This Bachmann Spectrum 4-4-0 also came with a wood load. I was inquiring on a FB group about finding a balloon stack for it and using the wood load. An answer I got was that this model of 4-4-0 was based on a late model and only burned oil or coal and putting the wood load in would be wrong… Not wanting to go with the opinion of one person, what say any of you that may have the knowledge. Oil or coal only, or wood as well?
I find it interesting that your loco came with a wood load, the parts breakdown for the loco does not show that option? It does show an oil bunker for one of the versions.
It is advertised as a “Modern” 4-4-0, air brakes, black paint scheme, etc.
They do show two different stacks on the parts breakdown, a tapered one and the straight one, but no balloon stack.
When those locos came out, I paid little attention to the details of the difference versions as the loco does not fit into my roster needs.
I will look and see if I have a Bachmann catalog which may offer some insight.
I think if we look around, we will find straight or tapered stack locos burning wood.
Wood burners after 1880 or 1890? I’m not an expert there, but I would think not too many, and only in the west.
Sheldon
Here’s one:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Crooks_(locomotive)
Mel
My Model Railroad
http://melvineperry.blogspot.com/
Bakersfield, California
I’m beginning to realize that aging is not for wimps.
I like the William Crooks 4-4-0 Mel[Y] It’s a piece of art!
Here she is.
Ain’t she sweet! I like 4-4-0’s across the board.
TF
He was right.
That is a modern 4-4-0 not the old wood burning 4-4-0s of the 1800s.
Note the electric headlight instead of a oil burning headlight,the straight stack and the more modern look over the older wood burners…
Huh!
One of my replies just plain disappeared right off this thread.
I didn’t see anything bad or wrong with it so I wonder why it got deleted. Things that make you go Hmmm
TF
Larry, I think you may be right with your observations. The extended tapered boiler is another giveaway apparently.
Sheldon, you are right, out West in big tree country wood was plentiful and used for a long time. Even though coal and oil became the fuel of choice there was one wood burner that ran up to 1960 on the East Coast of Canada in revenue service. Wood was used out West well into the 1930s as far as I can tell from what I have read. I have been reading a lot today.[(-D] Also, balloon stacks were a must as the chance of setting the country on fire were too great to not go with them.
There are aftermarket balloon stacks available, however, I will leave it as is and go about finding a couple of decent wood burners and add them to the fleet. I will be long dead before Rapido comes out with one in their “Legends Of Steam” series.[(-D] Given the importance of the 4-4-0 in the early days I think not enough attention is paid to them.
One thing I like about having a 4-4-0 plying the layout is, it makes the layout seem so much larger with its small size, shorter trains and slower speed.
Thanks all.
I’m certainly no expert on the subject, but I believe the purpose of the balloon-type stack was to collect hot embers.
For this purpose, there’d be a wire mesh above the straight portion of the stack, which diverted the bigger embers to the sides of the balloon portion of the stack. This area would need to be cleaned-out regularly.
These were used on wood burners and some coal burners, too.
There’s a diagram of the set-up on page 278 of my re-print copy of the 1925 Locomotive Cyclopedia.
Wayne
From what I have read you are right Wayne. Balloon stacks were mandatory out West as forest fires were an issue. I am not sure but I think the other main difference with a wood burner was the grates had to be changed in the firebox when changing over from wood to coal or back.
There’s a variety of ‘spark arresting’ stack designs, some working better than others under different conditions, dating back as far as the Isaac Dripps ‘Monster’. Most of these are actually a ‘normal’ front end inside, with screening that is supposed to ‘catch embers’ and divert them to what is a peripheral hopper from which they can be cleared – look for cleanout plugs or hatches.
The problem of course is that there’s no guarantee this works. The screen would carbon up, or get jammed over the internal-stack exit, or get holes compromising it; captured hot cinders might burn off paint or even reignite.
The replacement is to do the screening internally, e.g. as in the Master Mechanic front end, and part of this was the otherwise-cryptic little ‘can’ you see in many of the MR Cyclopedia drawings of turn-of-the-century locomotives. These could get remarkably deep/long, probably on the principle of extending time before the smokebox has to be opened for cleanout; I suspect they were dumped from the bottom at regular intervals. With many if not most wood fuels this would have to be done more carefully and more frequently.
The still more recent “innovation” was actually a cheat: the ‘self-cleaning front end’. What this actually does is increase the turbulence and energy with which the ‘cinders’ or ‘sparks’ as Gods called them impinge on the internal screens, so they are bashed into smaller particles and, in theory at least, better quenched as they contact the metal of the netting. They are then ejected over the countryside rather than remaining anywhere on or in the locomotive and requiring explicit disposal.
People seem to think wood was a weird and primitive fuel of convenience. It was not; fatwood for example gives a lovely luminous flame at high temperature – it’s just that the density is lower so you have to fire more of it, and there can be a relativ
I can see many reasons starting with not having to make “wood stops” to refill the tender… This require time and usually envovled the crew and male passengers. Then there was the costs of buying it from fuel wood loggers and them keeping the pile full. Then how about uniformity at engine service areas?
Coal and oil became the standard fuel for the bigger and powerful locomotives even a modern 4-4-0 could out pull the old wood burning 4-4-0s.
The Bachmann Spectrum engine is a late model (1890-1910 built date). By then wood fired engines built new would be pretty rare.
If you go back to the Bachmann “old timer” 4-4-0 or the Mantua 4-4-0 then those would be typical of wood fired engines.
A lot of it depends on what era you are modeling, 1870 vs 1920, and what part of the country you are modeling (great plains vs mountains). If you are modeling Kansas then wood fired would be very, very unlikey since there aren’t trees to supply the fuel. If you are modeling a lumber line then it would be more likely.
Wood burning locomotives served across the southeastern U.S. up until the late 1940s in many cases. Most were of smaller yet fairly late 4-4-0, 2-6-0, 2-6-2 and 4-6-0s. There was always plenty of wood available on logging lines and around sawmills so, it was the fuel of convenience and choice.
Thumbing through the excellent book “Slow Trains Down South…Deep in Dixie,” Vol.2, by Mallory Hope Ferrell, ISBN-10: 0-945434-63-4, published by Hundman Publishing, I got an education on southern forest product railroads. Southern timber lines stretched from the Florida Everglades to the piney woods of eastern Texas. The Rushton or “cabbage” stack seemed to be the stack of choice on wood burning engines, especially those built post 1900, regardless of whether they were rod or geared locomotives. Some engines were built as wood burners, converted to coal and back to wood again in the World War II era. Not all woodburners had the large spark arresting smoke stacks. Many, especially those converted from coal to wood, kept their straight or, “shotgun” stacks, with the arresting netting being installed in the smokebox.
Most of these rail operations did not venture far from their fuel sources at the mill, or in the woods. As most were not common carriers, and did not carry passengers, “wooding up” was strictly an employees only operation, unlike Hollywood. A 20 mile run was the exception instead of the rule with some operations as microscopic as a few hundred yards. A sure sign you were looking at a wood fired locomotive was the extensions around the fuel portions of the tender. On wood burners they were almost always slatted like a rail fence, instead of solid like a coal bunker. Of course the fragrance of burning pine is nothing like that of sulphurous, bituminous coal either. The last wood burning common carrier i
The Rushton was a late patented design (1923) and was sold as a preferred option by Baldwin. It is illustrated in the 1930 Locomotive Cyclopedia, and here is a reference that shows the drawings:
http://ngdiscussion.net/phorum/read.php?1,228173,228210
The earlier version of the stack (Radley and Hunter) used ‘centrifugal’ force via internal vanes to give more of a cyclone effect to the separation. This might also improve the effective draft path, as it would produce the effect of longer multiple ‘chimneys’ wound corkscrew-fashion
This could produce remarkably effective wear and, probably, some corrosion effects in comparatively short order. So I wouldn’t be surprised to see little aggressive cyclone action in a device with a sheet-fabricated casing… someone should find and post the patent, as I suspect there will be specific claim language there giving improvement over Radley & Hunter sufficient to ensure novelty.
The William Crooks was the first locomotive in Minnesota, arriving in 1862 for use on the St.Paul & Pacific Ry., which eventually became the Great Northern. IIRC it was converted to coal in the 1880’s, although after being restored for special events in the early 1900s it was fitted with a fake wood load in the tender.
Except for some logging railroads, most all railroads in the West were converting to using coal by 1880 or so.