interesting new optifuel locomotive

I didn't know at first what RNG means, but looked it up and found that Renewable Natural Gas is compressed natural gas made from animal and vegetable waste, food waste, and other "renewable" sources of feed stock material.

If we're going to spend the money, then I'm in favor of electrification on mainline routes, powered by distributed nuclear generating facilities.

@B Smith posted:

If we're going to spend the money, then I'm in favor of electrification on mainline routes, powered by distributed nuclear generating facilities.

But,,,,,,,,,,,,,how would the spent nuclear fuel be disposed of? That is already a long standing problem that is rarely discussed.

It can be successfully buried in salt caves and other impermeable formations such as those suggested for a burial site in Nevada (which was nixed for political rather than environmental or engineering reasons). The French currently have about 56 nuclear plants in operation, which contribute greatly to the power load of their TGV system, and disposal has not been an issue in that country.

would those RNG tenders be armored ?

i mean Florida East Coast uses LNG tenders

@paigetrain posted:

would those RNG tenders be armored ?

i mean Florida East Coast uses LNG tenders

Remember, LNG is Liquified, i.e. NOT a compressed gas such as RNG.

@paigetrain posted:

would those RNG tenders be armored ?

i mean Florida East Coast uses LNG tenders

You are missing the motivation there.  FEC did it because they had a local LNG plant already and their entire route was feasible.

"One, the FECR line-haul locomotive fleet is captive, operating solely on the railroad’s Jacksonville-Miami main line. Two, FECR has a ready source of LNG: Florida East Coast Industries owns and operates an LNG plant in Titusville. The $250 million facility got the green light in January 2015; FECI affiliate Tico Development built the now fully operational plant at the south end of Titusville."

https://www.railwayage.com/mec...s/fec-rolls-out-lng/

Read between the lines- what is being proposed is spending 8.5 Billion with a B in infrastructure, to build out multiple refueling stations and the tenders for transport. Then rather than retrofitting existing locomotives, they want to sell you a new one for 5.5 Million each.

@Vernon Barry posted:

You are missing the motivation there.  FEC did it because they had a local LNG plant already and their entire route was feasible.

"One, the FECR line-haul locomotive fleet is captive, operating solely on the railroad’s Jacksonville-Miami main line. Two, FECR has a ready source of LNG: Florida East Coast Industries owns and operates an LNG plant in Titusville. The $250 million facility got the green light in January 2015; FECI affiliate Tico Development built the now fully operational plant at the south end of Titusville."

https://www.railwayage.com/mec...s/fec-rolls-out-lng/

Read between the lines- what is being proposed is spending 8.5 Billion with a B in infrastructure, to build out multiple refueling stations and the tenders for transport. Then rather than retrofitting existing locomotives, they want to sell you a new one for 5.5 Million each.

with that kind of money it would probably be cheaper to electrify everything like in Europe

will we ever have a cleaner solution for locomotives other than diesel? that is a viable solution?

@paigetrain posted:

with that kind of money it would probably be cheaper to electrify everything like in europe

will we ever have a cleaner solution for locomotives other than diesel? that is a viable solution?

Mostly the shear size of the US, along with distance between cities is often cited as at least one reason it's not electrified. FWIW, I lived in Germany from 1995 until 2003, traveled much of Europe before coming back to the US.

There may be one day a cleaner fuel or source, but the point is, you have to look end to end at the entire system to make that determination. We keep leaving this part out of the massive end to end infrastructure and true total cost to make it viable and worse, the real actual total project cost- let alone the true environmental impact.

I'm not against renewable energy. RNG power generation at landfills is a good thing. Taking that concept, then saying let's adapt that at huge cost, more energy losses, higher safety risk, for powering trains is where the idea goes wrong IMO.

Again, fine, pump the electric into the grid. If you want, electrify sections of track that makes sense- powered via the grid. Try it at a small scale, one city, one state.

The RNG is pressurized to around 3,600 psi for storage and transport, so the tenders will have to be robust and well protected from accident. Compare with regular propane tanks that are pressurized to less than 200 psi.

The story does not say that $8.5 billion is government funding. It states that the development is "partially funded with a Department of Energy (DOE) grant."

The only reference I could find to the grant is that Optifuel was finalizing a $2.6 million grant from DOE. That's over 1000x less.

But since facts don't matter much these days, who cares about a little 1000-fold discrepancy?

OK....we had a bunch of alerts to this thread.  I deleted the comments that had "political" slants.  Don't make us have to disable those folk's accounts that insist on turning the thread into politics.  If you don't like how the government spends money, then find a group online that specializes in those kinds of topics.