Stupid Steam Questions

[marknewton]

A steam locomotive does not track very well at speed while shoving its tender in front of it

I think that would depend on how the engine and tender were coupled. Most methods of coupling the two were designed to prevent slack, so running tender first shouldn't make any difference. The engines I used to work had Franklin radial buffers, and as long as the wedge was knocked up tight, the ride and tracking when running tender-first was not noticeably worse than engine-first.

Garratts are bi-directional by design

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Yes, and depending on which Garratt you're on, the ride is either equally good or bad in both directions! The visibility from the cab on our AD60 class engines was better running bunker-first, and the smoke was behind you!

Cheers,

Mark

[marknewton]

Speaking only from my experience, the main reason for turning an engine was visibility. When running tender-first you can't see round the tender very well, and signal sighting becomes an real issue. As a result, the railway I work for has a blanket speed limit of 40 kph for tender first running. I once had to run tender-first from Gosford to Sydney, a distance of about 80 kilometres, and it was a real pain in the bum.

In Australia, Japan , the UK and Europe, many mixed traffic tender locos that were expected to spend a lot of time running trains tender-first had inset coal bunkers to allow better visibility in that direction. The same thinking is behind the so-called "clear-vision" tenders fitted to many US switchers.

I've never noticed any problem with the injectors picking up when running tender-first. If there's enough water in the tender, they'll work either way.

Cheers,

Mark.

[Anonymous]

Good, sensible answers... thanks!

[vsmith]

Engineer sits on the right side, seats faces forward, turn it around and now the fireman is one the engineers side, both are now sitting sideways on there seat looking back over the tender. Thats gets a bit uncomfortable for any lenth of extended time.  Switchers often had to endure sitting sideways for extended lenths of time but for the most part the reverse moves were short time wise. Dismal switchers had the same reversing problems as steam locos which is why side mirrors became common. I've read that some dismal switchers had seats that could be rotated 90 degrees so the engineer could sit and look both ways down the sides of the engine while still comfortably reaching the control stand during switching moves.

Water from the tender was pumped via a steam powered water pump into a preheater then direct into the boiler, so direction of travel was irrelevant.

Same with fuel from the tender on cabforwards, it was pumped via a steam powered oil pump from the tender all the way up to the front of a cabforwards firebox.

[cprted]

The ability of the crew to see is also an issue. While the view out the front of the cab may not be great, it sure beats having to lean out to look around the tender.

[CSSHEGEWISCH]

A steam locomotive does not track very well at speed while shoving its tender in front of it and the cab-forward design works with oil fuel only.  Tank locomotives work well in either direction since they don't have a tender and Garratts are bi-directional by design.

[Anonymous]

Common sense tells me that a steam locomotive ought to perform exactly the same way going in reverse as it does going forward.  Yet it seems the railroads made a lot of effort to insure that steam locomotives always faced "forward".  They built turntables, wyes, and balloon tracks just to turn the engine (or, sometimes, the whole train) around. Why did they do this?

Did steam locomotives perform any better going forward than in reverse?  Was the output of an SP "Cab Forward" any different than a similar steam engine facing "forward"?  Was there any difference in water flow from the tender when the locomotive operated "in reverse"?  (The reason I ask is this: I assume, probably wrongly, that the system of siphons "pulled" water from the tender into the firebox.  If the water "sloshes" back in the tender when the locomotive moves forward, then perhaps it "surges" when the engine is in reverse.)

Thanks!