Oil Firing

The key point is why temperature are rising? If you don't tackle that then everything else is a waste of time. To a man (or woman) climate scientists will tell you that it is due to CO2. It's the only known correlation with increasing global temperatures. There will never be sustainability without control (and reduction) of CO2 emissions.

The price mechanism will protect the consumer. I don't imagine that the NYMR are paying the same price for rapeseed oil as I do at Tesco!

 

I'm not arguing that about CO2. But with finite supplies of foodstuffs, the price mechanism will also harm those consumers who can't pay the sums necessary to achieve the effect you're claiming for use of plant based oils. At the scale of a railway, I couldn't give two hoots about whether they use rapeseed oil, but if you're then relying on industrialising it to achieve economy scale results, you will cause massive side effects

 

The process of producing rapeseed oil is already industrialised. If rapeseed oilk is in short supply, because of price it will be more likely to be sold to consumers. Any railway using rapeseed oil will not influence the supply in any way. Reducing CO2 emissions is the solution but we're only paying lip service, aren't we?

 

If liquid fuel firing is to to be effective and affordable then the debate about the systems of oil firing used previously are not sufficiently compliant with what is what is required and expected of the combustion system.
It is imperative that modern well developed technologies are used. These exist and being applied. Hence ok go for you coal mine where ever it is but that is a stop gap mesure. Even liquid fuels will have there day but currently offer the best option in what ever form is most cost and fuel efficient.

Beyond that this dry summer is predicted to be the future norm and the only logical solution is to use liquid fuels as a fire hazard reduction system.

 

While I agree that rail use is a drop in the ocean, this misses the wider point. If production for oil rises, that will induce price rises and the price mechanism means that agricultural production for rapeseed oil (in this instance) will increase. Broadly, that will reduce the amount of land available for growing other crops, which will cause their price to increase.

The idea that this will be self-levelling only works if the aggregate demand (food and industrial) is stable, and that the consumer price of the different crops is identical. But this is a situation in which, by definition, aggregate demand is rising because additional uses are being developed.

It also presumes that the markets for the different crops can sustain those price increases, and that supply can match the level of demand.

You don't have to be a Malthusian to see how requiring finite productive capacity of land to meet not only growing food demands, but also fuel demands met by depleted fossil fuel stocks, raises significant sustainability questions if embedded as policy.

 

I think the problem is that climate change is a very complex problem. We know what has caused it but we don't fully understand its ramifications yet. I suppose we could wait until we do know the full ramifications or we could act now do deal with the situation as we understand it now and change our actions later as we understand more. Personally I prefer the latter; don't like waiting for Godot.
It seems to me that burning fossil fuels is wrong. Burning renewables is better but it's still burning which adds to the CO2 but to a lesser extent. Having said that are we really going to do nothing until we no longer need to burn stuff. I don't think that's viable.
In the context of the heritage railway movement it's better to go for renewable liquid fuels now and stop burning coal. As for the argument that burning rape seed oil is going to cause people to go hungry I really don't get it. I have yet to see a recipe which includes rape seed oil (an oil that is generally blended with others and sold as vegetable oil) as anything other than as an agent frying other ingredients and I have a lot of cookery books.
Please let's discuss this sensibly without daft speculation

 

There are definitely still French locos running round with copper boxes - I know, not least because I put one of them in its boiler about ten years ago, and also did all the paperwork to keep the French boiler inspectors at bay.

I'm not sure there's any engineering knowledge in France on maintaining and repairing them, but that's a different question.

(As an aside, French boiler inspectors are universally the least competent of any variety I've encountered. They are gloriously zealous for the paperwork, but most of them have never even seen a loco type boiler. The one I dealt with on that particular job looked at the boiler (a conventional loco type) and asked what the purpose was of the side stays.
That said, I had the representative of a well known UK national outfit inspect an unfitted new firebox for something recently - after a few moments thought, and some more moments studying the boiler general arrangement drawing he pointed to tube nest and said "is that the top?", so perhaps the French aren't much worse)

 

No, no, no the cause of climate change is well known. It might have complex consequences but to a man, climate scientists will tell you that the cause is CO2. It's only the climate deniers that will tell otherwise. Richard Tice for one will tell that the cause of climate change is volcanoes. Volcanoes emit sulphur dioxide which has the opposite effect to CO2!



Burning renewables is, by definition, burning carbon already contained with the carbon cycle. If done on a sustainable basis, there would no increase in atmospheric CO2. Burning carbon from a fossil source, i.e. underground, will add carbon to the carbon cycle and lead to inevitable rise in atmospheric CO2. The only reliable way of removing carbon from the atmosphere is by growing trees but space and suitable ecosystems are becoming less and less. The UK government has £bn250 for carbon capture but no one has been able to make it work! We'll all be dead long before we've burnt the last liquid fossil fuel!

 

Yes, that was told to me on a French forum who probably should have known better. Having said that, there aren't too many locos with copper boxes in France. They wouldn't have withstood the pressure used by Chapelon. The French don't believe that the vast majority of our fireboxes are copper. According to them steel fireboxes don't suffer from electrolytic corrosion. Little do they know that most of our copper fireboxes date back to 1960s and earlier whilst a fair few of our Bulleids have had their steel fireboxes replaced.

 

I remember a new boiler inspector working for Bureau Veritas coming to inspect a boiler at Middleton. At one point, he climbed onto the saddletank and lifted the tank lid and looked in. He then uttered the never to be forgotten words "That's the trouble with saddletanks, the boiler barrel corrodes from both sides." I don't think he lasted long as he never came back but his replacement was the best inspector I've ever had.