RUNNING TRAINS ON OIL

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXIII, Issue 4365, 13 January 1922, Page 3

RUNNING TRAINS ON OIL

(By Vernon Summerfield.)

Necessity is not only the mother of invention, but often brings old ideas to light, and the extensive use off oilfired engines on British railways during the coal strike is largely due to the late, James Holden, a former locomotive superintendent of •’he Great Eastern, who was a pioneer of liquid fuel many years ago. He conceived the idea of using the residues from coal-gas works at a time when that fuel could be bought at about 13s a ton as compared with a sovereign for steam coal, but the practice ceased to be economical when the residues, hitherto a more or less wasted by-product, rose to between £3 and £4 a ton. But scarce and dear coal, the tapping of new oil supplies, and the f.act that a ton of oil develops twice the heat energy of the same quantity of coal, have altered the position. Oil-fired locomotives have this year been running on the Great Central, London and North-Western,’ Southwestern, Highland, North-Eastern, Great Northern, Midland; and Great Eastern Railways.

Except on the last two lines, use is made of a jet-burning apparatus; which sprays the oil into the firebox, where it is vaporised, and entirely dispenses with coal. "Firing” is thus practically reduced to the turning on of a tap.

On the Midland and Great Eastern (the latter converted as many as 75 engines to oil) an adaptation of the Holden system is employed. Crude oil fuel is sprayed Into the firebox, where a small fire has previously been made up with wood or coal, the oil issuing from the burner in the form of a thin jet or stream, which is atomised by contact with a jet of steam. Once the fire has been started properly it is often possible to make long runs without using any coal at all, and a little at the back off the firebox is enough if any be required.

To the uninitiated an oiliflred locomotive is just like any ether. The only visible alteration is a cylindrical barrel containing the liquid fuel on the top of the tender, while in a tank engine (i.e., one without a tender) the oil is stored in a rectangular container on the top of the coal-bunker, which , would not be noticed by one person in a thousand. Every oil engine used during ths recent coal strike gave satisfaction, but whether liquid fuel has “ come to stay ” on our railways is a matter involving very many factors. One very great economy is offered by oil quite apart from its price as compared with coal, and that is the possibility of distributing it all over a railway system by means of pipe lines.

At present the railway companies spend an enormous sum every year in building, maintaining, and hauling tens of thousands of waggons which carry nothing but locomotive coal and always make the return journey empty. A network of pipelines would enable all this quite unprofitable expenditure to be cut out, but so far no railway company has decided to instal such a network.

Our railways grew out pf the demand 'for more efficient methods of carrying coal, but it is by no means certain that the steam locomotive of the future will depend on coal.