Feature: East Coast Champ

[Brian Schmidt]

We have posted Fred W. Frailey's January 2015 feature story on Florida East Coast online following the annouced sale of the railroad to Grupo Mexico:

http://trn.trains.com/bonus/eastcoastchamp

[edblysard]

Liked the article, and like the railroad…FEC is an open shop if I remember correctly, which allows them to do a few things other, bigger roads couldn’t.

 

Still, where they are makes them the only game in town for a bunch of shippers.

[tdmidget]

When the article refers to "LNG "mlocomotives, it's hard to determine what's believable and what's not. There are no LNG locomotves and likjely will not be. Carrying the fuel as a liquid does not make the locomotive LNG. The liquid is vaporized before it is mixed with incoming air just as an LP gas engine does. The engine is still a diesel engine , relying on compression ignition of an injected oil charge.

[edblysard]

http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=455779

 

Uhhh…LA Junction has had LNG MKs for a long time.

[RME]

tdmidget

There are no LNG locomotves and likjely will not be. Carrying the fuel as a liquid does not make the locomotive LNG. The liquid is vaporized before it is mixed with incoming air just as an LP gas engine does. The engine is still a diesel engine , relying on compression ignition of an injected oil charge.

Ed, he's not saying there are no 'locomotives that burn LNG fuel', he's saying they don't burn 'straight' LNG or cryomethane. 

I think the current 'best practice' is still as tdmidget indicates -- the actual ignition in a locomotive "diesel engine" that has been converted to run on LNG is promoted with a small coinjection or pilot injection of diesel (I believe nominally about 5% of the needed heat content, but more determined by injection spray coverage than a critical release of overall heat from fuel mass), which then serves as the same thing as a 'flameholder' to light off the LNG in the charge effectively.  One alternative is laser ignition, as in a high-frequency PDE, but there can be substantial cost and engineering in providing the appropriate energy density and timing for the laser setup involved, and in maintaining the optical windowing into the combustion chamber appropriately.

Also as he pointed out, the schemes for unit injection of LNG have not proven very satisfactory, so the idea has been to use as much cheap or waste heat as possible to bring the natural gas constituents back to vapor phase and use them like typical "gas fuel" (not gasoline, but pressure LPG or pipeline natural gas) in engines that have been optimized to burn that kind of fuel -- usually NOT engines relying on compression ignition to work, as you're likely to induce predetonation with a dense enough admitted fuel+air charge to make necessary locomotive power density.

[edblysard]

I get it, I even understand the mechanics and physics, (the MKs tested here for a two week period ages ago) but what he wrote was there aint none, and none are expected…He needs to be clear and concise, and precise in what he writes, leaving no need to interpret or suppose.

 Had that been our buddy Bucky/Euclid, every poster, myself included, would have been all over him and so far up his backside we would be bumping boot tips on his chin for not being more precise.

“There are no LNG locomotves and likjely will not be.

No fudge room in that statement.

On the other hand, had he written something along the lines of…”There are no commercially manufactured long haul road service LNG locomotives, and none have been announced by major builders” he would have been spot on.

If we are going to hold Bucky to a set of verbal standards, we must hold ourselves to the same standards, yes?

The fact is, there are LNG locomotives, LAJ has several.

Not what FEC is looking for exactly, but they do exist.

 

 

[jeffhergert]

edblysard

Liked the article, and like the railroad…FEC is an open shop if I remember correctly, which allows them to do a few things other, bigger roads couldn’t.

 

Still, where they are makes them the only game in town for a bunch of shippers.

 

I believe the FEC is a UTU/SMART represented property.  Even so, they probably have a lot more flexibility in work rules. Heck, even the big guys have more flexibility than years ago.

Jeff