[8D]Why do I see fire coming out of diesels locos
When loading up a diesel to quik the turbo is not up to speed yet.
so to much oil floods the system, when the turbo finaly catches up the flame shoots out of the stack…
newer diesels have less of a tendency to get turbo lag due to computer controls checking the engine vs turbo.
Alcos would do this when the throttle was notched up too quickly, casing excess oil and fuel to get into the exhaust.
[:D]
Other than “fire” out of exhaust stack, sparks, flames, etc. can spew forth from dirty or failing dynamic brake grids (obviously if the loco is so equipped) under some circumstances.
Man, the Alcos did it nice!
so we crewman dont have to carry charrcoal and lighter fuid in our already heavey overstuffed with rulebooks grips…so when we stop…we can have a cookout…
i bring the hotdogs…the conductor bings a 6er…lol
just kidding…its what someone said already about turbo lag or something like that…
csx engineer
I recently bought the Trains mag video Big Power. There is some film on it of a UP Coal train on the joint line and this big GE looks as if it flames out about six times. Would that be just Turbo lag or does it have a problem. In Britain i cannot recall ever seeing a Deisel shooting out flame but i’ve seen plenty of black smoke come out of them.
There have been several good threads on this, with comments in detail from people who know exactly what’s going on. I don’t have the patience to work through the advanced-search to find 'em, but it would pay to do so. Please, somebody, find and list them…
The usual result of turbo lag is smoke (think “Alco 244” for the poster-child version), which is the result of too much fuel injected into the engine for the available mass of combustion air. But this usually doesn’t turn to flame without an ignition source of some kind – a hot spot in the exhaust, a bad exhaust valve, etc.
Randy and some others mentioned that locomotives will flame when carbon deposits form in the engine during prolonged idling, and the engine is then cranked up hard. I noticed that the old NJT (ex-EL) U34CHs would throw a good 3-4’ of laminar flame for a couple of seconds on hard acceleration, but this isn’t the dramatic yellow death cloud that shows up in some of the pictures.
One major source of the fires is the turbocharger itself, which has a lube-oil line to its center bearing. If the seals wear, or the casting warps, etc., the lube oil can pass into the exhaust turbine, where the temperature is quite sufficient to ignite it. As mentioned elsewhere too, FM opposed-piston engines could have quite a problem with lube oil pooling above the upper pistons and leaking down into the combustion chambers; revving these up after standing for a while could give you a nifty fire (good stories about this have been told!)
All this is distinct from crankcase fires/explosions, of particular interest on EMD 2-stroke engines…
Yes, they did!![:D]
Great thank you for that explanation. [8D]
I have a tape of the UPRR gas diesels & one of them went ka-boom at start up.
This was typical on GE’s I never saw this on an EMD. With new throttle computer control adjustments even the GE’s are rare at least in the west on the UP.
Turbo lag alone won’t dump enough fuel to cause fire out the stack. It usually takes a mechanical malfunction like a blown-off injetor tip or souping from too much idling to create the conditions for fire.
How about seeing a small tonge of flame from each stack at night…just normal exhaust temp that is just more visible at night, eh? same with eighteen wheelers.
Normally aspirated locomotives also experienced “stack fires” upon occasion also and it wasn’t all that uncommon to have problems with this on EMD
SW-9 or SW-1200s. Back in the days of Penn Central when I was on the extra
hoghead board at Lancaster, PA in the mid-1970s, we had three SW-9s assigned to us for the yard jobs. Thier numbers were 9042, 9043 and 9044.
The 9042 was the favorite of the shifting crews because of it’s “mighty might”
status. This engine could pull. Plus it had a set of Nathan Air Chimes off an old E-7 and they were good for scaring kids who trespassed on the railroad. The 9044 was good for getting out on the main-line and thus the crews who worked the industrial shifting out of the yard proper usually used this engine. Of course this left the 9043.
Nobody liked this engine because of it’s potential to have the main generator
“flash over” and trip the ground relay alot when working full throttle and also for the fact it had a less than desirable heater in the winter . So it sat back on the enginehouse lead, idling away…often times not used at all between trips to Enola Diesel Shop for MI.The 9043 liked her oil and with worn rings and whatnot, the oil accumulated in the exhaust manifold along with a lot of carbon and other crap.
I was called for an extra yard job one evening for C Trick and after signing up I discovered the only available engine was the 9043. Lancaster Yard is on a slightly eastward grade, so the standard procedure in shifting was to grab a draft of cars, pull them East and flat shift in the other direction. I had ahold of about 25 loads and when I pulled the throttle out, the smoke rolled out of the twin stacks to the extent I wasn’t sure or not if I had a diesel or a steam engine!
After getting the train up to about a half-a-mile a year, it didn’t take long until the exhaust manifold ignited, spewing fire and chunks of carbon out of it, promptly
setting the weeds on fire on both sides of the railro
When a GE unit looses a turbo it will usually seize and there fore the engine will not get enough air and blow black smoke and a flame out of the stack about 10 to 15 feet out of the stack.
The one I have of a UPRR gas turbine look like there was a small explosion after the fire blew out the stack then a large cloud of black smoke followed. They did not say what happen though
A couple of ex-PRR guys I worked for at Conrail told me their nickname for the FM switchers assigned Chicago was “blowtorches” for their tendency to have fire out the stack (similar circumstances to Capt Jack’s 9043). The FMs were even less likely to get the repairs they needed because of having to remove the top crank to get at the pistons rings and liners.
This is exactly analogous to what often happens to turbo-charged race cars on overrun when braking into a turn. Rotary powered Mazdas are particularly noted for this, sometimes shooting a 4 foot flame out the exhaust pipe. Rather thrilling on a gasoline-powered car.
over here in the uk it has happend with br class 37 the pictures were in the railway magazne about three years ago