Somebody find the original book that has the test-plant results and discussion from the St. Louis exposition operation [that's the book with the detail discussion of the original tandem-compound Santa Fe 2-10-2]. Look at the runs that determine the functional grate limit. That would be the economic highest firing rate considered, easily 50lb/hr/sq.ft. even with relatively crappy draft.
At one time the book was available for PDF download via Google Books, with scans for the fold-outs.
I believe there are more recent tables and graphs in Chapelon's La Locomotive a Vapeur -- check the '52 Carpenter translation first. I know there are some in the untranslated volume 2.
Actually, 8400 lb/hr in 1911 is hard to believe, on an E2 or whatever it was. Probably it was producing 1000 dbhp or less -- could it possibly have been that inefficient? (I seem not to have noted where I saw Young's statement.)
timzC. D. Young, PRR test engineer, said when they were testing the E6 in 1911 they used a fireman who had already shown his ability -- for three hours (3 hours continuously?) he had averaged 8400 lb/hr on an engine doing better than 60 mph.
There are a couple of mentions in the Q2 test program that 'at the limit' it could be hard on the fireman to access and break open the bags fast enough to dump them into the stoker worm!
I had a cab ride on Nevada Northern #81, a 2-8-0 back in April. For that relatively small train and relatively small distance, it seemed that the fireman shoveled a LOT of coal. He was a well built, young man, and perfectly capable, but the total trip was maybe an hour and a half, and the speed limit there is 15 mph.
I would imagine that a full 8 hour shift, not to metntion what passed for regular working hours in say, 1915, would be a workout that modern folks wouldn't be able to sustain.
David
The high end of what was possible:
C. D. Young, PRR test engineer, said when they were testing the E6 in 1911 they used a fireman who had already shown his ability -- for three hours (3 hours continuously?) he had averaged 8400 lb/hr on an engine doing better than 60 mph.
I wish my memory were better...maybe what I read was 8 TONS a shift, which would be much more realistic. And I agree that a strapping young'un should be able to fire about 10-12 tons over four hours, although it would be a very tough first week or two... Hard on the back, bent and shoveling while pivoting, and doing it almost incessantly for his period of duty. Three friends and I unloaded 20 tons of cement off a flatbed when still in our teens, and each of us handled every bag at least once. I remember that as well as rolling and splitting large rounds cut off a towering fir four feet in diameter at the base of the trunk. I was by myself and had rented a gas splitter. I don't think I have ever worked so hard as that day, already 56 years old. And as you say, it might take time to work up to that level of consistent output, but.....sumbuddy had to do it!
selector Ulrich .. A fireman could shovel 5000 lbs of coal per hour... ??? I read that a fireman on the Pennsy was required to be capable of shoveling 8000 lbs a shift. Whether that is correct or not, 5K/hr works out to about 20K-40K/shift, depending on the route and shift length and on the work required of the engine...quite beyond credibility.
Ulrich .. A fireman could shovel 5000 lbs of coal per hour...
.. A fireman could shovel 5000 lbs of coal per hour...
??? I read that a fireman on the Pennsy was required to be capable of shoveling 8000 lbs a shift. Whether that is correct or not, 5K/hr works out to about 20K-40K/shift, depending on the route and shift length and on the work required of the engine...quite beyond credibility.
I don't know. I got the 5K figure from a Wikipedia article (or maybe I read it wrong). Perhaps it is inaccurate. In my younger days I could handbomb a floor load of Campbell Soup in six to eight hours.. that's roughly 40K lbs. I'm not quite sure how handbombing soup cases compares to shovelling coal.. but likely similar effort and fitness required although the fireman is performing his task on a moving conveyance which added a degree of difficulty.. not to mention the heat.
My one grandfather came from Slovakia and worked the coal mines in SE Ohio. The seams there were only 2-3ft thick so you worked lying down a lot. He died of black lung disease.
BackshopHard manual labor was the norm back then.
"You load sixteen tons of Number Nine coal and the straw boss said "a-bless-a my soul" was more than a song lyric.
I had two great uncles who came from the Old Country around 1905 to work as miners in the Pennsylvania Anthracite Country. There was no machinery at the coal face. If you were lucky, you had pneumatic drills, otherwise it was Jawn Henry revisited with sledge hammers and steel drill rods to drill holes for the explosives. As a miner you paid for the oil in your lamp and the blasting powder or dynamite to blow down the face. After the blast, you used your Red Edge Shovels, "the best money could buy", to load the mine cars. Yet, thousands of men flocked to the mines - it was a better life than "back home" offered
Grandma was lucky, her brothers saved their money to pay for her passage to America and a "cushy" job as the 16 year old maid at the mine manager's "Big House". She got room - her own, what luxury! - and board and her mistress was a kind lady who, she said, treated her more as a daughter than a servant.
My mistake. I rechecked Franklin King's "Locomotives of the Duluth Missabe and Iron Range" book, and it was the WW1-era Duluth Missabe & Northern 2-8-8-2s that were delivered without stokers. At first they were assigned two firemen. All had stokers added by 1925, and continued to work well into the 1950s.
They applied mechanical stokers in the mid 20's to their older articulateds that struggled to be kept fed with two fireman on the job, so regardless of any law I can't imagine that they ever considered going without a mechanical stoker on a Yellowstone years later.
And I don't know about the Missabe's Yellowstones, but some other giant modern articulateds like Northern Pacific's own Yellowstones got oversize MB stokers since more conventional units couldn't even keep up with the desired firing rate. That certainly suggests that there wasn't much room for serious consideration of hand firing such a giant.
Heck, I don't even know if a human being could build up enough steam by hand firing to even use the whistle when the firebox has 145 square feet of grate area...
The only modern mainline steamers in North America that I can think of that were built without a mechanical stoker were CPR's F1 Jubilees.
timz wjstix IIRC the Missabe's first Yellowstones were built to be hand-fired. That wouldn't even be legal in 1941, would it? Aside from the impracticality.
wjstix IIRC the Missabe's first Yellowstones were built to be hand-fired.
That wouldn't even be legal in 1941, would it? Aside from the impracticality.
And as timz noted, after 1937 it would not have been legal to run without a stoker anyway...
wjstixIIRC the Missabe's first Yellowstones were built to be hand-fired.
The article about the second DM&IR order
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015013029791&view=1up&seq=433
says they had stokers and were "practically identical in design" to the first order.
BaltACDThere were many more Kings of the Throttle Box than there wasn't. They had paid their 'dues' with a shovel during their early years and were bound and determined that the 'newbies' that were their Firemen would do the same.
And your basis for this claim is what?
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BaltACDAdditionally Fireman and Engineer did not belong to the same labor organization 'back in the day' and there was that element of competition.
The BLF&E was one of the original unions amalgamating into the UTU in 1969, which might explain in part why the locomotive-engineer training remains in that union.
jeffhergert BaltACD Additionally Fireman and Engineer did not belong to the same labor organization 'back in the day' and there was that element of competition. Later on those organizations merged into the Engineers organization we have today. Today's BLET will sell out any other craft they can for a few dollars when it comes to contract negotiations. The fireman did not join the B of LE. They merged into the UTU, now SMART-TD. The trainmen hold the fireman (engineer training) contract. BLET member.
BaltACD Additionally Fireman and Engineer did not belong to the same labor organization 'back in the day' and there was that element of competition. Later on those organizations merged into the Engineers organization we have today. Today's BLET will sell out any other craft they can for a few dollars when it comes to contract negotiations.
Additionally Fireman and Engineer did not belong to the same labor organization 'back in the day' and there was that element of competition. Later on those organizations merged into the Engineers organization we have today. Today's BLET will sell out any other craft they can for a few dollars when it comes to contract negotiations.
The fireman did not join the B of LE. They merged into the UTU, now SMART-TD. The trainmen hold the fireman (engineer training) contract.
BLET member.
Thank you for the correction. Hard to keep up with the progressions of crafts that aren't your own.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
I fired on a locomotive that was equipped with a Duplex stoker. Some 'old timers' recounted how the most often occurring problem was a rock or a length of pipe or carelessly tossed fire rake that would get jammed or wrapped around the tender trough auger.
The stoker could be reversed to try to unjam the problem but if the drive shaft or universal was broken, no such luck.
However there was a plate that could be lifted in the cab floor that covered the 'distribution' hopper of the Duplex. This is where the horizontal auger dropped the coal whereby it could then be picked up by the twin, vertical augers.
The horizontal gearbox could be disengaged and the vertical 'elevator screws' could sometimes continue to be employed and the fireman then only had to shovel from the coal boards and dump the coal into the distribution plate for the vertical augers to pick it up and the steam jets to then distribute it over the fire.
Still a lot of work but not quite as much as completely hand-bombing, plus the firebox door could be kept closed for longer periods (the back-inside corners usually still had to be hand 'dressed'.
If the right or left vertical auger became jammed one or the other could be disengaged and the remaining working one used.
Good Luck, Ed
Flintlock76 BaltACD You aren't getting ANY engineer that qualified himself up to Engineer from a shovel wielding Fireman to pick the shovel up again. It really depended on the man. From everything I've read yes, there were some engineers who remembered what it was like on the way up and didn't mind helping the fireman if he needed to take a breather and there were others who acted like kings and wouldn't get off the "throne."
BaltACD You aren't getting ANY engineer that qualified himself up to Engineer from a shovel wielding Fireman to pick the shovel up again.
It really depended on the man. From everything I've read yes, there were some engineers who remembered what it was like on the way up and didn't mind helping the fireman if he needed to take a breather and there were others who acted like kings and wouldn't get off the "throne."
There were many more Kings of the Throttle Box than there wasn't. They had paid their 'dues' with a shovel during their early years and were bound and determined that the 'newbies' that were their Firemen would do the same.
IIRC the Missabe's first Yellowstones were built to be hand-fired. The railroad tried using two firemen when they first arrived, but they couldn't keep the steam up so they retrofitted stokers.
MidlandMike Did passenger trains have head end brakemen in the cab? I thought the brakemen/trainmen rode in the coaches.
Did passenger trains have head end brakemen in the cab? I thought the brakemen/trainmen rode in the coaches.
That's an "it depends" situation. Some would have head-end brakemen, some wouldn't, and that applied to both passenger and freight trains.
Just a note, the left-side cab on a Camelback locomotive was for a head-end brakeman if one was called for. Some have mistakenly called it a fireman's cab but no, he was back by the tender and firebox. A head-end brakeman would have just been in the fireman's way if he was in the back.
BaltACDYou aren't getting ANY engineer that qualified himself up to Engineer from a shovel wielding Fireman to pick the shovel up again.
A fireman of that era must have really been a man of steel.
The largest locomotives built to be hand-fired were Virginian's AA mallets of 1910. The story is that the Virginian actively recruited left-handed firemen so that a second fireman could be assigned for the climb to Clark's Gap. The AA's that survived into the 1920s did receive mechanical stokers.
MidlandMike The 2-6-6-0 mallets on the Denver & Salt Lake were hand fired, and before the Moffat tunnel, that was up to 11,600' altitude. When avalanches burried the engine on the high pass, firemen left the digging out of the snow to the rest of the crew. Edit: Mechanical stokers were added in 1912
The 2-6-6-0 mallets on the Denver & Salt Lake were hand fired, and before the Moffat tunnel, that was up to 11,600' altitude. When avalanches burried the engine on the high pass, firemen left the digging out of the snow to the rest of the crew.
Edit: Mechanical stokers were added in 1912
Those Salt Lake Mallets were pocket sized relatively and not much bigger than a large consolidation or small Mikado so were kind of an exception but we can be sure it was a huge job firing them up Rollins pass.
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