One of the books in my collection is P W B Semmens and A J Goldfinch (2000) How Steam Locomotives Really Work, Oxford University Press.
The book has a main emphasis on British practice, but steam is steam. One big difference between British and U.S. practice is that U.S. steam engines have the front of the smokebox bolted on with what looks like a lot of individual bolt heads. British engines have that "hour and minute hands on the clock" pair of levers on the smokebox cover, which the book explains is a quick release to get it off and back on again.
The book also goes on to say that the smokebox is something you want to clean on a regular basis as not only combustion ash but soot can also pile up there, and that soot can catch fire if not cleaned, described by old timers as "having a fire at both ends." In fact it is suggested that popping the smokebox cover and cleaning out the soot was a fireman's job in "putting a locomotive away" after a run, and in addition to the smokebox, there were various ways of cleaning flues from the smokebox end, ranging from some kind of outsized bottle-brush to run down the flues and squeeze past superheater elements all the way to a steam nozzle on a pole for this task.
If U.S. practice was to hold the smokebox on without a quick release but instead with more bolts than one can count, did the smokebox get cleaned out after each run? At regular intervals?
If GM "killed the electric car", what am I doing standing next to an EV-1, a half a block from the WSOR tracks?
Can't comment on regular steam (before my time!) but on at least one fan trip they had to clean out the smokebox about 50 miles into the run on the smaller engine of a double-header. It probably had something to do with the quality of the coal but how the fireman and engineer were working the locomotive may have contributed to the problem. If I remember rightly, I think they just had to turn the dogs 90 degrees so the tabs no longer held the door, rather than tediously removing multiple bolts.
It seems more primitive than the British practice but simplicity can have advantages. Keeping the mechanism behind the levers working, on the hot side of the smokebox door, must have presented its own maintenance challenges. If it jammed there was no easy way to get inside to free it up!
I expect that the shop staff would at least check the smokebox at the end of each run - just another of the many routine tasks that the diesel would eliminate.
John
There was more to keeping the 'pipes clean' than just opening the smoke-box cover and hosing or scraping the interior. In some steamers, the petticoat pipe* needed attention for the same reasons...clinkers and other crud plugging it up. There was also netting in the smoke-box to catch large hot bits that might land nearby and start fires. That had to be cleared, and sometimes it happened halfway up a long grade.
Flues could be sanded while the engine was underway. If the fuel was known to develop soot inside the flues, the fireman would periodically let a couple of shovels-full of sand get sucked into the firebox via the open firing door. That would scour the interior of the flues.
-Crandell
Cleaning out the ashes was just part of the normal procedure for 'turning' a locomotive, done at the end of a run or a shift.
One technique for cleaning tubes and flues of an oil burner involved opening the firebox door and holding a scoopful of sand in the air blast while the locomotive was working hard. The resulting smoke cloud would reputedly send birds to roost at noon...
Japanese locomotives (except those imported from the US) used the wheel and lock lever centered on the smokebox door. The only 'jammable' parts, the locking thread and nut, were on the outside of the smokebox door. The American-style 'dogs' were locked down with about a half-turn of the nut on the pivot stud, again on the outside of the smokebox door.
Some locomotives had 'hopper' arrangements at the bottom of the smokebox where fly ash could accumulate and be removed without opening the smoke box. For a while, the Kiso Forest Railway had ash boxes at the bottoms of their wood-burner's balloon and industrial-cyclone stacks, like saddle bags on both smokebox sides. Made them look like hamsters...
Chuck
Thank You.
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