Fuel consumption in wood burning steam locos

Trains Magazine Steam & Preservation
1

I’m working on some operations activities for model trains, and I’m interested in learning about volumes of wood typically consumed in wood burning steam locos.

I have some data on coal burning (~14 tons of coal to steam 10,000 gallons of water, with water stops ranging from 6 miles in old locos, and 25-100 miles in modern steam locos).

Does anyone have any ideas on what volume of wood might be required to convert a certain volume of water to steam? Is wood volume usually measured in cords for this purpose? Is there any data on volumes of wood typically carried?

Separate question: I would imagine steam locos would carry plenty of coal (or plenty of wood) and most often just be stopping for water - correct? How often might a loco require more coal/wood?

Thanks very much. Newbie on this type of info.

2

Hoo boy, it was a lot harder to find any information on this than I thought it was going to be.

Best I can come up with is it took about 5,000 pounds of wood to evaporate the same amount of water as 2,000 pounds of coal. Tender capacity of a typical mid-19th Century steam locomotive, which is usually what we think of when we think of wood burners, was 2,000 gallons of water. I couldn’t find anything concrete on how many cords of wood a tender could hold, but a cord is 4X4X8 feet.

Stops were made for wood and water about every 25 miles in those days.

After 1870 railroads started switching to coal as a fuel, it was much more efficient and increased the ratio of stops to two stops for water for every one stop for fuel. As the 19th Century wore on and locomotives and tenders got bigger the milage between stops increased.

This is why when I run my O gauge 4-4-0’s I don’t even think of any prototypical fuels stops, I just set 'em up and watch 'em go 'round and 'round.

Hope this helps.

3

Makes me think of Buster Keaton in “The General.” But it occurs to me, all the western movies I’ve seen and I’ve seen many, lots have wood-burning 4-4-0s and I don’t recall a single pile of wood for them. Water towers, yes, but no wood piles. Funny that and here I thought John Ford was a stickler for accuracy.

4

In 1980 I purchased a book in Pennsylvania about logging railroads in the Warren and Potter County areas. The book offered this factoid: In just one year before the Civil War (late 1850’s, I imagine), the railroads of Pennsylvania consumed some 40 million cords of wood.

No wonder the state lost nearly all of its old growth forest. Also, by 1897 the sighting of just one (!) deer in that area was exciting enough to be noted in a newspaper story.

5

Hey, how many times do you see anyone reloading the guns in those old Western “shoot-em-ups?”

Talk about “load it on Sunday and shoot all week!”

And NKP Guy, it wasn’t just Pennsylvania, by 1870 just about the whole eastern seaboard from Virginia northward had been deforested for fuel and building material. It got so bad that railroads were importing wood fuel from the South just about the time the switch to bituminous coal became feasable.

A personal note: Here in the Richmond VA area quite a few Civil War earthworks are still to be found. I was following a Confederate trench line through some woods and was thinking “Man! It must have been rough digging those trenches with all these trees around!” Then it hit me, when those trenches were dug the trees weren’t there!

6

This should be a fairly easy exercise to get a ball park answer. First find out the btu content of the coal per cubic foot. Do the same thing for the wood. you can now generate the conversion on volume by dividing the coal btu number by the wood btu content. Those charts are on the internet.

7

Go from Cheyne, WY to Ogden, UT. How many cords of wood would it take to run a Union Pacific “Big Boy” pulling what was an average freight train it handled in the late 1940’s.

8

At one point in the 19th Century to augment wood shortages - at least on the East Coast - mummies(I kid you not) were imported to fire locomotives! Tens of thousands of these carcasses from Egypt were consumed. How does this compare with wood for evaporating water? Bituminus? Anthracite? I forgot why this practice was discontinued. Might be an interesting adjunct to modeling prototypical operations in the 1800’s. I might have read this in an old Trains Magazine, but I haven’t tried to look it up since we entered the computer age.

9

Mummies? Jeez! I’d heard of Egyptian railroads using mummies as fuel, but had no idea they were imported here for the same reason. Sounds too weird and creepy to be true. I can’t imagine what the head-end crews had to say about it!

I can imagine why the practice was discontinued! May have had something to do with “Rule G” being adopted as well. And I can just hear those Irish railroaders…

“Jaysus, Mary and Joseph! They want us to burn WHAT?”

I did read in a Colin Garret book that the Finns used dried fish for fuel in their steam engines when wood was in short supply.

10

Oh yeah, they burned the mummies up until someone with enough clout realized that Egyptian heritage was being destroyed and put an end to the grave robbing. Nothing new. Napoleon shot the nose off the sphynx as artilery practice. Then they brought everything they could carry back to France so why not? People will do anything if they can get money.

Thais (Siam in the steam era) used sugar cane and bamboo for fuel.

Don’t forget that wood is exactly like coal in that more dense woods will burn more slowly. So you’d need a median species to work from. I’d suggest pine or fir.

11

Ugh, enough with the burning mummies! Can we dicusss a locomotive fuel that has a lower gross-out factor, like say, uh, buffalo chips?

12

I can’t find any referrences to mummies being used as locomotive fuel in the US, but Mark Twain, in The Innocents Abroad, claimed they were used on the line from Cairo to Alexandria.

I read a story, quite probably apocryphal, that an Egyption fireman was heard to say the mummies of commoners burned poorly, but those of royalty burned much better.

13

Speaking of Mark Twain, I’m thinking that it sounds like the origin of these tales about mummies could have been a Mark Twain prank.

14

Gentlemen, let’s get a grip, shall we? Mummies as locomotive fuel? What’s next, black helicopters from the Tri-Lateral Commission? What a load of hogwash.

First, only very special and exalted Egyptians were mummified. Non-royals or non-nobles were simply buried in the sand. So, are we to believe that tomb-raiding Egyptians were able to collect so many of these remains that they could be exported (or even used in Egypt) as fuel? Ridiculous.

Second, I have never read even one reference to ships being unloaded of mummies to be used as fuel in America. Have you? Ever? Where? Name the book.

Third, unless wanswheel can produce old photographs of longshoremen in Brooklyn unloading countless thousands of mummies there, as St. Thomas said, “I will not believe.” And you shouldn’t, either.

Sheesh. Some people will believe anything.

[angel]

15

The fuel value of well dried wood (less than 20% moisture) is roughly 60% of the fuel value of coal. These figures apply to the quantity measured by weight.

The specific gravity of same wood may for common northern hemisphere forests be assumed to be somewhere between 0.5 to 0.7 depending on the tree species. The specific gravity (density) of coal ranges from 1.2 to 1.8, varying from location to location. If we assume a similar fraction of air between the coal pieces as between the firewood pieces (although haphazard tossing of firewood into the tender is likely to increase the fraction of air in the volume), the same tender volume capacity for fuel will provide 0.6 x 0.6 / 1.8 = 20% of fuel value and thus mileage from firewood compared with coal.

No wonder wood burners usually had an extended cage built on top of the tender to hold the required firewood!

Btw, some years ago I had the exquisite pleasure of operating a wood-fired steam engine at the railroad museum in Haapamäki, Finland. Recommended!!

16

Here’s a lovely old poem I read in “Outdoor Life” magazine years ago. It’s by Lady Celia Congreve and dates from around 1930, and it’s called appropriately enough…

The Firewood Poem

Beechwood logs are bright and clear, if the logs are kept a year.

Chestnut’s only good they say, if for logs it’s laid away.

Make a fire of elder tree, DEATH within your house will be.

But ash wood new or ash wood old, is fit for a queen with a crown of gold.

Birch and fir logs burn too fast, blaze up bright and do not last.

It is by the Irish said hawthorn bakes the sweetest bread.

Elm wood burns like churchyard mould, even the very flames are cold.

But ash wood green or ash wood brown, is fit for a queen with a golden crown.

Poplar gives a bitter smoke, fills your eyes and makes you choke.

Apple wood will scent your room, pear wood smells like flowers in bloom.

Oaken logs if dry and old, keep away the winter’s cold.

But ash wood wet or ash wood dry, a king shall warm his slippers by.

Isn’t that nice? Beats the hell out of talking about mummies! Yuck!

17

It’s a sort of urban legend, started largely by Twain’s writings, and as most things go, partly true. Not the mummies themselves, but rather paper made from the wrappings. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mummy_paper Anecdotal at best.

18

Oh, and I can’t remember if it’s willow or cottonwood but one of them smells like an outhouse when you burn it! I noticed that was strangely omitted from the poem! [swg]

19

Looks like Lady Congreve was referring to English woods. I don’t know if they have willows in the British Isles, but cottonwood is strictly American!

And I’m not about to try the outhouse experiment with either.

20

Firelock76: I really enjoyed the poem, not least because to this seasoned fireplace owner every word rang true.

One wood type not mentioned is my favorite: wild cherry. We have many, many wild cherry trees here in northern Ohio and I can state that when fire season starts and I put cherry logs on the fire, the entire backyard is perfumed with what can only be described as a scent similar to Cherry Blend tobacco. It’s wonderful! It’s also a pleasure to split with my maul.

But as the author said, elm is about useless for heating purposes and is most difficult to split.

Best kindling: kiln-dried pine that’s been used in shipping pallets.

After this hot & humid summer I’m sure looking forward to sweaters and log fires this autumn.