RPSI may consider switch to oil burning for steam fleet
THE Railway Preservation Society of Ireland may consider switching its steam fleet – used for hauling trains on the main lines of Northern Ireland Railways and Iarnrod Eireann, as well as on its own train rides line at Whitehead – from coal to oil burning, as coal become harder to source.
RPSI technical operations engineer James Friel revealed that the society is keeping what he describes as “half an eye” on oil as a possible future solution, but cautions that at current prices, oil costs just over twice the price of coal.
He said: “We have been using coal supplied by Kingsberry Fuels for about 10 years now and, until recently it had been importing from Russia, but with the very sad events in Ukraine it is shifting to other countries.
“Our last batch may have been Polish, and I don’t think we have had coal from a UK mine since 2012, when we got a particularly clinkerforming batch from Daw Mills.
“The price of coal has gone up by a third in the last six months and is continuing to go up, and although we reckon we have enough to see us through the summer, we have had to adjust our ticket prices to suit.
“It’s clear that coal will become more and more difficult to obtain, and we’ve had half an eye on oil burning for some years – in fact, our former Great Northern Railway of Ireland 4-4-0 Slieve Gullion was an oil burner briefly, in 1936, so there is a precedent!
“It would, however, take the price of coal going significantly above oil before we made a decision in that direction.”
For details of RPSI trains running throughout the summer, visit www. steamtrainsireland.com