1st Florida JMC - fictional unit for T2k (any edition)

[Abbott Shaull]

Originally Posted by Targan

It would have to be easier to convert the burners to wood-fired than trying to source fuel oil, not to mention the fact that you'd conserve oils for use in engines that can only them as fuels/lubricants. Fabricating a wood burner for a steam boiler would not be a difficult undertaking.

Yeah any thing that uses Steam, I would think would be converted to wood fire than continue to use the limited oil fuel. The oil fuel would be to valuable for other types of vehicle to keep them mobile.

[schnickelfritz]

Keep in mund that the "oil" typically used in an oil burning steam locomotive is as heavy as it gets....as step or two up from tar. If you look it up, many of them, especially as used on the Union Pacific, needed a steam heater apparatus to make it flow it was so thick. I believe it was called "Bunker C." Unless you have specialized refining equipment, most of the "fuel oil" available would have no real use other than for burning, and weed control, I guess.

I'm thinking that the WDW staff would have stockpiled what virgin oil it could and would also have access to a large quantitiy of used motor oil that could be filtered for this purpose, given the sheer size of the Disney vehicle fleet.

If used, lightly filtered motor oil is useable, more could be sourced from abandoned gas/service stations throughout the Orlando area. Missions to guard tanker trucks or obtain tanker trucks from recycling facilities (like those at Safety-Kleen) could be adventures in themselves.

As far as the Monorails go, they are indeed fragile and are stored in a semi-hardened facility in the same building as the steam trains. With the runup to full nuclear war, I would imagine Monorail service would have been curtailed and the units placed in storage at the time of the TDM, if for no other reason than to cut electrical power useage.

-Dave

[Targan]

I know what bunker oil is. We've had long discussions in this forum before about POL. I still believe that if other fuels were available (wood, combustible garbage, non-edible harvest waste for example) they would be used in a steam powered locomotive in preference to any kind of oil. Reason being that it wouldn't be hard to have a locomotive burning fuels other than oils. But it would be hard or impossible to do without oil for other purposes. See what I'm saying?

In any case there are cleverer people than me that made some great points about POL in previous threads. I highly recommend that all new members spend a few hours trawling through the thread map the sticky the second from the top of the main thread list. Kato has very kindly made it easy to find some of those excellent older threads on a variety of interesting topics.

[schnickelfritz]

I doubt there would be much virgin fuel oil available, most of what you could use would come via used motor oil, which should be available in abundance.

Convering an oil burning steam boiler to solid fule isn't as easy as it might seem...once you remove the oil apparatus, you need to fabricate a grate and ash pan, among other items.

All 4 Disney Locomotives originally burned solid fuel when they were in service in Mexico. Disney converted them to oil for ease of maintenance and better control of the fire.

Am I wrong in the group's opinion in the belief that a large metro area such as Orlando, there would not be used motor oils available in storage tanks at shops and recycling facilities?

-Dave

[Legbreaker]

I think you'll find that most used oil gets recycled/disposed of fairly quickly. With the progression of the war, it would be more and more important that this is done as soon as possible, so it's extremely doubtful you'll find large reserves of used oil anywhere.
At best scroungers might come up with a few drums of it that were missed by previous visitors.

[schnickelfritz]

Yes, I believe that most oil-lube shops would have only a limited storage capacity. However, once the lights go out and places are abandoned, especially trucking companies and school bus firms, you probably could get something useable right there, if you had the truck to pump it out....

Getting off the sidetrack (pun intended) of fuel oil, I'm curious to get people's opinions on what might have become of the Walt Disney World Complex in T2K just before and then after society grouond to a standstill.

I cannot get past the immense amount of cash that Disney could throw at the problem from the beginning of the Sino-Soviet war until TDM.

With the proper planning, forethought, and their resources, I see them as a bit of an oasis in the wasteland that is Florida in 2000.

-Dave

[The Dark]

For helicopters at the time, OCSO had a pair of OH-58C Kiowas. SN 71-20384 (N-number 384CS) was delivered in 1996 and SN 70-15432 (N-number 82844) was delivered in 1995. They also had a Bell 407 (N-number 407KB) delivered in 1998.

They also purchased a HMMWV using drug-forfeiture money in 1997. At least one of FHP's LAVs was acquired in 1998, so it may not exist in the T2K timeline (they bought it for $250 from DRMO). OCSO's XM734 was acquired from Israel, but I don't remember when. It's now at the Vietnam War Museum in eastern Orange County (southeast of UCF). 1994 was when OCSO was converting from revolvers to 9mm Berettas, so both may still be available - I don't remember when the cutover finished.

The Orlando Police Department Mounted Patrol would have 7 horses available in 1997 (the eighth horse, Partner's Pride, died in March 1997 of a heart attack). I think they were already at the Rio Grande stable by the mid-90s.

NASA had 4 of the M113 APCs for firefighting and rescue operations (generally three deployed for a launch, two with firefighting crews and one empty except for the driver to take the astronauts if they had to evacuate). It's possible not all of them survived, though (or that some were taken back into active service).