BNSF Fireless Cooker still in Minnesota ?

[nanaimo73]

A few years ago I read BN was using a Fireless Cooker in central Minnesota. I believe it was at a tie treatment plant in Staples. Is it still in use ?
Are there any Fireless Cookers still in use in North America ?

[CSSHEGEWISCH]

There may be some fireless cookers still in service in chemical plants in West Virginia near Charleston, primarily to reduce the fire hazard.

[Anonymous]

As I am new to these forums I would like to know what a fireless cooker is. I own what is called a fireless cooker but it was a domestic unit
thanks Jim

[arbfbe]

Two from the former GN/BN tie plant at Somers, MT are retired in Montana. One is at a Whitewater rafting company east of Coram, MT and the other is at a museum in Polson, MT. Both are approachable.

Fireless cookers are steam engines without a firebox. Without a means to generate steam they must be charged up from a stationery source. They are like a large thermos bottle that stores steam to be released to the cylinders to move the locomotive. They were used in locations where sparks from a locomotive smoke stack might start a fire. Chemical plants and tie plants where large amounts of wood and sawdust are present are good examples. They look like small 0-4-0 switch engines without stacks and large diameter boilers. They must be close to a steam source and most industries that use the fireless cookers use steam in their industrial processes anyway.

EDIT:
Yes, read OVERMOD's explanation below this post. The storage vessel on the loco is filled not quite full with hot water and steam. When the throttle is opened, steam is released to the cylinders to provide propulsion. Since there is no need for fuel and water storage on the locomotive as on a steam engine, the pressure vessels take up all the space normally occupied by the boiler and water tank on a tank engine. No exhaust stack and only the exhaust from the steam chests for noise.

[Overmod]

Actually, it's not "steam" in a fireless cooker, it's very hot water. If you charged up a boiler with nothing but steam, you'd very rapidly run out of pressure when you opened the throttle and the cylinders started working!

The basic principle is the same thing that underlies boiler 'explosions' -- water that is at a temperature above the boiling point has already absorbed the necessary latent heat of vaporization to change from steam to water, and is only in the liquid phase because pressure is being applied to it. Release that pressure suddenly, and the whole works tries to fla***o steam, expanding over 1500 times in volume, and incidentally creating a 'rocket' effect through any sort of opening across which there is appreciable pressure drop and mass flow. In a fireless cooker, the flashing is controlled (by the locomotive throttle) -- what happens is that the overcritical water flashes to steam, bit by bit. The temperature of the remaining water drops, bit by bit, as this happens, until ultimately there is insufficient pressure -- you can look at a steam table (NOT the kind in a restaurant ;-}!) to get the ratio of temperature to evolved pressure.

To charge a fireless cooker, you can either bubble process steam through water in the locomotive's "boiler" tank, or you can physically pump overcritical water through a pressurized hose connection to fill the tank directly. Our systems for doing the latter involve pre-pressurizing the locomotive tank and transfer lines (with inert gas such as nitrogen) to preclude the flashing and noise that would otherwise result in the first few seconds you started pumping. I'm sure there are knowledgeable people on this forum who can describe the bubbler heads, manifolds, etc. that fireless locomotives use: the charging process can be pretty quick because (as fans of exhaust steam injectors know) a pound of steam heats something like six pounds of water to the boiling point as it condenses, and the steam coming through the bubbler head or whatever will essentially be condensing as the water comes up to temperature (and the tank pressurizes up to whatever process-steam pressure your plant provides).

BTW, I'm using the word 'overcritical' intentionally, to avoid confusing water that is relatively slightly over the nominal boiling point at 1atm pressure with water that is 'supercritical' above 3206 to 3208psi (about 218atm) and is always in the liquid phase, regardless of higher temperature, above that pressure...)

[tree68]

A key factor in the use of fireless cookers is that the plants where they are/were being used generally have a ready source of steam. In the case of a tie plant, steam is used to heat/pressurize the vessels where the ties are treated with creosote, and very possibly to dry the wood in preparation for treating.

IIRC, an additional rationale for using a fireless cooker is that because the steam is available, there is no need to use a traditional steam locomotive, with its attendant maintenance and manpower requirements.

[locomutt]

QUOTE: Originally posted by CSSHEGEWISCH

There may be some fireless cookers still in service in chemical plants in West Virginia near Charleston, primarily to reduce the fire hazard.

I have no idea if they are still in service today;but according to
"C & O Power",C & O had three of them (0-6-0F).
They were built by Porter in 1949,and were used for the
'chemical' plants around Charleston,WVa.

One could only hope,couldn't they ???

[Leon Silverman]

Overmod:
I think you may be confusing superheated with overcritical. Superheated steam will remain in its vapor state until it cools down to its' saturation temperature. It will continue to do work (expand) until that point is reached.
One of the problems with using critical steam pressures is that the required wall thickness of the piping is roughly equivalent to the i.d. of the tube. Thus, a 3 inch pipe would require an outer diameter of about nine inches. The only supercritical stationary steam plant built was in Eddystone, Pa. It proved too costly to ever be copied. The main reason is that repairs on these pipes were long and costly.
A supercritcal tankless steam engine would problably weight too much to move iteself, assuming the rails did not collapse under it.
These tankless steam engines probably used superheated steam, although older steam engines were able to operate with staurated steam as well. They simply were not as fast or fuel efficient.

[morseman]

To: MJAM682

Welcome to the forum. A great place to get your questions answered

for info on fireless cookers look up the following

www.messiaen.demon.co.uk/trains/newsteam/modern21.hym

www.catskillarchieve.com/rrextra/porter99.html

www.trainweb.org/oldtimetrains/industrial/steam/westinghouse.htm

www.rr-fallenflags.org/misc-u/ues-s4ags.jpg

www.dself.dsl.pipex.com/MUSEUM/LOCOLOCO/pneumat/pneumat,htm

www.cr.nps/gov/history/online_books/steamtown/shs2q.htm

www.nrhs/web_exclusives/fireless_cooker/

[Anonymous]

Thanks all for the info.
I guess the theory is similar to that of the capacitor in electronics. There is a steam museum near Cornwall Ct. That may have one I will have to check. Some people believe that steam as used in industry is obsolete. Nothing could be farther from the truth. New and sophisticated instrumentation is being developed and produced all the time for the steam handling industry. The fireless cooker was new to me but thanks to all of you it isn't now. As far as my cooker is concerned , it is a double wall metal box. insulated and containing two metal cylinders. The top is hinged and fits snugly over the cylinders. Each cylinder can contain, in special hangers, round soapstones that fit tightly and are usually placed at the top and bottom of pans that also fit the cylinders. Some are even broken down into pie slice shaped pans for different dishes etc. You heat the soap stones to a predetermined temp measured by a surface thermometer according to the recipe. They cook unattended. I gave one to my wife last year along with a new wash board and tub.
I am getting back into the hobby. I have alot of pre war O both American Flyer and Lionel. I inherited quite a few Model Railroader Mags. along with Model Railroader, The Quiz book from the Association of American Railroads etc. All from the 40's and 50's. I also have N and HO. Looking forward to it. I was much too Long but again thamks for the info. This is really a class Forum.

[nanaimo73]

Morseman-Thanks.
There are two cookers in Canada,both retired and in Ontario. One is in Sault Ste Marie and the other in Fort Erie.

[Overmod]

QUOTE: Originally posted by Leon Silverman

Overmod:
I think you may be confusing superheated with overcritical...

No, but I threw that comment in at the end and I can see how it introduced confusion, needlessly... What I meant to indicate is that many references use the word "supercritical" to refer to any high-temperature water that is held in the liquid phase by pressure -- which does not distinguish the special behavior of water above the ca. 218atm transition. Using "overcritical" to denote the former provides a way to keep the two ideas separated in technical discussion...

Overcritical would apply only to water in the liquid phase, held there by pressure. Superheat nominally applies only to water in the vapor phase, when discussing steam locomotives. Supercritical 'behaves' as a vapor regardless of additional pressure or 'liquid' comparable density.  I concur that they should not be confused.

No fireless cooker in a rational world would use supercritical pressures! (I might add that there's little point in using them on any conventional locomotive anyway, for a wide variety of reasons I can provide to anyone interested via e-mail; the sole exception being USC via solid injection (cf. the enginion AG approach) with long expansion at very small initial mass flow per stroke.)

QUOTE: Superheated steam will remain in its vapor state until it cools down to its' saturation temperature. It will continue to do work (expand) until that point is reached.

Yes, because you're taking the heat energy used to perform the superheat and recovering it as (expansive) work. But (again looking at a steam table) the amount of additional enthalpy (per degree of nominal temperature rise) in a pound of superheated steam is small compared to the latent heat of vaporization in a pound of saturated steam -- I believe you'll find that much of the practical advantage of superheat on typical steam locomotives is more in areas like the reduction of premature condensation in the steam circuit than in achieving significantly higher Rankine thermal efficiency.

QUOTE: The only supercritical stationary steam plant built was in Eddystone, Pa. It proved too costly to ever be copied. The main reason is that repairs on these [heavy-walled] pipes were long and costly...

Oh dear -- better Google up "ultrasupercritical steam" and tell all those folks about this! ;-}

Seriously -- there have been a wide variety of extremely successful supercritical and ultrasupercritical stationary plants built since the first one -- Philo 6, now an ASME history reference:

www.asme.org/history/brochures/H228.pdf

The point about Eddystone is that it used supercritical steam at a higher *temperature* than any of the other early steam plants. The increase -- only 50 degrees F, to 1050 instead of 1000 -- may not look like much, but it involved working much closer to the limits of what was possible with the high-pressure alloys of the time (late '50s design, early '60s construction). This plant, to me, rates right up there with Cisler's Fermi 1 plant in Lagoona Beach for bravura use of technology... and perhaps also for the over-the-top use of technology in ways that probably won't give meaningful payback for the cost and added troubles of operation. It simply didn't pay to achieve the added enthalpy in the steam at the higher temperature.

There has, of course, been considerable research into high-temperature pressure alloys since the early '60s, and while there's still a requirement for heavy tube walls, I think the predominance of various kinds of supercritical steam (and once-through boilers to generate it; see the Benson-boiler variants, for example) in modern electric-power generation is quite well established.

QUOTE: A supercritcal tankless steam engine would probably weigh too much to move itself, assuming the rails did not collapse under it...

Aside from the fact that there would be no point to using supercritical pressures in something that doesn't involve active firing at very high heat-transfer rates: some of the most important reasons for using SC and USC steam involve avoidance of nucleate "boiling" in the tube circuits exposed to the fire, and concomitant hot spots and tube-metal weakening...

QUOTE: These tankless steam engines probably used superheated steam...

Ummm... no. What would you be using to superheat the steam? By definition, as it comes off the overcritical water, it will be in saturation at the delivered pressure... but still saturated. You have to use external heat to superheat that steam, and a fireless cooker is notable for lacking an external heat source to do that...

QUOTE: They simply were not as fast or fuel efficient.

There have been some proposals for quite fast and relatively fuel-efficient "fireless" locomotives (see for example

www.internationalsteam.co.uk/ trains/newsteam/modern32.htm

or, a bit more exotic,

www.quasiturbine.com/QTPCMLocoValentine0502.doc

I won't comment here on the economic practicability of these designs, but their thermodynamics can be easily (and reproduceably) verified.

[nanaimo73]

A few years ago I read BN was using a Fireless Cooker in central Minnesota. I believe it was at a tie treatment plant in Staples ? Is it still in use ?
[:)]

[GN24]

Actually both of the fireless cookers are back in montana. One is at somers and the other is in polson. Im the great grandson of the current owner of the S-1

[mudchicken]

Dale: You ought to start looking for fireless cookers around the multiple beet sugar refineries in CO,UT.NE and MN. A few still have them as back-up power.

(Shuttlewagons, Trackmobiles and other similar car movers that can set off have taken their place, but not completely. Cheaper than a diesel switcher and less of a compliance problem in most cases)

[tree68]

Saw one yesterday at the Rochester & Genessee Valley Railroad Museum.  No where near in running shape, though.