Are any oil fired steam locos currently opperational on British heritage railways?

[renegademaster]

I heard a while ago that one of the castle classes where getting converted but not heard anything since. Did anything survive from when GWR orignally tried it?

 

[norbitonflyer]

The festiniog has run a number of oil burners, which make them less of a fire risk in the heavily wooded areas they run in - some of the more recent locos were built that way - but converted many of them (back) to coal because of high oil prices.

Ffestiniog Goes Back To Coal - Festipedia

www.festipedia.org.uk

The NYMR is also converting two of its locos.

WD Dame Vera Lynn and S160 Omaha to be converted to oil-fired locos

The North Yorkshire Moors Railway has confirmed that WD 2-10-0 3672 Dame Vera Lynn will burn 'liquid fuels' when it returns from overhaul. Originally, WDs were built as either coal-fired or oil-fired locos and there is evidence that 3672 was originally built as a oil-fired loco so converting it w...

www.rmweb.co.uk

 

[peteb]

I heard a while ago that one of the castle classes where getting converted but not heard anything since. Did anything survive from when GWR orignally tried it?

How easy would it be to convert a "Castle" or indeed any other mainline express steam engine to burn oil? And is oil in these cases diesel fuel oil or could other oils be used?

 

[61058]

How easy would it be to convert a "Castle" or indeed any other mainline express steam engine to burn oil? And is oil in these cases diesel fuel oil or could other oils be used?

5 Castles were convert to oil firing in 1946/7 for a few months until the Government realised the cost of using foriegn exchange as the country was nearly bankrupt after fighting World Ear Two.

 

[Taunton]

The Festiniog has run a number of oil burners, which make them less of a fire risk in the heavily wooded areas they run in - some of the more recent locos were built that way - but converted many of them (back) to coal because of high oil prices.

Heritage railways in the USA, where oil is far cheaper and steam locos were often oil fired when in mainstream service, make a feature of running on Recycled Oil, which I believe is a mixture of waste lubricating oil from road vehicles and waste vegetable oil from restaurants and food processing plants.

 

[peteb]

Heritage railways in the USA, where oil is far cheaper and steam locos were often oil fired when in mainstream service, make a feature of running on Recycled Oil, which I believe is a mixture of waste lubricating oil from road vehicles and waste vegetable oil from restaurants and food processing plants.

Hmm....so might be feasible here in the UK as/when supplies of suitable coal cease? Seems a "greener" option but I wonder if they'd have a pleasant aroma, vans etc running on reused cooking oil do produce a strange smell!

 

[Merle Haggard]

Back in the 1960s the Tallylyn (I think - might have been the Ffestiniog) used oil burning but this was waste engine oil. I remember seeing their tanker, which went around garages.
Is the oil used recently similar to D.E.R.V. (i.e., thinner) ?

 

[Taunton]

Garages have a considerable quantity of waste lubricating oil from oil changes, which is what the USA museum lines use. It's quite different to diesel fuel (Derv). I don't know how it worked commercially, whether they had to buy it or were actually paid to take it away.

Mainstream railways in the USA who used oil firing steam locos, particularly in places like California with local oil but a very long way away from coalfields, some of which made a direct transition from wood firing to oil, used what was essentially a refinery residual product called Bunker C, which was notably cheap. It was thick and difficult to manage, and could even need steam heating by pipes coming back from the loco into the tender oil tank to avoid it solidifying. It might contain a proportion of sand which originated from the rock formations the crude oil was pumped up from. Bitumen (tar) is a further thicker fraction of oil, but that has various uses, such as blending into road asphalt. The huge gas turbine locos of the 1950s in the western USA also used Bunker C in the turbine.

 

[AndrewE]

Garages have a considerable quantity of waste lubricating oil from oil changes, which is what the USA museum lines use. It's quite different to diesel fuel (Derv). I don't know how it worked commercially, whether they had to buy it or were actually paid to take it away.

Mainstream railways in the USA who used oil firing steam locos, particularly in places like California with local oil but a very long way away from coalfields, some of which made a direct transition from wood firing to oil, used what was essentially a refinery residual product called Bunker C, which was notably cheap. It was thick and difficult to manage, and could even need steam heating by pipes coming back from the loco into the tender oil tank to avoid it solidifying. It might contain a proportion of sand which originated from the rock formations the crude oil was pumped up from. Bitumen (tar) is a further thicker fraction of oil, but that has various uses, such as blending into road asphalt. The huge gas turbine locos of the 1950s in the western USA also used Bunker C in the turbine.

Isn't there a potential - or real - pollution problem from distributing over the countryside the heavy metals in it from bearing wear? Or are modern bearings so good that there isn't any significant amount of wear?

 

[andyjhatton]

Garages have a considerable quantity of waste lubricating oil from oil changes, which is what the USA museum lines use. It's quite different to diesel fuel (Derv). I don't know how it worked commercially, whether they had to buy it or were actually paid to take it away.

Garages in the UK have to pay to have waste products such as oil (lubricating, and hydraulic fluids) and fuel (diesel and petrol) disposed of in an environmentally compliant way.
I imagine most of them would happily give it away for free as it would remove a cost-centre for them, however any such "scheme" would have to be signed-off by the relevant authorities as environmentally compliant.

From the railways perspective they would have to be sure that what they were collecting was suitable for burning, and free of any contaminants.
I imagine one big sludge of lubricating oil (posssibly contaminated with heavy metals as mentioned above), hydraulic fluids, petrol and diesel fuels might not be the best.
In which case somebody would bear the burden of filtering out material suitable for oil firing from the rest, and then paying somebody to dispose of what's left.

 

[Taunton]

The use of Bunker C, which was the fuel for most oil-fired steam locos in mainstream service (USA, Africa, etc, even some mainland Europe), is not really practical for heritage railways, as it requires all sorts of heating for storage, transfer and use.

Late 1950s some USA railroads even tried it in diesels, as it was much cheaper, but it didn't work out. You couldn't start the engine on it, had to make a gradual transition once running. No issue on a ship, with a full time engineer in the engine room, but not practical on a loco. Described here:

So what is Bunker C Fuel Oil? - Trains Magazine - Trains News Wire, Railroad News, Railroad Industry News, Web Cams, and Forms

Trains magazine offers railroad news, railroad industry insight, commentary on today's freight railroads, passenger service (Amtrak), locomotive technology, railroad preservation and history, railfan opportunities (tourist railroads, fan trips), and great railroad photography.

cs.trains.com

 

[MarkyT]

5 Castles were convert to oil firing in 1946/7 for a few months until the Government realised the cost of using foriegn exchange as the country was nearly bankrupt after fighting World Ear Two.

Dad finished his premium apprenticeship at The Plant in Doncaster and took a junior draughtsman job in the loco drawing office in 1946. The LNER was also involved in the Government's mass planned oil conversions and father was tasked with preparing designs for the fixed fuelling infrastructure at depots. This required a steam plant providing heat to soften the heavy bunker fuel and supply a small steam pumping engine to move it at each proposed site. The dream of cheap oil availability soon disappeared when a new Iranian government nationalised vast former British oil assets in that country and the whole project was quickly abandoned. In this period the railways had difficulty obtaining the best coal for the express services they were keen to re-establish. I believe the Government of the time saw this newly nationalised commodity as a great foreign exchange opportunity and preferred to sell it overseas rather than allow the railways to use it domestically, one of the justifications for oil conversion. During hostilities, the best steam coal had mostly gone to the Royal Navy, of course.

On travels with Dad, I saw some oil-fired steam on heavy freight in West Germany in the 1970s. That was also the heavy bunker fuel, as used in shipping, and I assume as these last steam freights were working to and from major Baltic ports, DB could obtain the fuel easily in that area. Modern conversions and new builds use much cleaner lighter oils which can include diesel and domestic heating fuel. The Ffestiniog famously appealed for donations of used motor sump oil in their oil-fired period. While they no doubt processed it to an extent, I think with all the metal contaminants and combustion products, old engine lube oil was probably not a very clean fuel; I remember very black smoke on that railway as a child when we visited regularly in the 70s!

 

[Dave S 56F]

I heard a while ago that one of the castle classes where getting converted but not heard anything since. Did anything survive from when GWR orignally tried it?

Are you sure your not thinking of Tyseley,s 49xx collett Hall 4965 Rood Ashton Hall? Its been converted to oil firing on its next overhaul when it emerges again

 

[renegademaster]

Are you sure your not thinking of Tyseley,s 49xx collett Hall 4965 Rood Ashton Hall? Its been converted to oil firing on its next overhaul when it emerges again

Probbally , know its something GWR

 

[randyrippley]

Isn't there a potential - or real - pollution problem from distributing over the countryside the heavy metals in it from bearing wear? Or are modern bearings so good that there isn't any significant amount of wear?

Pass it through a cyclone centrifuge, should remove the metals.
Back in the 1970s BR made a big point in the press that they were already doing this to clean and reuse lubricating oil - as lubricating oil. Re-use, not re-cycling

 

[WAB]

The Ffestiniog famously appealed for donations of used motor sump oil in their oil-fired period. While they no doubt processed it to an extent, I think with all the metal contaminants and combustion products, old engine lube oil was probably not a very clean fuel; I remember very black smoke on that railway as a child when we visited regularly in the 70s!

I understand that there was processing involved at the time, but I doubt the setup used then would pass muster these days. And yes, the quality is variable. Perhaps not so much a problem for the standard gauge but on the narrow gauge where the locos are putting a lot of work in, bad fuel is probably not a good idea.

 

[Taunton]

5 Castles were convert to oil firing in 1946/7 for a few months until the Government realised the cost of using foreign exchange as the country was nearly bankrupt after fighting World Ear Two.

Contrary to a great deal of misinformation, no foreign exchange was required, because the major UK oil producing areas of the era were in the Sterling Area, which enabled payment to be made in UK currency rather than foreign exchange. Several of the major oil producing points in The Gulf were members, notably Bahrain and Kuwait, which in those times were the centre of Gulf oil production. You will notice that shipping, almost entirely oil fired postwar, or the RAF, both of which used far more oil than the railway ever might, had no issue with supply. This is a list of the Sterling Area territories and countries:

Sterling area - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

The several reasons for abandoning the scheme were:

- Pressure from the coal mining union on the postwar Labour government.
- Poor financial and operational results from converted locomotives.
- An improvement in the coal supply

 

[Merle Haggard]

Does anyone else remember pannier tank 3711 on ECS duties at Paddington? That was, bizarrely i.m.o., still oil fired in the 1960s. It was noticeable for its interesting exhaust smell. It had an oil tank in the former coal bunker. Never shown as such in the A.B.C.s, seemed to be completely 'under the radar'.

 

[MarkyT]

Does anyone else remember pannier tank 3711 on ECS duties at Paddington? That was, bizarrely i.m.o., still oil fired in the 1960s. It was noticeable for its interesting exhaust smell. It had an oil tank in the former coal bunker. Never shown as such in the A.B.C.s, seemed to be completely 'under the radar'.

That was a late one-off conversion under BR in 1958. I don't know whether that used the heavy bunker C oil used in the 1940s trials or whether they'd moved on to lighter/cleaner fuels by then. Diesel would be fairly widely available at depots for diesel shunters and DMUs by then.

Here's an interesting article about the subject which mentions the pannier:

A brief flirtation with Oil - Firing

Short-lived programmes for oil-fired steam locomotives stopped by costs. . . . . . 28XX class 2-8-0 number 2854, renumbered as oil-burning locomotive 4801, being refuelled around 1947. Great Western TrustIn Britain it was the Great Eastern Railway that pioneered oil-fired locomotives from...

www.nrmfriends.org.uk

 

[Merle Haggard]

That was a late one-off conversion under BR in 1958. I don't know whether that used the heavy bunker C oil used in the 1940s trials or whether they'd moved on to lighter/cleaner fuels by then. Diesel would be fairly widely available at depots for diesel shunters and DMUs by then.

Here's an interesting article about the subject which mentions the pannier:

A brief flirtation with Oil - Firing

Short-lived programmes for oil-fired steam locomotives stopped by costs. . . . . . 28XX class 2-8-0 number 2854, renumbered as oil-burning locomotive 4801, being refuelled around 1947. Great Western TrustIn Britain it was the Great Eastern Railway that pioneered oil-fired locomotives from...

www.nrmfriends.org.uk

Thanks, interesting I can remember that 3711 had a strange smell, not sure after all these years but I don't think I would have remembered that if it was the just same smell as a diesel loco - so it might possibly have been 'Bunker C'. Again from memory it seemed to have a very clean exhaust, no water vapour either (so prob very hot), invisible. Gave a strange effect of no visible effort.

Although the 1947 ish oil fired loco conversions didn't last long, I'm fairly sure that the facilities for storage etc remained at Wellingborough shed up to the end of steam there. The tanks were painted light brown and there was a lot of concrete involved, probably why they remained.

 

[MarkyT]

Thanks, interesting I can remember that 3711 had a strange smell, not sure after all these years but I don't think I would have remembered that if it was the just same smell as a diesel loco - so it might possibly have been 'Bunker C'. Again from memory it seemed to have a very clean exhaust, no water vapour either (so prob very hot), invisible. Gave a strange effect of no visible effort.

Maybe burning diesel or other similar light oil in a firebox would produce a rather different smell to burning the same fuel in an internal combustion engine. I don't recall much smell from the Brienz Rothorn rack locos which use a light domestic heating oil very similar to diesel. They seemed very clean burning typically, apart from a hint of dark for a while when turning up the burner after a period of low activity.

Although the 1947 ish oil fired loco conversions didn't last long, I'm fairly sure that the facilities for storage etc remained at Wellingborough shed up to the end of steam there. The tanks were painted light brown and there was a lot of concrete involved, probably why they remained.

The bunker oil heating and pumping plant would have been a significant maintenance liability to keep going through a decade or more of no use. As you suggest, perhaps the tanks at Wellingborough were simply rather difficult to remove so they put off the task until the land was needed for something else.