Overnight stay at a rest area in Winter

Railway locomotives are left idling all the time. Is there anything different with these diesels, or are the railways trading engine life for time saved warming the monsters up again?

 

Mike:

Doing that also dramatically increases fuel consumption. For a typical fleet diesel the auxilary diesel powered coolant heater, or even diesel powered APU, then have even quicker ROI

jay

 

I would like to see one run on propane. Sized for a typical car engine block, it would probably run all night at -40 on one of those small campstove propane cylinders

 

If you have a "winter front" on the grille: yes. Otherwise it seems the Prius is very cold blooded at -30 C and colder

 

I wish we could do the same trick and just hibernate when it's really miserable outside. If bears can do that, why can't we?

Of course, I wouldn't want to be that hairy and stinky

 

I think it's dumb for them to be left running all the time. Around here, at rail yards they plug the engines into shore power whenever they are stopped in the yard. The shore power connection will keep the coolant at about 160 F, and keep the batteries charged

In areas with strict anti-idle laws, you don't see locomotives idling. Even in colder areas, if the locomotive will be stranded for a long time, they shut it down

There was a case last winter during a blizzard when a freight train bound for Churchill ws buried in a snowdrift. They got stuck and called for help. Obviously, to keep from freezing, they kept it running.

Another locomotive with a snowblade on front was dispatched to pick the crew up. Once the other locomotive arrived, they shut down the stranded engine and got the hell out of there

Took almost a week for weather conditions to improve enough to send a crew to dig out the locomotive. They had to use generators to heat up the engine, then jumpstarted it using the work crew locomotive

Unless an engine is equipped with sophisticated monitoring equipment, it can be dangerous to leave it unattended for long periods. Say a fuel leak develops and sprays the engine with fuel, or an oil filter starts leaking, or a seal blows and all the oil is lost

A very mysterious fire broke out at a formerlly manned - converted to unmanned - long range radar base at Lady Franklin Point, codename PIN3, back in 2000. Even a relatively minor occurance can destroy the equipment if the nearest crew is +3 horus away

PIN-3

http://www.lswilson.ca/firepin-3-2.jpg

 

The point of the 1000w additional heater is twofold: (1) It generates heat, (2) It forces the ICE :heh: to run which will also help to heat the car. Heck, just try to do things the "inefficient" way, since that usually creates heat. Run every electrical accessory you can that doesn't annoy you.

Hmmm, I'd bet you could get pretty good heat just tying a 240 VAC heater directly to the main battery. If it doesn't have electronics (or those that won't work on 200 VDC) it should run fine on DC at lower voltage.

Lots of summer today and next few days. 30+ celsius (86F) and 40+ humidex (104F). I presume you could fry something if you still had blocking installed with these temps ? Wonder how high humidity might be handled by Prius electronics...

And BUGS !!! Population exploded 3-5 times this year, perhaps related to the huge late dump of snow this year.