Railroad companies are now looking at using Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) as a fuel for the near future to power their locomotives. According to the article listed below from The San Francisco Chronical, the Canadian National Railroad has built an experimental locomotive that will run on a combination of CNG and Diesel to test to see if it will be feasable. This technology has been around for years as the Napa Valley Railroad, a scenic railroad in California, has two locomotives that run on CNG. One runs on a combination of CNG and the other runs on straight CNG. This is another step forward in reducing emissions being pumped into the atmosphere.
I pulled a couple of quotes from the article that have an interesting twist in the story:
"On a 300-mile stretch of railroad in the plains of eastern Alberta, a test train chugs across the landscape burning a fuel that once made sense only to environmentalists."
"Although natural gas is a fossil fuel that contributes to emissions, many environmentalists have long supported it as a cleaner-burning bridge fuel toward renewable energy sources. "
Seems that some of the environmentalists are for using natural gas as an alternative fuel. Imagine that !!
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Natural-gas-eyed-as-fuel-for-trains-3948140.php#ixzz2IoueQDD8
