hi, i have a brass model of the Santa Fe 2-10-10-2 by Westside Model. but i have been thinking of making it look like the prototype in some pictures showing the engine with the jacket on the firebox stripped, pipes saddling around the firebox exposed. since the brass model is an earlier production, I’m thinking of super-detail it as well.
first, does anybody out there know what those exposed pipes are? how they works and how they wrap around the firebox? do they just simply saddling on the firebox from one side of the bottom of the firebox to the other? any bolts and wash plugs on the firebox?
second, does anybody know of any info to help me super-detail the model? especially the backhead. i had googled and done some research, but the result is very limited. any help i could gather from any of you would be much appreciated. thank you in advance.
See the drawing of and article about the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe 3000-class Mallets in the May 1989 Model Railroader. As shown there, the engines had a jacketed firebox, meaning the part of the boiler pressure vessel wrapping around the firebox was covered with insulating lagging and sheathed with a thin sheet metal jacket. The drawing and photos show two horizontal rows of cleanout plugs on either side, one down low at the firebox mud ring – the bottom of the boiler’s water legs wrapping around the firebox, and on higher, just above the boiler center line. These engines burned oil, so there was no ash pan under the firebox.
On both sides of the engine, the water supply pipes from the non-lifting injectors under the cab run along the bottom edge of the firebox mud ring. On the left or fireman’s side, two pipes run forward from the cab. One supplies steam to the two cross-compound air compressors, and the pump governor appliance is in this pipe just ahead of the cab. The other pipe is blower line running forward to the smokebox. The fireman could induce draft through the boiler when the engine was at rest by opening his blower valve and blowing steam up the smokestack.
It sounds like your model represents the exposed firebox, withjout the lagging or the jacket, although the locomotive didn’t normally operate in that condiditon. These engines had Jacobs-Schupert fireboxes, composed of arched channel sections riveted together. That’s why there were so many washout plugs along the firebox, because every channel had to be opened for cleaning. The idea was to form a very strong structure that would resist boiler explosions, which it did. The trouble was that it also resisted efficient water circulation and heat trans
i got the MR issue with the drawings of the 2-10-10-2. it was really helpful, especially the backhead info. but still there’s no mention of the pipes that saddle over the firebox when the jacket on the firebox was striped, as in some pictures of the 2-10-10-2:
if i can get info on how those pipes route, it would be really great to model. otherwise, i guess i could just route lines from one side of the firebox to the other without knowing what they are. but that would be my last choice. thank you, and you guy have a great Christmas, and happy holidays.
I found a photo of engine 3000 with the jacket and insualtion removed from its firebox. It’s on page 222 of Steam Locomotives of the Santa Fe, A Former Shopman’s Scrapbook, by Frank Ellington. I think you’re mistaking the flanges of the channel sections forming the Jacobs-Schupert firebox for piping. (The same photo appears in the book Santa Fe Locomotive Development, by Larry E. Brasher, but in a smaller reproduction.)
These channels are shown clearly in a drawing of the 3000-class locomotive on page 220 of the Ellington book. There were 15 of these arched channels, so there were 16 raised flange joints, 12 of them forward of the cab.
The only piping visible in the photo of the engine with its firebox exposed is the same piping you can see in photos and drawings of the engine with its firebox jacket in place. On the left side, that’s the supply pipe for the air compressors and the blower pipe running forward to the smokebox.
I’ve never seen the Westside model you have, so I don’t know how the builder represented the firebox flanges. If it’s done with lengths of round brass wire or rod, I can understand why you’d think it was piping.
Incidentally, according to Ellington, the 2-10-2s rebuilt from the 3000 class after 1915 retained their Jacobs-Schupert fireboxes, and a photo of 2-10-2 3020 with rows of multiple water-leg washout plugs similar to those on the 2-10-10-2s support
Before I put Ellington’s book back on the shelf I flipped through to see if he had more information about the Jacobs-Schupert firebox. He does indeed, including photos from a contemporary edition of the Railway Age Gazette showing how it was assembled. My description of it as composed of channel sections is incorrect, although it does have that appearance outwardly.
The basic structure was a series of 3/8-inch-thick plate steel arches with perforations to allow for water circulation, except that the end plates, without perforations, were 9/16-in. thick. The walls of the firebox were composed of 5/16-in.-thick steel strips, 9 - 5/8-in. wide, riveted between these arches, and the outer shell of the boiler and the water legs were more strips, but 1/2-in. thick, riveted 3 - 7/16-in. from the outer edge of the arches. What appear as flanges on the locomotive’s exposed firebox are the edges of the supporting arches. The strips forming the boiler shell were formed with a slight radius, so they were slightly convex between the exposed arches.
So when you look at the exposed firebox on the locomotive, what you see as a series of ridges are the edges of the arch plates supporting the whole structure, with the arched strips forming the boiler shell and firebox water legs in between.
Thanks for being persistent with your questions, as I now have a better understanding of the mysteries of the Jacobs-Schupert firebox.