On Fri, 26 Jun 2009 09:31:46 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
It was pretty graphic way to remind us WHY coal powered steamers were
ditched. Frequent stops for water mandatory, unless you count the water
troughs systems..unreliable and needed very frequent servicing, and a
filthy dirty backbreaking job to stoke them.

Hmm, I thought some of the larger ones had automatic stokers - I'm sure
that could be adapted for smaller engines, too these days.

I rad somewhere recently that even modern electric trains are ot very
carbon efficient: the trains are, but the amount of track servicing
signalling and so on is a huge overhead of goods materials and people
that need to be shipped around to keep it all going.

The curse of a small crowded island, I suppose - over here it seems to be
a very efficient way of getting goods from A to B. It's not uncommon to
see trains with three engines and over 200 wagons (and there are no
overhead bridges on a lot of routes, so shipping containers stacked one
atop the other are a frequent sight).

Some of the fuel consumption figures claimed by the freight companies are
pretty impressive - presumably because steel-on-steel is low friction, and
these are from routes with no stop-starting and flat gradient all the way.

cheers

Jules