Are you really troubled that your country is moving beyond using coal as fuel, which was pretty much mankind's next step after burning wood or dung as fuel?
When coal is burnt to generate electricity or heat homes then no, we have better alternatives.
When it is being used within heritage railways which provider pleasure for so many - see some of the comments on this thread - I feel an exception should be made.
Much coal is still burnt within industrial processes in the UK, cement producers for example. Because this is much less visible and because they are powerful multi-national companies they do not appear to face the same level of scrutiny.
I understand attitudes of younger generations to me. The tide is turning. People will no longer tolerate "polluting for pleasure" and the days of steam railways are numbered. Grab a trip or sight of Tornado whilst you still can!
Correct. I wondered how long it would take the do-gooders to start moaning about steam engines/heritage railways and coal use. These quasi-religious zealots need to be put in their place as they are doing more harm than good for the environment. Unnecessarily alienating people doesn't help.
Emissions from heritage steam trains is hardly measurable in the grand scheme of things.
How viable is it to build (or retrofit) "heritage" steam locomotives with electric boilers? I assume it would be very difficult to run off battery, but maybe draw from the catenary on electrified lines? I know it's not /quite/ the same but I'm curious if this is a road things might go down.
Given the amounts of energy involved and (terrible) thermal efficiency of steam traction it would be impractical. You could short the 25kV overhead wires on an electrified route straight to the boiler and I doubt even that would make sufficient steam to get an express up to speed.
A more practical option would be oil firing, which was tried in the days of steam and found to work, but didn't save enough money to be worth the effort in a country that still had an efficient supply chain for coal. It could be done again now and would doubtless work, but wouldn't smell or look quite the same. Better than nothing I suppose and if coal really does become unavailable, that's what heritage operations will have to do.
There were some small steam locomotives switched to electric firing, as a way to use existing infrastructure during wartime coal shortages. It's questionable if it would scale to the levels you'd want to allow a large main-line engine to run at peak performance.
