Re: Alternative Fuel for Rail?

["Al" <alpout@optusnet.com.au>]

"David Bennetts" <davibenn@ozemail.com.au> wrote in message
news:xchP6.64$Yr1.2487@ozemail.com.au...
> With alternative fuels such as LPG now well established for road transport,
> and more recently CNG (compressed natural gas) being used for buses, I
> wonder if such fuels have been successfully trialled for rail transport.
>
> It would seem that natural gas is likely to be more available than diesel
> fuel in the future, and it has been used for heavy road transport, I'm not
> sure just how successfully.
>
> Rail would seem to offer an advantage over road in that CNG requires larger
> fuel tanks than either liquid fuels or LPG, it shouldn't be too hard to
> couple a CNG tanker behind the locomotive just as steam engines used coal
> tenders.  Of course the safety aspect of such fuels would also need to be
> considered, I must say that I felt a little uneasy a while ago standing on
> the platform at Kuala Lumpur station as a train of LPG tankers went through!
>
> Regards
>
> David Bennetts
> Australia

I suggest Biodiesel.  It can be totally manufactured in Australia, it is
carbon-neutral (ie the fuel itself can only put out the carbon in its
ingredients first, as opposed to fossil fuels), it has a similar calorific
value to petro-diesel and it can run in most diesel engines without
modification, or with only minor adjustments.  Diesel (the engineer) when
demonstrating the Diesel engine used peanut oil for fuel.

It also doesn't need any pressure vessels to contain it, so it's safer in a
crash, such as the Beresfield collision (that's Al the engineer and
firefighter talking there) and is more biodegradable than petro-diesel (that's
Al the greeny talking there).

Secondly, I'd suggest LPG.  Conversions of diesel to LPG are fairly common
now.

Al