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Florida East Coast Railway has become the first North American railway to adopt liquefied natural gas (LNG) as the fuel for its entire mainline locomotive fleet. William Vantuono outlines the reasons for the switch.
FLORIDA East Coast Railway (FECR) in partnership with the Natural Gas for High Horsepower Summit, officially rolled out its 24-unit liquefied natural gas (LNG) fleet in November 2017, making it the first North American railway to adopt LNG. The fleet consists of 12 pairs of back-to-back GE ES44C4 locomotives with a purpose-built Chart Industries fuel tender in between. FECR, a Class 2 regional railway, is also the first railway in the United States to haul LNG as a commodity, under a Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) waiver.
"We are proud to be the first North American railroad to operate its entire main line fleet on LNG/' says Mr Fran Chinnici, FECR's chief operating officer. "We hope that our efforts will help other railroads and industries with this paradigm shift."
FECR says LNG is a key part of its overall sustainability objective. "Natural gas is abundant, dean burning and economical," FECR says. "Compared with diesel, it reduces locomotive emissions and helps improve the environmental quality of the railway's operations."
FECR has been operating with LNG since late 2015. Raven Transport, a road haulage subsidiary of Florida East Coast Industries (FECI), also uses LNG, having converted 44% of its fleet to run on the fuel. By October 2017, FECR and Raven had completed more than 2300 trips coveting more than 1.37 million km while consuming more than 10.2 million litres of LNG.
LNG has been tested as a locomotive fuel for the better part of 25 years and is still under evaluation by several Class 1 railways including BNSF. It works for FECR both as a fuel source and a commodity, for two reasons. First, FFCR's mainline locomotive fleet is captive, operating solely on its Jacksonville - Miami mam line, while secondly FECR has several sources of LNG. In addition to purchasing truckloads of the fuel on the open market, FECI's affiliate New Fortress Energy owns and operates a 378,540litre-per-day-capacity LNG plant in Hialeah, near Miami.
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