Re: Oil and the future

I subscribe to the premise that the "cheap oil" era is over.
Ten years from now $80 per barrel oil might seem like quite a bargain.
I doubt that coal fired steam locomotives, at least as we relate to them, will ever return. Although they might capture fuel cost savings, they are still maintanance dependent machines, and labor costs to keep them running would probably far exceed any economic savings from fuel costs. I suppose that technology could assure stack emmission acceptance, but the era of burning the sulfur ladened coal of past eras would probably not be an option.
It would seem logical that coal would be an economical fuel on dedicated unit train runs to and from the Powder River Basin, but does the coal leaving that area have enough BTU yield to be a suitable railroad fuel?
I would have loved to have seen the 614 pulling a freight or coal consist. I rode behind her on a passenger excursion from St. Louis to Flora, Illinois. It's probably esoteric, but she just seemed to have a certain finesse, that the UP 8444 lacked.
I have some impages of 614 at work. Is there any simple way to link them to this board?