The RRs in the West (SP,ATSF) started using oil about the same time oil production began in California (early 1900s). What the RRs were using was Bunker fuel, left over after extracting the higher-dollar products like gasoline and kerosene in the refining process. It was much cheaper than coal, the refineries were happy to get rid of it for a few cents per gallon. And it was easier to burn, store, and transport than coal.
STUART SIBITZKY Well, Jetrock has written the answer (17 years ago) I've been seeking. Just walk into ANY hobby shop and look for an oil-fired locomotive. Unless you're in the market for an SP Cab-forward or an SP class 4-8-4 you're pretty much out of luck. And now Jetrock tells me "just cut out the coal bunker and cover it with a flat piece with a hatch". How cool is that? I do see that Bachman is now offering an 0-6-0 oil burner. It just seems strange that since so many of the Union Pacific, Southern Pacific and Santa Fe locomotives burned oil, there are no models reflecting the type. Maybe it's because coaling towers are huge, complex and impressive to have and oil servicing is just a hose surrounded by oil soaked ground. Thanks for the insight!
Well, Jetrock has written the answer (17 years ago) I've been seeking. Just walk into ANY hobby shop and look for an oil-fired locomotive. Unless you're in the market for an SP Cab-forward or an SP class 4-8-4 you're pretty much out of luck. And now Jetrock tells me "just cut out the coal bunker and cover it with a flat piece with a hatch". How cool is that? I do see that Bachman is now offering an 0-6-0 oil burner. It just seems strange that since so many of the Union Pacific, Southern Pacific and Santa Fe locomotives burned oil, there are no models reflecting the type. Maybe it's because coaling towers are huge, complex and impressive to have and oil servicing is just a hose surrounded by oil soaked ground. Thanks for the insight!
Athearn/Roundhouse is doing a run of 2-8-0s for oil fired soon here - you can also pick them up on occassion used. Luckily as well, if you are up to some styrene scratchbuilding and painting, an oil box over the top of a coal tender tends to be much easier than turning an oil box into a coal tender.
Edit: I believe that the ATSF, UP, and V&T prototypes are all built with oil tenders.
Ed, you forgot Baldwin 60000 and, I believe, the Timken Four Aces. (Bet you have some fun material on both...)
In this cropped view of the CPR's Drake Street Roundhouse, circa 1916, you can see what is probably the oil tank repair area along with the gantry necessary for lifting the tanks out of the tenders. An oil tank 'insert' is hanging under the gantry:
CPR Drake-St Roundhouse by Edmund, on Flickr
The New York Central converted some 20 or so K-11 Pacifics assigned to the Adirondack Division as the state of New York decreed that only oil burners would be permitted in the forested areas during the summer months.
Also there was the Mohawk, 2873 streamlined for the Rexall Train that was converted to oil for the duration of the special assignment.
Good Luck, Ed
The documentation I've seen indicated that the earliest practical application of oil fuel to locomotive firing dated to the early 1880s. This involved heating broken rock or refractory pieces on a firebox grate and then spraying oil over it -- this both carbureted and cracked the oil and served as flameholding.
Practical use of the grades of oil that were most "economical" (read: cheapest to source and use) were facilitated by the early development of steam-atomizing burners, often of the 'drooling' type like the famous von Boden-Ingles type used on ATSF. These used steam both to heat and atomize the oil at the point of delivery and introduce primary air through long slots in the burner, the result being a long, flat plume of luminous flame filling the firebox volume with minimal impingement on "firepan" or internal firebox surfaces. Usually this was installed at the throat, firing back into the firebox space, so that the heated combustion plume would pass around a masonry arch and back over the crown, increasing both the TOF available for combustion and the area exposed to luminous radiation (the uptake being proportional to the fourth power of temperature).
Some experiments were done with other burner types over the years, but comparatively little involved mechanical atomization (as in the Racer burners in marine practice). The late version of Southern Pacific practice was a device called the Gyro-Jet burner, which used vanes to swirl the oil and primary air to get better atomization and entrainment with heavy oil.
SP did a careful comparison testing of different designs of burner in the early Fifties, right at the practical end of innovation in oil-fired steam in the United States, and wrote up the results in a study published in 1951. This is available in a couple of formats (see for example the link in the recent thread on RyPN). I have the PDFs but they are too large for conventional e-mailing, even if the e-mail feature here still worked.
Alternatively, light-oil firing could be a 'thing' -- some of this involving what we currently consider diesel #2 complete with its additives optimizing its use as a compression-ignition engine fuel. PRR spent quite a bit of time and effort designing various engines to use this fuel, culminating in a detailed consideration of the Steamotive system in the mid-Thirties (this was the system used in the two Union Pacific 2500hp GE steam turbines of 1938). Locomotives built to use heavy #5 (or bunker) oil could be effectively fired on this fuel with appropriate care and modification -- Frisco 4-8-2 1522 being a particularly well-documented example. There is less heat content per gallon in the lighter oil, and its flame is not as luminous in spectra that give best radiant uptake, but it is far easier to handle and, in the modern world, much more easily obtainable.
As a note, both in England and in the United States there were 'scares' in the late Forties about a concerted coal strike eliminating coal as a locomotive fuel source. Considerable engineering work, of interesting quality, was done by almost all American railroads into emergency oil conversion of coal-burning power -- amusingly, N&W prepared very detailed drawings of oil-firing equipment, including for the J class, and that remains at NWHS in case anyone wants a 'historically accurate' oil-firing system for 611.
Tender 'conversions' were often done with drop-in sheet-metal bunkers, but there were some conversions of 'water-bottom' tenders that used the existing side and slope sheets as part of the 'bunker' to save some weight and cost. Note that a Vanderbilt tender, referenced earlier in the thread, only uses cylindrical construction for its water cistern space -- its coal bunkerage is wholly conventional, and I don't know of any Vandy that was oil-converted to use a cylindrical oil reservoir of any configuration (that doesn't mean there might have been a couple, probably 'drop-ins' where using the full capacity of the bunker space was less essential).
A lot of wisdom to be found here. I hope these old posts remain so they can be referred back to when needed.
only the manufacturers really know why they favor coal over oil tenders but I suspect it's because they can reuse the same tooling. Anyway it has long annoyed me as well since I model western railways.
QUOTE: Originally posted by David_Telesha A Vanderbilt was not always a oil carrier. There were coal and oil Vandy's. The NH had some coal Vandy's.
QUOTE: Originally posted by jrbernier Oil tender are really not special. An oil 'bunker' or 'insert' is dropped in the coal bunker space on a tender. No 'coal auger' is neededt o push coal, but steam lines are routed to special coils in the oil bunker to 'heat' the oil up so that it will 'flow'. Many times cheaper 'Bunker C' fuel is used and can be tar like or even stiff in cold weather. The cylindrical part of a 'Vanderbilt' tender holds the water. The Vanderbilt was a progression away from older 'retangular' tenders. The bottom of older tenders tended to fail and this was one of the new ideas to relieve it. A Vanderbilt tender could have either a coal or iol bunker. Later cast water bottom tenders were built and the Vanderbilt design faded(except for the lines loyal to the design). Jim Bernier
Modeling BNSF and Milwaukee Road in SW Wisconsin
QUOTE: Originally posted by dingoix Tracklayer, you meant when were the locomtives able to use oil, not when the RR's used them- i know Rock Island had coal burning and oil-burning 4-8-4's and generally the oil burners were west of Kansas city and the coal burners were east of Kansas city. So i think it depends on the area.
QUOTE: Originally posted by nfmisso If you are asking about a specific railway, ask the appropriate historical society, and become a member.
Chip
Building the Rock Ridge Railroad with the slowest construction crew west of the Pecos.
I know. The question has probably been brought up a hundred times, but if so, I missed it if it was... So what year did steam locos begin using oil for fuel ?. Tracklayer