I don’t think anything could encapsulate the D&S smoke issue better than this letter to the editor of the Durango Telegraph:
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Let's get with the times
Dear Editors,
This is a quote from my 4-year-old daughter. "Mommy, look at the train. It has black smoke that is making the air dirty. If I had a choo-choo train, I would make it clean."
We need to get with the times. Pollution is neither quaint nor nostalgic. In the past, we did not have the technology to avoid pollution, but we do now. Let's purchase those filters. If a 4-year-old can see it, why can't we?
Tracy Ford, Durango
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I have attached a link with an article in the Durango Herald that details the current proposed remedy to the problem.
[www.durangoherald.com]
My thoughts:
The Denver consultant, Earth Tech has proposed some specific solutions to the smoke emission from D&S locomotives. Their primary focus is on the hot standby status of the engines when not in use, but interestingly, they do suggest that the engines might be run at a reduced pressure and temperature as an experiment to see if it lowers emissions. I would think that there are locomotive experts out there who could accurately predict the results of running at a reduced pressure without a need to experiment. Would the emissions go down? Or would they go up?
To address the hot standby phase of operation, Earth Tech recommends gas-fired heaters in the fireboxes, or in an external boiler that is connected by piping to the locomotive boiler, circulating common water between the two. The external boiler would operate on gas or electricity.
It is interesting to note that they are proposing these auxiliary heaters not to maintain a head of steam overnight, but rather, to bring the “stone cold” boilers up to steam. So with this method, there is no hot standby. Do they not realize that the reason for the hot standby is the time required to bring a cold engine up to steam? --OR—do they believe that the auxiliary heaters could bring a cold engine up to steam much faster than would be the case when building a coal fire from scratch? I suppose the auxiliary heaters would be faster because you have the full BTU output the instant the flame is ignited. Although, in the case of the independent, connected boiler, you have much more water and mass to heat up.
However, even if you do rebuild a head of steam or maintain it with an auxiliary heater, you still need to re-establish an operating coal fire. It is not clear to me as to what condition that fire would be in after the engine stands overnight with an auxiliary heater keeping the boiler hot. Perhaps the coal fire could be re-established in very little time under those conditions. It seems to me, though, that there would be substantial smoke created when a large volume of coal is added to rebuild the fire after sitting overnight. I wonder if an hour of firing during this rebuild phase might make more smoke than four or five hours firing during the current hot standby phase.
Ron Keagle
