A 75-year old Santa Fe locomotive sits in a Topeka, Kan., park waiting to take a ride to Minneapolis where it will be fixed up with digital technology and new engineering in an effort to revive steam engine rail transportation.

A key aim of the effort is using carbon-neutral bio-coal being developed by the University of Minnesota-Duluths Natural Resources Research Institute (NRRI). The Coalition for Sustainable Rail, a subsidiary of Sustainable Rail International, is raising money between $3 million and $5 million to update the steam locomotive, said Davidson Ward, 24, president of the non-profit.

We have a technology we are confident will outperform the existing technology not only with performance and maintenance costs but also with emissions, he said. Its a paradigm-changing project.

Dubbed Project 130 to reflect the desire to develop a locomotive that reaches 130 miles per hour, the sustainable rail effort began as a single track idea a revival of steam locomotion.

Then, another track was added when Ward approached the University of Minnesotas Institute on the Environment. The institutes staff liked the idea and thought bio-coal UMD had been developing might work in the steam locomotive.

The environment institutes special projects director, Rod Larkins, said he became convinced that Project 130 was a good idea after learning it could serve as a combined heat and power application of the kind used at District Energy in St. Paul. The technology that could revive steam engine trains could be applied to bring energy to underserved areas of the world.

What youre doing is creating a combined heat and power unit that not only moves you up and down the tracks but if you park your train at the end of the line in a small village in Africa you have a way to heat and light a village at night, he said. If you take the wheels off and ship these things around the world you have small scale heat and combined power.

One ingredient to the success of the sustainable train is the development of bio-coal that involves a process known as torrefaction, according to UMDs Center for Applied Research and Technology Development director Donald Fosnacht.   Wood, grasses, corn stovers and other plants are subjected to extremely high temperatures during torrefaction that densifies them into a product that is the equivalent of coal albeit a much cleaner and cheaper version.

Bio-coal doesnt have mercury and its low in sulfur, so you get all those beneficial things, said Fosnacht. Theres no doubt we can be competitive with diesel on a cost basis and well have less containments.

The bio-coal created from wood and other waste can produce the same amount of energy as western coal from Wyoming and the Dakotas that is used by many Minnesota utilities, said Fosnacht. The interest in bio-coal, he figures, could extend beyond steam trains to energy companies looking to avoid expensive upgrades in coal-based power plants yet use a cleaner power source.

When you convert to a torrified material its like what youre using so you dont have to do upfront changes, he said. Another benefit might come in a revival of the forestry industry, hit hard by paper mill closures and reduced demand, Fosnacht added.

For now, though, the sustainable train will be the focus of the bio-coal. In addition to being a cleaner option than diesel, the steam engine train will have twice the power and use fuel half the cost of diesel, Ward said.

Steam trains fueled by coal largely disappeared by the end of the 1950s, he said. Even then, many cities were concerned about air pollution from locomotives. The rail industry moved to diesel-engine locomotives, said Ward, which remain dominant today.

The federal government wants to create a passenger rail network where trains travel at least 110 to 125 miles per hour, said Ward, similar to speeds that steam locomotives reached back in the 1930s.   If the sustainable rail coalitions locomotive, the Santa Fe 3463, can reach the goal of 130 miles per hour it will set an international record for steam engines.

Ward gathered a few colleagues with ties to the railroad industry to start Sustainable Rail International in 2011 in collaboration with the U of Ms Institute on the Environment . His partners include Washington, D.C.-based rail consultant John T. Rhodes, local rail expert G. Rob Mangels and Argentina-based engineer Shaun T. McMahon.

Wards day job is as a transportation analyst at R.L. Banks & Associates in Arlington, Va. Now living in the Washington, D.C. area, he keeps one foot in Minnesota while submitting applications to foundations, the University of Minnesota and others to bolster funding and get the train moved to Minneapolis.

An anonymous donor offered an initial grant that the group used to cosmetically refurnish the Topeka train, create a website and pay for other startup costs. Theres plenty of interest in the project, especially among rail enthusiasts and technologists, though another important group has begun to take interest.

Ive talked to multiple railroad industry leaders about the project and theyre interested but they want to see what happens, he said. They want to see that it works.

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