-welding duscussions, they are both going to get the metal hot enough to work, and get the job done.

Thanks for the interesting discussion Hyce! The Great Northern railway switched to oil for similar reasons. After the Wellington disaster (check out the 3/4 show episode) and the Big Burn of 1910 they began to switch the western divisions to oil.

0:12 "There I am Gary! There I am!"

2:58 RGS 20 on the high line…

This is awesome. I learned so much!

Hyce, excellent video. I run industrial boilers on both gas and no. 2 oil. We used to run no. 6 oil and I would rather work with that nasty sludge than coal any day! And a small anecdote, I used to hear stories from old navy guys that they would re-light fires off the refractory all the time, especially if they were in a pinch to get fires lit again. good stuff!

In the 40s the NZR converted their biggest locomotives in the North Island - all K, Ka 4-8-4s and some J 4-8-2s - to oil burners due to a shortage of high quality coal in the North Island. In the early 50s if memory serves the NZR wanted to convert the K and Ka's back to coal and the firemen's union protested and stopped the reconversion.

As always great video!!🛤️🚂

I actually was on the 2nd to last trip of 481 as a coal. Got the news onboard. I was pretty honored!

Gotta say that while coal is the most nostalgic aspect of live steam, oil also makes a lot of sense too. As much as it'd be nice to keep the coalburners around the transition the D&S is making is not just out of safety but is for the future. As far as I know both Durango and Silverton have benefited immensely from having the D&S operate (Similarly for the C&T), as well as preserve not only historical equipment, but also the alignment that equipment was actually used on. IMO, the transition to oil- to keep history alive- is worth it

Hi Mark, an excellent explanation about oil vs. coal. I so agree with you. On the one hand, it is lovely to see the fireman’s skill when scooping coal into the firebox and all that. On the other, there’s the cinders that, as you mentioned, go everywhere. From my experience, even with protective eyewear and earplugs, these little irritants seem to always find ways in! The cinder accumulation you described from 20 was OMG. Oil will certainly be the future and to echo you, Mark, the choo choos will still run on steam; and that is beautiful. BTW loved your video of the firebox-great videography! As always Professor an A+ learning moment! Truly grateful for your videos and cheers to you!

Excellent video! Your final thoughts are spot on. It’s still a steam locomotive no matter what you burn to make steam. Those who said they would never ride the railroad again if they went to oil are going to be sitting around in their living rooms watching videos instead of being out there enjoying the trains. Even C&TS is converting to oil. Another reason they stated is that the mine they get their coal from will be shutting down in a few years. Keep up the great work and keep sharing your thoughts and experiences.

I just went to the National railroad museum today

I have gotten a cinder to the eye every single time I have ever chased the 765

I first rode the Durango and Silverton in August 1965 in one of their open cars and remember the soot and cinders from the coal. I returned to ride in June 2022 and the locomotives pulling our consist were oil-fired. The smoke from the stack was minimal but it was rather acrid and off-putting when it occasionally wafted into our coach. Even so, the ride was amazing.

20:09, there is a clip of 2926 I think re-lighiting and it looks spectacular

I thank you for your concise and well spoken video on the matter. People often forget just how long oil burning has been around, its just as historic as coal and wood. I think also attachment to a particular fuel goes very much to ones favorite railroads and where they grew up. All the railroads historical and present day that I like burn oil so its the normal fuel to me.

I have personally experienced these Booms on the 25. It’s exciting, but very nerve-wracking being there holding your foot in front of the fire hole the whole time waiting to see if the fire goes out so you can slam the atomizer off. This was very helpful. I’ve been going back and forth as to whether my dad and I are going to do coal or oil for our 3/4” gauge Hudson. Thank you.

In regards to the Southern Pacific, Joel can fact check me on this if I'm wrong, the AC-9's were the only coal burning locomotives on the SP's roster. Aside from those, it was mainly oil-burners on the SP. the first oil burner for the raiload was, ironically, a 4-4-0.

The Museum operated a number of oil fired locomotives for a time, No. 40 and Shay Nos. 12 & 14.

I'm watching this while on break at Tweetsie R.R.

"there will never be coal in Durango again" I don't think it was ever planned to convert 340 or 346 to oil firing? Assuming the run-in will take place at the D&S.

I love learning about the pros and cons of different ways of fueling a steam locomotive. I'd love to see a video about the pros and cons of propane compared to coal.

As someone who lives in the area, the coal was a menace

I used to work for the guys who were burned on UP 844 (8444 at the time) when they were in the cab, the fire had gone out and the engine watchman tossed in a fusee and it flashed back into the cab. It sucked working on the railroad when the West and South ride managers were fried foamers. Jerry from the South drove a car he bought with the money he won for being injured. John, my immediate boss, was not as hurt and was a good boss.

The Great Northern during the 1920s ran into a dilemma when the first N-1 2-6-8-0 arrived on site and firing the Rosebud coal from northern coal mines in Wyoming, Montana and Idaho would not burn hot enough due to being very poor in density and being rather wet and freezing in the Cascades, Bitterroots, and Rockies. The Great Northern subsequently began to order all its engines around 1927 to burn bunker oil and began to convert and purge off all remaining coal burning engines. This later allowed the GN to keep its lokies massive without having half the engine being a firebox like the Northern Pacific's Z class Challengers (infamously so large they had a picknick table and party inside the first Z-6) and allowed them to hold the record for largest steam engine with the R class until the big boys. Great Northern did keep some coal fired engines on the great lakes with its yard jokies but everything was oil fired until the end of steam came around 1968 or so when the last N-2s and 3 stationary boilers were scrapped or sold off.

At the museum I used to work at, a person could get in free if they brought a gallon of used motor oil. They also accepted barrels of fryer oil and sometimes a mystery solvent. I was warned one day that they put 10% mystery solvent and it may go poof. I kept my head out of the door and stirred with the measuring stick to mix it well. It seemed to smell like motor oil. Maybe they were fooling. Didn't go poof and I didn't get lung cancer or high, brain cells still intact. Fryer oil made everyone hungry. We should have had a concession stand those days.

They should fill the boiler with batteries and add a half dozen electric motors. Kidding. You make a great point that they need to do whatever is necessary to keep their mission going. I’d much rather a D&S that burns oil than none at all. We vacationed in Durango during the pandemic and the train (and most of the city) was shut down. So glad it’s all up and running again. Great review Heis!

In northern germany one heritage railway tried wood pellet fuel as an alternative to coal. There are challenges e.g. the firebox needed conversion, the fuel can't get wet and you need about 1.7x the amount but it seems the trial was succesful and the conversion is here to stay. Besides the long term problem another reason to try this was the war in Ukraine which doubled the coal price. I think that every heritage railway running steam which wants to stay running should start thinking about and trialing alternatives to coal rather today than tomorrow. It's only getting more difficult from here on out

Never really put much thought into the differences between oil and coal burning for a steam locomotive. I just figured that railroads on the east coast would burn coal because it was more plentiful and railroads on the west coast would burn oil because it was more plentiful. Very insightful, Hyce never knew the pros and cons of oil burning

One thing that is a real benefit for oil burning is the learning curve. It is *far* far easier to train a new fireman on an oil burner than it is to train a new coal burner fireman.

SVRy 19 and 20 were built as wood burning and then converted to oil by the white pass For our small operation the oil works out really well on the big engines. Our little heisler is still wood burning and you gotta throw a lot of wood. I don’t want to imagine what the fireman had to deal with back on the original sumpter valley throwing wood into a large mikado with stuff like 4% grades

When they were rebuilding the Big Boy, Ed Dickens posted a video about her oil conversion. Of course, they took out the coal grates and replaced them with an oil pan, which they then lined with firebrick. The thing I thought neat was that the oil pan takes up half the space that the coal grates used to, so that's half the firebox being used for heat generation, yet uneven heating didn't seem to be a concern. They also didn't seem to need the brick arch anymore, as it was taken out. Any ideas on why that was the case, Hyce?

In regards to oil burning steam locomotives: Back in Eastern Germany in the late 60s they decided to equip near the entire fleet of the class BR95.0, a tank engine, with oil burners. Do to the way the class was build, it happened that when they had to clean the boiler pipes of oil residuals with steam after shutting off the burner, the residuals ignited explosively and a big fire came out of the smokestack. This could only be done if the cleaning with steam was done directly after shutting off the burner and could only be achived with this class, thanks to it's short boiler pipes. There are quite a lot of photos of that and I imagine it must have been an experience to see that.

I've lived near The preserved CN6069, not only is she one of 3 left, she's the last of her sisters to be in coal burning configuration (If I remember correctly, in service the class was split 50-50 between coal and oil, with one of the other two being oil burning all the time and the 2nd one being converted to oil later) and of the very sporadic talk of reactivation its always acknowledged that she'd have to be converted to oil.

Norwegian here: Ironically (oil nation now…) we had very few oil fired engines. Some post ww2 ‘kriegsloks’ were oil, but they didn’t fit into an infrastructure with coal bunkers abundant. Today, we have very few engines running in preservation, as decommissioned secondary lines (there were many) got ripped up as soon as possible. The network has very few alternate routes, and is extremely “star shaped”. And… there’s ERTMS - ETCS, effectively eradicating any vintage engine due to conversion cost. Ultimately, steam operations are a vintage experience, romanticising and craving the use of ‘real’ coal (wrote this just as Hyce got there…🙈😅). The art, smoke & steam IS the love of steam engines, even if Hyce’s colleagues have to work their a***s off for us punters. That’s why we’re here, after all…? 👍

You also have less flue tube wear with oil vs coal.. Probably not as great of an effect today but back in the days when they ran constantly it meant you had to replete the flues less often.Today the length of time between flue removal and subsequent reuse or replacement of them is short enough that flues don't have enough use to wear out.

Santa Fe 3751 and the following 3752 Class were built as coal burners but were converted to oil during a rebuild in 1937 making them identical to the 3760 class 4-8-4’s. The Milwaukee Road S3 class 4-8-4 Northerns #’s 262, 263, 267 and 269 were built as coal burners and were converted to oil for use between Avery, Idaho and Othello, WA on the non-electrified gap. And GCR ex-CB&Q 2-8-3 #4960 was coal burning until the Grand Canyon Railway acquired her and rebuilt he to burn oil and look more like a Santa Fe 2-8-2.

Probably the way to go to keep steam locomotives in operation in a lot cases, for all the reasons you've listed. I watched an interesting video a while back about a railroad in Germany evaluating wood pellets as an alternative fuel. Some of the same benefits as oil: Current and future supply is more secure (apparently some of the best steam locomotive coal in Europe came out of Russia... something of an issue lately. Meanwhile wood pellets are made from sawdust and wood scraps), a cleaner fire with less ash and particulates, and practically no cinders. They were still in the early stages of testing, so it'll be interesting to see what comes of it, but I love that people are looking for ways to keep these magnificent machines running into the future.

Vegetable Oil GCR4960. So cool to ride behind a 100 year old Mikado to the Grand Canyon.

very nice video, one thing that could help burn oil is have a computer run the firing, would be very handy for an wheelslip event.

In 1986, I rode the coal burning Durango and Silverton train, and loved everything about it, including the cinders, and the smell. Especially the smell! As a child, I would go to the basement of the theatre in a small town in west central Wisconsin, and watch my dad scoop coal into the furnace, to warm up the theatre for evening movies. The smell of a coal fire is so nostalgic for me. When I visited England and Scotland, the fireplaces had been converted to coal burning, and I was instantly swept back to that small theatre in Wisconsin! I will be riding the Durango and Silverton this July, on my 80th birthday, and will miss the coal smell.

Missed you at National Train Day!

As a kid in the 90s, I was lucky enough to get to see 611 run. I remember getting rained on by cinders just after it passed. Thankfully, they weren't hot.

Thanks for the video. I don't work on choochoos, so I have only an armchair opinion.... namely, if it's burn oil vs not go at all let's burn oil! I do love the smell of coal smoke, and I agree that hopefully as time goes on a few coalburners will stay alive, especially in smaller places like the crrm where the fire danger is easier to mitigate than on a line through the woods that's miles long. I think the D&S made a good choice and I hope one day I can see it and ride behind one of those excellent oil-fired steam choo-choos!! Thanks again! PS. I rode behind the 2102 last year, and after a day of coal burning train with the coach windows open I was covered in little gritty cinders - I didn't mind, but I had to explain to the gent in the next seat where the grit came from!!

Cumbres and toltec is slowly converting to oil.

Ridership and viewership will appreciate the much cleaner stacks. Erosion of flue and stay ends in the firebox will be less as well....

I think if a museum could have a track connected to a railroad where they can get a hopper of coal dropped off they could keep coal operations going fairly easily. Most decent-sized coal mines have rail connection, or are at least near enough where coal could be trucked from the mine's wash plant to a yard or siding where it could be transshipped.

Hi Hyce, we run a Case Traction engine on coal here in Western Kansas and our source in Oklahoma closed, you got any suggestions for our show to find a new supplier? I enjoy all your posts , Thanks

Thank you for another lecture on the rail industry. Educational. In your dissertation, you did make several obvious points about fire hazard, flexible firing, clean exhaust, laying the fire and end of day. But I do have a question, what do you do in the evening and overnight when the engine is laid up. Letting an engine go cold is not good for the tubes, tube sheets and the boiler barrel. Lighting the fire from the fire brick??? It must be extremely hot in the firebox to do that. Interesting. Did you mention the general temperature in the firebox when the engine is fired with oil as opposed to coal. Interesting that the box is lined with brick whereas coal is not. By the way, a good coal fire has no visible exhaust. The white billows from the stack is steam in all its glory. Thanks for this enlightning topic and your informed input.

I like you Hyce like the smell of coal but not in copious amounts. How about installing stack scrubbers to remove some of the cinder pollution?

The reason that steam locomotives are often converted to oil is that various boiler parts aren’t damaged by cinder cutting. Also the flues don’t get choked with the ashes and cinders. Oil firing makes cleaning the locomotive easier too.

The thing is that the coal source was close to the D&S..over the mountain in Hesperus. The closest oil sources..the refineries in Farmington and Gallup..are shut down.

As long they can keep steam locomotive to run today and for the upcoming days, I'm totally in fro oil/diesel burning conversion!!

I wonder if you can control the oil and water feed using computer software and place. sensors though out the boiler. and monitor things like the water level, steam leakage, boiler thickness, temperature and pressure and this way FRA can monitor the locomotive status as well.

I got to ride the Durango to Silverton train in the late 70's. I remember getting cinders in my eyes. The exhaust from a coal fire is nearly 100% CO2, the exhaust from an oil fire is CO2 + H2O. Not that the amount of CO2 generated from historic rail roads and museums is a significant source of CO2 emissions, but it is nice to have a little less CO2.

As part of the conversion, using computer control sounds like a good safety measure to avoid the oil issues. Manual over-ride possible of course for corner-cases, but - why not? It's a modification, so make it a restomod while your at it.

Yep, oil is good for when the operational efficiency is the focal point, and since the D&S is a revenue railroad it makes sense to make this move. Imo coal is more rewarding in terms of challenge and skill. Sure it's alot more work before and after (not to mention during!) the run, but I feel a great sense of accomplishment when working the shovel. I'd miss it, even if my back won't. Our railroad has a huge pile of original coal from the SJ days of operations, so we currently have the benefit of running on free fuel. With only a couple of days of operation a year, it should last us a while yet. 8:50, THIS exact thing was the big issue with the SJ E10 4-8-0s built in the 40s, they had woefully inadequate fireboxes but when converted to oil they performed great. A few B 4-6-0s were also plugged in to burn oil. As many others have said; whatever needs done to pay the bills and stay alive and most people couldn't care less as long as it goes "choo choo" and "whoo whoo"... But I'd put a neat little fake coal cover over the tank to sell the illusion it still burns coal. ;)

Rock Island towards the end of steam had a region ( Iowa into Kansas IIRC been a couple years undermy belt since I read the issue of Rock Island Lines) that had been converted to oil burners that restricted those locomotives to those regions. Forget why at this point but it may have been issues with coal infrastructure and cost to repair something with a short remaining lifespan vs converting steam to run on a fuel with an infrastructure that could be converted over to serve diesels easily.

In the early 20th century, the British and Japanese had a number of mixed-firing warships (coal augmented by oil). It seems that some kind of oil-biased dual/mixed-firing arrangement would be ideal for historical railroads: run on oil in normal circumstances, with the option to chuck in a few shovelfuls of coal from time to time for the nostalgiaz.

Lovely thing about steam is anything that'll burn can and has burned in them to make steam. If nothing else, if the need ever arises they can always convert them back, or to something else. What's got me interested is all the experimentation in the UK with solid fuel made from biomass, coal scraps, and other bits snd bobs. Big problem for steam preservation over there is all the coal has to be imported since most of the coal mines in the UK have shut down, and the cost just keeps going up.

I like your opinion about them converting to oil. Doesn't really matter if it's coal or oil. As long as they keep the steam trains running that's all that really matters. Didn't know that getting oil was more expensive than getting coal. I would've thought the exact opposite.

Hyce just talked me off the ledge and I am OK with this now.

Kings Island and Miami valley railroad (3ft gauge Amusement railway) have 2 Cagney Americans from the 80's that run PROPANE. Oil is pretty tame compared to that.

Need to team up with Los Alamos and try one with a radioactive core. Will need to move up to standard gauge...

I would like to thank the Rev. Awdry and Britt Alcroft for the romanticism of coal fired steam engines 😜

Another benefit for oil fired locomotives is that the mainline locomotives that do run on oil can pretty much go anywhere they'd like. Whereas coal there's no infrastructure or coal for a coal fired engine to successfully run there.

Fun fact , the last true western Maryland steam locomotive , 202 4-6-2 on static display , is in fact, an oil burner, which is quite cool considering that the western Maryland was primarily a coal road , Side note 734&1309 if you don’t know already are not original Western Maryland locomotives tho both burn coal. 202 , was initially considered for restoration for the western Maryland after Allegheny Central done moved out with his G5 Pacific. , but due to her low tractiveeffort she was left where she sits today ,

Heh relighting off the bricks is always… fun if you’re daring enough 😂

On one occasion back in the 1970s at Rail Town 1897 on the Sierra, 2-8-2 No. 34 was being fired up early one morning and the fire went out. I don't remember what the specifics were that caused the explosion in the firebox when the fire was re-lit, but the resulting blast blew off the spark arrestor and lodged it pretty snugly up into the smokejack. Lots of interesting stories with 34; toward the end the tires were so shot that the locomotive would slip violently with a modest train, requiring a helper for heavier excursions. Damn thing was leaking so bad around the mudring on its last run in 1980 that the engineer at the end of that day pulled its cab card and said something to the effect of, "that's it, this thing won't run again until it gets fixed." Never ran again, but at least the ownership dispute has been resolved after more than 40 years in mothballs, still at home in the roundhouse. Bit of a tangent there, but it's nice to share steam stories.

Do the tenders for oil-fired steam locomotives need heating on cold days ... say, if the locomotive's been sitting in snow for a few days?

In the 1970's my wife's Ohio family and I were taking a chartered trip on a coal fired steam train though the Akron, Ohio area (I'm from Boston). Both my wife and her older sister were wearing white colored pants on the trip. Before the trip I suggested to my wife that it would not be a very good idea to wear that color. On the trip, we were several passenger cars back from the engine. The windows were open, this being in the Summer time. At the end of the trip, both my wife's sister and my wife's pants had little tiny black specks on them. We didn't see any soot on the trip. But their pants were evidence that the exhaust was spewing out the particulates.

I recently commented to someone that if they wanted the coal experience on more than just the CRRM's loop, they should visit the Cumbres. As far as I know, they're only planning the 2 oil conversions. When 492 returns under steam, she'll still be a coal-burner.

The Locomotives at Disney World run off compressed natural gas. They are great, clean burners. and they actually smell pretty cool. They still gave a lot of grease to add to the odor. I don't know about energy density of the fuel, but they go a full day between fills (it is also flat Florida not like going through the mountains). They are very beautiful engines though.

Curious on Propane or Kerosene fired steam locomotives and your thoughts.

Hi, nice video idea would be to do a break down all DR&W locomotives located at c&T ,D&S , CRM , an etc that would be cool 😎

I have a question about the auger style coal engines vs fireman skill concerning proper coverage in the firebox. I recall a video of how an auger works but i dont think this comparison was mentioned. I know you say proper firebox loading is important to an even fire, how does an auger achieve this or is the fire so big on those engines it just eats everything anyway?