Saturday, December 24, 2011

Queens gets cleaner trains

From the Forum:

Two of the diesel engines that run on tracks cutting through Middle Village, Ridgewood and Glendale will get a state-of-the-art,low-emissions upgrade by 2013.

Thanks to a grant from Environmental Protection Agency’s National Clean Diesel Funding Assistance Program, New York will get $2 million to upgrade the engines operating out of the Fresh Pond Terminal railyard in Glendale.

The EPA, New York City Economic Development Corporation, New York City Department of Sanitation, and New YorkCity Department of Small Business Services made the announcement on Dec. 13.

These locomotives will remain in the freightrail network and will be transformed in partnership with CSX Transportation and the joint work of the New York & Atlantic Railwayand Waste Management of New York.

The upgrade replaces each conventional diesel engine with several smaller generators that can be activated when the locomotive is working at full power and deactivated when their power is not needed.

EPA officials say these two conversionswill save an estimated 31,000 gallons of fuel each year and remove an expected 32 tons ofnitrogen oxides and 0.64 tons of particulate matter from the air annually. Removing 32 tons of nitrogen oxides from the air is the equivalent of taking more than 4,300 personal automobiles off of the road each year.

3 comments:

Joe said...

"The upgrade replaces each conventional diesel engine with several smaller generators" that can be activated when the locomotive is working at full power"
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This makes no sense ! The Sanitation Commissioner is an idiot. What 2nd idiot (if any)proofed this story ?
2- Why is the Sanitation Commissioner commenting on engineering he clearly knows nothing about and total mis-information at that ?

Generators by themselves do not magically "generate" energy themselves without some form of exciter.
Diesel power will still turn the generators to create electricity that powers the locomotives electric traction motors.

In these modifications 1 huge block running 24 or so cylinders is swapped out with 4 smaller diesel-electric generating modules each with their own header's mufflers and exhaust system.
Its more efficient but still not free of conventional diesel power !

All the engine/cylinders come on line all at once ONLY when full power is needed.
This vs wasting a block of 24 cylinders to keep basic systems like brake pressure and lights running when idol or towing a couple cars.

Anonymous said...

Why is it that the only time i day they seem to need to shuttle cars around is on the overnight shift? That yard is a ghost town during the day, but at night, its all hands-on-deck.

Anonymous said...

Most cars are cut, sorted, grouped and sent to Maspeth LIC and point east be processed as the distribution truckers and workers hit the docks around 6 AM.
Lots off beef in some of these cars during winter