No more Choo Choo ?

[#1]

Could steam trains become collateral damage in our battle against climate change?

https://twitter.com/hashtag/steamtrains?src=hashtag_click

I enjoyed The Yorkshire Steam Railway: All Aboard - Channel 5 recently

[#2]

Given the tiny amount of poillution they put out compared to airliners I think it would be utterly stupid to even try to pin climate change on steam engines.

It's like Prince Harry and his recent claim that he won't have more than 2 kids due to his carbon footprint... while using a private jet to get around the world. 

The vast majority of output from a steamy is just that - STEAM. Yes there is some smoke too from the fire but unless you're going to ban every house in the country from having an open fire then stopping the steam engines being used is just another way of proving this country despises itself.

[#3]

As the guy in the video says, they could be punished because they're so visible.

The heritage railways are an economic and social asset. Wouldn't it be more logical to target private planes?

[#4]

For one horrible moment I thought we had lost Michael 'choo choo' Portillo. 

[#5]

@7up 

Like Brexit climate change gets the blame.

Reading earlier that although electric scooters are zero emission, the production of them contribute to global warming.

Just can't win. 

[#6]

As a youngster I had to walk to work on a footpath crossing an open, sunken railway station.

Unfortunate timing meant i’d often have to return home to get changed. This didn’t dampen my enthusiasm for the wonderful steam engines. So, yes, I believe they should be preserved, not as museum pieces but as working exhibits of a bygone age.

[#7]

Just on the news this morning about celebs and the great and good turning up to yet another climate change conference in private and hired jets, it seems to be a case of do as we say, not as we do..

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7309805/Backlash-barefoot-Prince-Harry-hypocrite-celebritie...

Don't start me about the latest fad for virtue signalling......

[#8]

Don't worry folks. the great and good will be OK whatever happens!

Stopping people running steam engines is just fiddling at the edges while ignoring the real issues. 

[#9]

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@7up wrote:

Given the tiny amount of poillution they put out compared to airliners I think it would be utterly stupid to even try to pin climate change on steam engines.

It's like Prince Harry and his recent claim that he won't have more than 2 kids due to his carbon footprint... while using a private jet to get around the world. 

The vast majority of output from a steamy is just that - STEAM. Yes there is some smoke too from the fire but unless you're going to ban every house in the country from having an open fire then stopping the steam engines being used is just another way of proving this country despises itself.

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@7up  Climate change from all the evidence we have is a hard problem, but see in your post personally directed criticism of a personage for believing something, but because actions in a particular situation. Without full details that lacks fairness. Put aside personalities. How are people involved in attempting to solve such problems without  using airliners; a non polluting rowing boat?

I hesitate to tarbrush you, but all too often, when someone is added as a target for criticism, it is because of dislike or disapproval for unrelated reasons. Those reasons frequently appear to have been swallowed without mastication from a red top.

[#10]

A shame there is all the "cleaner" better quality coal underground in the UK that is somehow uneconomical to mine and it is cheaper to buy "dirtier" fuel from Poland and the USA! I remember they shut down Kellingly colliery due to the economics of better burning fuel against more polluting alternatives.

[#11]

@Marksfish I sem to remember that the railways used to use Anthracite coal from wales as this was the cleanest and produced the most heat.Could be wrong tho

[#12]

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@TTman wrote:

@Marksfish I sem to remember that the railways used to use Anthracite coal from wales as this was the cleanest and produced the most heat.Could be wrong tho

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A few years ago we went on the Jacobite steam train from Fort William to Mallaig on Scottish west coast, stunning scenery but the journey was marred by the train having to stop about four times to get steam pressure back.. The reason was instead of Welsh anthracite they were having to use low grade Polish coal .... either because no longer financially viable to mine the Welsh coal, ( I believe the harder cleaner burning more energy dense coal comes from deeper mines, the softer brown 'dirty' coal from opencast mines or at shallower depth where it did not get compressed as much.