What Causes A Locomotive To Shoot Sparks?

[wcfan4ever]

Last night, I was watching the IC 3138 in the yard in Manitowoc get moved between tracks. As they powered up, tons of sparks came out of the exhaust stack! They contiued to pour out until it was idled back down. I'm guessing this is normal and we could see it during the day if it wasn't so bright as well. Am I right? The loco was sitting for a good 4-5 hours also. It was a pretty neat sight and I wish I had a decent camera to record this!

[Anonymous]

I've seen this on many occasions, in fact just last night while the CP was switching in New Westminster, one of their locomotives was giving quite the fireworks show out the exhaust stack.

I know there are a number of people on here who can explain it to us, I remember talking about it sometime ago, but I'll leave it to the pros.

[oltmannd]

Carbon build up in the exhaust system will cause sparks. Usually, a locomotive will have a spark catching system in the exhaust manifold or the turbocharger will "quench" the sprarks.

[Anonymous]

i'm not sure what causes it but they do it when they sit for a while. Normally they don't do it for long but it looks kinda wild . I think that the emds do it worse, the ges just smoke lol (i'm a engineer for csx not just makin bs up)

[tree68]

You can bet that there is soot building up from all that idling. (A furnace guy told me the other day that the reason a pilot light was acting up was because the gas pressure on an LP heater was too low and the pilot was sooting up...) And the exhaust is hot (just look at all those GE flamethrowers!). Bits of the soot / carbon will be breaking loose and getting lit, resulting in the fireworks.

[adrianspeeder]

Carbon and all kinds of crap builds idleing when the exhaust isn't that hot and is moving at a low volume.

Now open up that throttle to get the turbo pushin big boost, exhaust gas temps can raise over thousand degrees igniting the carbon deposits. The increased volume of exhaust gas also gives a blast effect.

In effect, it is still perfectly fine to still use the meaning "lay on the coal"

Adrianspeeder

[Anonymous]

A lot of largeer boats and small ships use EMD's and other train engines for motive power. It is common, especially with the EMDs, that after idling for a number of hours to, when throttled up to full power, blow huge clouds of smoke and somtimes flames from the exhaust for several minutes. This is as stated in earlier posts caused by the build up of carbon and unburned fuel and oil in the exhausts.
What can be really spectacular is a stack fire. The carbon, oil, and fuel actually catch on fire and then you can have flames shooting out the exhaust for 15 to 25 feet. The mufflers and exhaust pipes glow cherry red. When this happens you only have seconds to get off the throttles or you will burn out the exhaust system.
Another result of long idling is all the soot that get thrown out the stack when you first throttle up. On the tug I run, there is an aft control station that I use when hooking up to a tow or stretching wire in or out. I, at times, get covered with soot, and the chunks of hot carbon blowing out the stack can have me do all kinds of funny dances on the boat deck when some of it goes down the back of shirt or lands on my neck.

[edbenton]

Idleing will cause a nice buildup of carbon in the exhaust system and when you give the engine a blast of fuel everything tries to get to speed all at once and breaks loose all the carbon and soot and nicew sparks come flying out. I had a old cummins sengine during the winter after sitting and idleing all night to keep the cab warm would shoot a flame out of the stack a good 6-7 feet of course the engine was set up to put out over 700 to the wheels[:D][:D]!

[adrianspeeder]

Cummins eh? So is that 700 horses or just torque? hehehe

Adrian"psd"speeder