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This is exactly how it happens! I seen it everyday on our local switcher, and old GP30. We jokingly say "light er up!", or "light the candle". [quote]QUOTE: Originally posted by MIKE0659 That flame is often caused by turbocharger problems, a partial or complete failure. When the turbo fails, the governor and fuel systems just keep dumping fuel in. It can also be caused by fuel system problems, like when the governor starts to fail. I've also seen it happen on a long, hard pull on occasion, but again, mostly on GE's. I saw it a few years ago on the NS pulling the grade up past the Copper Creek Trestle in Virginia. The crew stopped to cool things down right near the Speers Ferry church, when they started pulling again, no more flames. That restart with the train stretched on the grade (With no pushers on the rear) was also pretty impressive. The sparks that some others wrote about are in fact carbon build up. Usually this comes from a locomotive being in yard or local switching service for a period of time (Days, weeks, months) and never getting in a higher throttle notch or getting hot from being worked hard. The carbon builds up in the exhaust manifolds and stacks, when the locomotive works hard and thigns get good and hot, a pretty specatular fireworks display happens. The chunks can get pretty big and I wouldn't want to be close by when this happens. The downside is that it can set lineside fires as the train travels along working hard. Not good since the forest fire types frown on this and will send a bill for the brush fires that are started by the train. Been there, done that, got the bill. So what a smart shortline does is to get these locomotives out there and work them hard every so often to keep the build-up to a minimum. Failing that, you can just run it in the rain so no fires start. Class I's have been known to de-carbonize a locomotive by either hooking them to a load-test stand or via internal loading systems (Newer locomotives have this feature.) and getting them good and hot. [/quote]
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