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Railways, energy, CO2 - Part 1 | 30 comments (30 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)
Re: Railways, energy, CO2 - Part 1 (4.00 / 6)
It surprises me that river barges come out worse than rail,firstly when you look at the power consumption

Road vs Rail vs Water

I know the source Association has an axe to grind, but experiments involving horses, railway wagons, barges etc proved the point hundreds of years ago.

There isn't much infrastructure needed for barge traffic either.


"The future is already here -- it's just not very evenly distributed" William Gibson

by ChrisCook (cojockathotmaildotcom) on Tue Jan 22nd, 2008 at 05:53:29 AM EST
The critical question for river barges ... (4.00 / 2)
... will be the number of locks and the energy consumption of locks. River barges on systems where no locks are required, or where locks are self filling and require only gate operation, will show up better than on systems where water must be pumped.

OTOH, that is one area that not only can be electrified but in many cases already is, so it can directly tap renewable electric power sources as those come on line ... electrifying the river barges themselves is a substantially more difficult proposition.


I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.

by BruceMcF (agila61 at netscape dot net) on Tue Jan 22nd, 2008 at 10:37:05 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: The critical question for river barges ... (4.00 / 2)
Ummm...being pedantic, rivers flow, and as far as I know locks on rivers don't usually have pumps.

So for "river barges" that factor doesn't really apply.

On the other hand, there's a lot of canals about, where in dry conditions especially, pumping is a factor in energy consumption.

But there is some new technology out there that's pretty efficient in energy terms.....

I've always loved those Thames river barges. There were loads in St Katherine's Dock which my office looked out over back in my days in the Belly of The Beast.

"The future is already here -- it's just not very evenly distributed" William Gibson

by ChrisCook (cojockathotmaildotcom) on Wed Jan 23rd, 2008 at 04:47:22 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: The critical question for river barges ... (4.00 / 2)
Yes, its the lock to go from a river to an inter-river canal that is the one that would normally need pumping ... a bypass canal can almost always be built to simply fill up with the flow of the river ... but unless you are nominating a more energy efficient way for river barges can go from one river system to another, I am puzzled as to how that is not what I just said.

River boats have enough energy efficiency per ton of freight that we can readily consider home-grown biodiesel as a sustainable liquid fuel source ... as opposed to the fantasy of using biodiesel as a plug and play for petrodiesel for the existing truck-based freight system ... and having wind assist like above makes it an even better prospect.


I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.

by BruceMcF (agila61 at netscape dot net) on Wed Jan 23rd, 2008 at 10:54:17 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Railways, energy, CO2 - Part 1 | 30 comments (30 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)
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