Caring about the community, the Railroad employs earth friendly efforts

DURANGO, Colo. – Al Harper, owner of the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad (D&SNG), tends to be on guard when members of the general public call. He’s become accustomed to complaints about the smoke generated by the railroad’s historic and authentic coal-fired engines.

“I didn’t know who Mike Sandberg was,” said Harper. “He called up and said the High Noon Rotary Club wants to thank you, and I said, ‘What do you mean? What are you thanking me for?’”

According to a study performed several years ago by Fort Lewis College, the D&SNG pumps some $111 million into the local economy, and provides Durango with a generous dose of its character. These facts were not lost on the High Noon Rotary and Sandberg is credited with coming up with the idea for the local service clubs to purchase enough Green Power – electricity generated from a renewable resource – to offset the coal burned by the D&SNG’s engines and illustrate the community’s appreciation.
“I thought, wow,” said Harper. “I’ve never had anybody call me up and say they want to go all out to really help us and say thank you. I thought it was one of the neatest ideas I’d heard.”
La Plata Electric Association offers its member/customers the option to purchase Green Power at a $0.80 premium per 100 kilowatt-hour block. Forty cents of that goes to Tri-State Generation & Transmission to purchase wind power, and the balance remains in La Plata and Archuleta Counties to fund renewable projects locally.
To offset the railroad’s coal usage – approximately 3600 tons of coal annually – LPEA officials estimated that the members of High Noon Rotary would need to purchase some 6,000 blocks of green power.
“That’s a lot of green power for one service club to absorb,” said Ray Pierotti, LPEA project specialist who handles the Green Power Program. “It started with High Noon Rotary, but has spread to most if not all of the service clubs – such as the other Rotary Clubs, Kiwanis, Lyons – in LPEA’s service territory. Even clubs in Pagosa and Bayfield have signed on to the program. And I think it’s a huge step for the railroad itself to commit to buying 100 percent of their electricity usage in the form of green power.”
According to Pierotti, the railroad’s contribution is by far the largest commitment thus far, with the D&SNG purchasing 1133 blocks. With the service clubs, the total is about 3000, or 50 percent of the goal.
“And Carol and I went green at our home,” said Harper, referencing his wife. “We also put it in our employee newsletter to encourage everybody here in the company to go green, and we hope that they do.”               
Maintaining the authenticity of the railroad is important to Harper and many rail fans throughout the world, and that necessitates continued burning of coal. He’s delighted with the program to help make the overall impact to the environment negligible.
 

“The service clubs are doing a really neat thing for the community and they are raising awareness,” said Pierotti. “It’s the type of thing that could be done on any scale in any community.”

As it turns out, however, purchasing green power is only the latest in a continual effort being made by the railroad to reduce the train smoke and its particulates, and become more environmentally “friendly.” The Harpers see it as the “right thing to do.”
The most successful effort to date, according to Harper, has been the purchase and installation of four scrubbers on the Roundhouse stacks – with a price tag of a half million dollars.
“A steam engine never turns off,” explained Harper, so in the summer when we have as many as five steam engines running, I can at least put four of them under scrubbers, which reduce, according to independent studies, the smoke and particulate between 30 and 40 percent. And they have said that over the last five years, that’s what our success has been.”
Last June, to further reduce the emissions of the idling engines, the railroad began using a type of sawdust logs created from a byproduct of Muscanell Millworks. The effort was another community collaboration.
Region 9 Economic Development District helped Muscanell, which makes high quality hardwood flooring, secure a business loan for purchase of hardwood briquette making.
“The waste sawdust can now be compressed into wood logs without binders or other products,” said Laura Lewis of Region 9, explaining that heating the sawdust allows the wood sap to bind the dust together.
“We did it as an experiment last summer and it was gigantically successful,” said Harper, of the 20,000 lbs. of wood chips contributed by Muscanell. “We’re now bringing in the pellets by the truckload and using them all night. That’s another 40 percent reduction in smoke and particulate emissions during that period.”
“It was a great opportunity for Region 9 to help out two businesses important to our region,” said Ed Morlan, Region 9’s executive director, and match-maker for the effort. “I was intrigued with Muscanell’s innovation, burning their own sawdust to run their company furnace.”
And it’s the same principle for the railroad’s furnaces. The Harpers were willing to commit to the practice at a $40,000 increase in annual operating costs, again because “it was the right thing to do.”
Further efforts for smoke mitigation have come through use of the railroad’s diesel engines – purchased initially after the Missionary Ridge fires, when the fire danger generated by the steam engines forced a halt to the excursions to Silverton. According to Harper, when those engines aren’t in use for fire prevention, they’re used on the line for maintenance, and in the rail yard to move the rolling stock and equipment – replacing the coal fired engines.
The railroad has also shifted part of the engine servicing to Silverton, with crews removing cinders from the engines while they are idling there, waiting to return to Durango. This task now no longer needs to be done in the open yard in Durango, and the engines are placed under the scrubbers in two-thirds the time.
One of the D&SNG’s engines has also been equipped with an over fire tube, which forces more oxygen into the burning area and burns a cleaner, purer fire, according to Harper. It’s most effective when the engine is moving.
“It’s not something you can take engines out of service to do, but when they’re in for their three-year major overhaul, we’ll put those in,” said Harper of the tubes.
As part of the Smoke Mitigation Task Force, the Harpers have pledged to invest $1 million in further smoke and particulate reduction efforts. Harper estimates that the railroad has seen a 50 percent reduction over the past five years, and has a goal to achieve an additional 10 percent reduction annually with new efforts.
The railroad has installed misters around all the engine stacks – primarily for fire prevention, but they also serve to bring the particulate down. Because smoke and particulates can be reduced by the way the crew fires the engines, special training classes are being held. And in the summer, the managers walk the local neighborhoods checking for soot.
“I feel like we’re on the right track,” said Harper, noting that two years ago the railroad received two to three complaint letters a week. “Last year we had three letters in the entire year. It’s dramatic.”
As a result of the service club’s green power program, Harper has been inducted into the High Noon Rotary as an Honorary Member.