Vintage steam trains are likely to run out of coal

Britain is a country built on coal and iron or and surrounded by water and natural gas but anytime it seems that at least one of these as either run out or is not available. Many of our vintage railways with their steam engines run on coal. Yet in this country we are not mining coal anymore and this is a problem for these steam engines which need coal to run. The next supply source for high energy coal was Russia but this is now not available so other sources need to be found like Europe or maybe even bringing this in from Australia which is stupid considering the distances this coal will have to travel. Many of these steam engines need to run on high calorific coal which is now found widely in Europe, but I think many of these engines are going to have to now move onto different smokeless fuels one is being developed from mixtures of anthracite, coal dust and molasses and the initial results of this have been promising.



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