-Define

One big issue in the modern railroading industry is emissions, it’s a big problem not just for locomotives but also for our environment, & Greta Thunberg won’t stop talking about it.

-Discover

New locomotives & future locomotives  that are being built with the EPA’s Tier 4 emission standards. Tier 4 equipped Locomotives produce much less emissions than its much older counterparts, *COUGHS* Alco.

In 2025, the EPA’s Tier 5 Emission standards will go into effect.

-Dream

Some ideas that we can do to reduce locomotive emissions are the following:

– Build new Tier 4 locomotives & sell them to even more railroads.

-Overhaul existing locomotives to increase fuel efficiency & the lifespan of the locomotive.

-Retrofit locomotives to be able to do dual mode (Diesel & Electric) power.

-Electrify existing railroad tracks.

-Use an alternative to diesel fuel like Hydrogen.

-Produce battery electric locomotives.

-Design/Deliver

*Photo coming soon*

A solution to our issues with locomotive emissions could be that we could manufacture a dual mode locomotive with a Tier 4 equipped prime mover & also a pantograph. When the locomotive enters a stretch of track with catenary wires, it can switch to electric power, when it returns to a stretch of track where the catenary wires disappear, it can switch back to the fuel efficient engine that it has.

-Debrief

After doing this project, 2 things I did well on was using my existing knowledge on this project as trains are big interest of mine, and another thing was finding some good sources to use (Trains Magazine, & Railway Age).

2 things that I could improve on is finding a specific article to reference some of my stuff with as it was a challenge during the making of this post, another thing is trying to stay on “track” and trying not to just stare at all those trains!

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