Hi Folks, I know a couple of folks here can answer this - on a heavy runs (for example river running) how much coal is used per hour and what does coal cost these days?
Just wondered, Mike IIRC President normally used 3-4 bags of coal a day (i.e. about 2cwt) but Adamant which is much less powerful uses about 2 bags. I reckon to use about a gallon of oil an hour - maybe more when running hard, and of course it takes and hour and a half and more than a gallon to raise steam - President takes about 4 hours. I'm not sure of coal prices, but suitable coal is at the pricier end, as ordinary house-coal has too many volatiles. I have been told that on the Ffestiniog, the (oil-fired) locomotives use 8 times as much fuel as the diesels, which would fit, as efficiency is 5% at best (at the pressures used, it takes 1100 BTUs to turn a pound of water into steam and 100 to raise the steam to working pressure IIRC). On the other hand in the 1950s apparently five steam locomotives could be built for the cost of one diesel, as they contain only a small number of rather large parts. When Phil Martino was considering a new boiler for Adamant a few years ago, he was quoted £6K, which was good value when you consider it was a one-off design and was going to have VERY thorough testing of every weld. As Ron mentions, boilers have to be tested yearly (say £150) and taken out of the boat and stripped down every ten years (£500 for the test plus new parts and the cost of getting it in and out). And of course your insurance is more expensive because it has to include third party cover for boiler explosions, though I'm not sure that the £3m limit would have covered the damage when I was nearly run down at one of the Birmingham canal festivals. I would have rather lost interest in financial matters by then, though. Sean
