Diesel

Good morning -- Shaquille O'Neal -- It's time to show if The Diesel has anything left in the tank.

Prince George's man charged in tanker theft A Prince George's County man was arrested and charged yesterday with hijacking a diesel fuel tanker truck from a Curtis Bay fuel depot last week. Willie Orlando McKinnon, 43, of the 4800 block of 66th Ave. in Hyattsville was arrested by Prince George's County and Baltimore police in the 4800 block of Ravenswood Road in Hyattsville about 3:30 p.m. on a warrant charging him with armed robbery, hijacking and theft. Cpl. Arvel Lewis, a Prince George's police spokesman, said McKinnon's arrest came after police received reliable information from concerned citizens.

SINCE Rudolf Diesel invented his internal-combustion engine a century ago, the vehicles using his eponymous motor have been more fuel efficient than gasoline engines. Until recently, they were seen as a less serious pollution threat, despite their belches of black smoke, and they produced fewer global warming "greenhouse gases."Regulators discounted emissions testing of diesel vehicles as an air cleanup solution.That's about to change in Maryland. The General Assembly has passed legislation to require exhaust testing of large diesels.

Bill requiring emissions checks for diesel trucks OK'dThe General Assembly gave final approval yesterday to legislation requiring vehicle emissions testing for large trucks and buses that burn diesel fuel.The bill, a victory long in coming for environmentalists, now goes to Gov. Parris N. Glendening, who is expected to sign it.The measure would subject Maryland's 70,000 diesel trucks and buses weighing more than 10,000 pounds, along with the same class of out-of-state vehicles, to random testing for the amount of soot or black smoke that spews out of their exhaust pipes.

DETROIT -- Delphi Automotive Systems Corp., the world's largest auto parts maker, said yesterday that it will buy TRW Inc.'s diesel fuel-injector business for $871 million to grab a piece of Europe's fast-growing market for diesel engines.TRW acquired the unit this year in its $6.53 billion purchase of United Kingdom-based LucasVarity PLC, and the sale will help TRW pare debt. The unit had sales of $1.1 billion last year.The purchase furthers Delphi's goal of adding customers other than former parent General Motors Corp.

HACKENSACK, N.J. - At the Haines School in Medford, N.J., students can glance out the window at several hundred acres of soybeans across the street. Soybeans are the leading field crop in New Jersey, surpassing corn, wheat, hay and potatoes.Now these youngsters will have a chance to learn firsthand whether soybeans can help New Jersey comply with the Federal Clean Air Act. Their rural district recently said it would try out a mixture of soybean oil and diesel fuel in 20 of its school buses.

An undetermined amount of diesel fuel spilled into the Severn River yesterday when a tractor-trailer rammed the rear end of a flatbed truck carrying the fuel near the middle of the U.S. 50 bridge over the river, state police said.The crash triggered a four-vehicle pileup that backed up eastbound traffic four miles just before 3 p.m.Police said the vehicles were in the right lane of the bridge when traffic slowed up. The tractor-trailer, owned by Timberline Transportation, rammed the 1986 Isuzu flatbed, rupturing a drum of fuel.

CSX Transportation Inc. yesterday unveiled its new $2 million locomotive, hailing it as revolutionary equipment that can push and pull far more freight and boost the railroad's productivity in the lucrative freight arena.The Jacksonville, Fla.-based railroad, which employs 1,500 people in Maryland, becomes the first in North America to place the 6,000-horsepower engine, known as the GE AC6000CW, into service. Most other engines currently in use have 4,000 horsepower."It means a new generation of horsepower that allows it to pull 30 percent more freight," Peter Carpenter, president and chief executive officer of CSX, said during ceremonies at the B&O Railroad Museum roundhouse in Baltimore.

Diesel daysThe "All Aboard Days -- Diesel Weekend" will offer train fans an opportunity to get a behind-the-scenes peek at the diesel railroad equipment housed at the B&O Railroad Museum this weekend.Some of the exhibits usually are not open to the public. Theweekend activities include tours, educational programs, musical entertainment and films. Other highlights include HO model diesel train demonstrations and N-Gauge layout in the roundhouse.The B&O Railroad Museum is at 901 W. Pratt St. and will be open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. this Saturday and Sunday.

Wartsila Diesel Inc., a European diesel maker with its North and Central American headquarters in Annapolis, has signed two contracts to build a $12 million expansion of a power plant in the Dominican Republic and a $43 million expansion of an electricity plant in El Salvador.The diesel engines for the power plants will be built in Finland, but the projects will be overseen by Wartsila's Annapolis office, which has about 80 workers involved in management, sales, finance, engineering and design, said Wendy Yannes, a spokeswoman for Wartsila.

The beats start slow, then swell with speed, clickety-clacks giving way to chucka-chuckas and shoo-shoo-shoos. A whistle, a squeal, a whoo-whoo. Low rumbles and trembling tracks - a percussion symphony led by a conductor in a pin-striped cap. "There are a lot of rhythms in the railroads," Charles "Bill" Kinzer says just as a train slides by outside in Leakin Park. He pauses to listen. "Choo, choo, choo!" he chimes, mustache jumping. Kinzer is president of the Chesapeake & Allegheny Steam Preservation Society, which kicked off its annual season of free train rides Sunday, part of a quarter-century-old deal struck with the city: Members allow the public to ride their miniature trains - one-eighth the size of the real thing - on the second Sunday of the month, April through November, in exchange for 10 park acres, which they lease for a dollar a year.

If you saw Vin Diesel on Late Night with Conan O'Brien last week, you had to feel for the guy. There he was on a hip talk show, trying to spin a funny-scary anecdote about a snowmobile nearly crushing him during a stunt for Babylon A.D., his DOA action film, and no one was laughing or applauding. The chuckles only came when O'Brien compared him to Wile E. Coyote. Then Diesel showed a clip from the movie, and you could see why he had the audience confused. The clip had nothing to do with that stunt: It was full of post-Matrix, follow-the-flying-projectile effects that had no payoff except a major explosion.

If the planet runs out of oil just a smidgen later than it otherwise would have, Mark Nagurney will deserve some of the thanks. The Laurel physicist isn't waiting for auto companies or the government to act when it comes to alternative fuels. As The Sun's Tom Pelton reported, Mr. Nagurney has taken matters into his own hands, converting his diesel car so it can run on used vegetable oil. It's seemingly a triple win: Mr. Nagurney avoids pain at the pump, a local restaurant is rid of its waste oil, and the environment is a bit cleaner (most scientists believe that vegetable oil is less polluting than petroleum-based fuels)

With fuel prices soaring, Mark Nagurney thought he had figured out a clever way to drive free - and save the Earth at the same time. The 49-year-old Laurel physicist is one of thousands nationally who have converted their diesel cars and trucks to run on straight vegetable oil. But in burning a cleaner fuel than diesel, Nagurney never imagined he'd end up on the wrong side of federal environmental laws. Or break Maryland's fuel tax regulations, which require even folks driving on grease thrown away by fast-food restaurants to get a "special fuel" license, obtain a $1,000 bond from an insurance company, file monthly forms and pay the same 24 cents per gallon tax as drivers using diesel.

For most Maryland drivers, the $4-a-gallon fill-up is still a dire prediction. But for those who depend on diesel to power their trucks and tractors and family cars, four-buck fuel has been a fact of life since February. AAA Mid-Atlantic reported yesterday that diesel was selling for an average $4.24 - up $1.30 from a year earlier. Regular unleaded was up, too, to a record $3.40 a gallon. But diesel prices have risen at percentages far outstripping the cost of regular gasoline. Last year at this time, diesel cost only 6 cents more than gasoline.

Sisters Kaetlyn and Mikaela Gordon visit the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Museum monthly, relish a ride on the rails and know their train lore. They raced to window seats with their father yesterday and settled in for a short trip. "I have been about 400 times, and I still get excited," said Kaetlyn, 8. Right on schedule, the bright red diesel engine departed from the museum's platform for the first of three rides yesterday. It pulled three coach cars filled with passengers, many of them children, enthralled with a railroad experience.

Prince George's man charged in tanker theft A Prince George's County man was arrested and charged yesterday with hijacking a diesel fuel tanker truck from a Curtis Bay fuel depot last week. Willie Orlando McKinnon, 43, of the 4800 block of 66th Ave. in Hyattsville was arrested by Prince George's County and Baltimore police in the 4800 block of Ravenswood Road in Hyattsville about 3:30 p.m. on a warrant charging him with armed robbery, hijacking and theft. Cpl. Arvel Lewis, a Prince George's police spokesman, said McKinnon's arrest came after police received reliable information from concerned citizens.

For eight hours yesterday, city, state and federal law enforcement officials mounted a multistate search for a hijacked tanker loaded with 7,100 gallons of diesel fuel. Authorities doubted terrorism was afoot in South Baltimore, but -- in this post-Sept. 11 era -- couldn't be too careful, particularly in a city so close to the nation's capital. By midafternoon, after authorities flashed alerts across the Interstate 95 corridor, the tanker was found abandoned -- and emptied -- on a street in southeast Washington near Bolling Air Force Base.

I read a funny article recently noting that New Yorkers love to eat outside, even though sitting at a sidewalk table in Manhattan often means enduring diesel fumes, the sounds of jackhammers and the rudeness of passing strangers. I thought of this recently as I enjoyed a wonderful outdoor meal at Desert Cafe, the six-year-old Middle Eastern restaurant in the trendy heart of Mount Washington. -- Poor:]

Good morning -- Shaquille O'Neal -- It's time to show if The Diesel has anything left in the tank.