The White Moutain Central 3 different engines #1, #5, #6 all operate with Wood.
This is the Clark’s Trading Post railroad at North Woodstock, NH and its Climax #6 always seem to be forgotten in the count of operable Climax in the USA. It actually has an almost new boiler, replacing the original a few years ago. They also have a Shay #5 but it is stored in its original condition, and only sees the daylight once a year for occasional railfan weekend. It is so original, the old oil cans are still sitting within the safe spots near the frame, and the lower flues are still plugged with cinder and grit.
How can they make such a error as Trains Magazine publishes the Tourist Train Guide which includes their wood burning data.
I guess that was just the writer running with the “Iron Horse” analogy where a draft animal needs to be supplied proper fodder?
For a moment there, I thought it was discussion of the fuel requirements for proper firebox combustion with respect to lump size, the tendency of the lumps to make dust that gets pulled out of the fire and up the stack under high draft conditions, the amount of volatiles that can generate smoke, the amount of ash, the tendency of the ash to melt and form “clinker”, or the tendency of the coal to swell or “cake” when the volatiles are “coked” off, all of these effects choking off the fire, but in some instances, reducing the “sparks” thrown out the stack by binding small coal particles to the firebed.
I thought that maybe “good coal” was a concern of coal-burning tourist lines because the coal mining industry supplies a product that gets ground to a fine powder when fed to electric utility boilers and there is no longer an effort to make it suitable for the mode of coal lumps on a firegrate in a locomotive boiler?
I guess those concerns are all “inside baseball.” (sigh)
My live steam club is facing this issue. The mine we bought from about 10 years ago has closed down and we can’t find any good-quality coal in bulk order.
The stuff that works okay for the full sized locos at IRM or Strasburg just isn’t good enough.
We’ve tried just about everything, but it’s either too big in lump size, too dirty (passengers don’t ussually like a face full of smoke, the engineer too) or it just won’t burn hot enough.
Finding good coal is an issue that everyone should pay attention to. With new “green” movements we might soon find ourselves without a quality coal supplier, as my club has.
Can you give us a sense of the differences in firing a live-steam model in relation to full-size railroad steam?
The last time our club got invited to the Whiskey River RR at the Little A-Merrick-A amusement park in Marshall, WI, it seems that they had stuffed the fireboxes of their operating engines full with coal in rather largish lump, but this seemingly indifferent firing technique didn’t appear to generate much smoke. These locomotives were “zoo gauge” (16" in this instance), so they are perhaps a bit larger than many live-steam models and somewhat smaller than a proper “narrow gauge” (2’ and up) railroad.
Apart from Livio Dante Porta’s Gas Producer Combustion System and some other outliers, it appears that the standard technique for firing with lump coal is the “little and often” method maintaining a thin, evenly spread firebed that is “light and bright.” That doesn’t seem what they were doing on those subscale engines but they were doing OK with what they were doing. I did hear from one of the people who is part of steam engine operations that they pay top dollar for the coal they use, so maybe they are getting their results from a high-quality coal?
I have limited expirience firing full-sized steam (About 20 minutes or so on the Strasburg), but I know enough to say that full sized steam is another beast. I fire our locomotives (12’’ gauge) the same way I have been taught and read on the full sized engines. In my expirience you can scale full-size firing techniques down to live steam, but NOT the other way around. Firing live steam, honestly, requires little skill when you have good coal.
Live steamers typically have smaller fireboxes than are optimal, so more has to be done with less grate area, hence the need for high quality coal. (For these purposes I swear by Pocahontas No. 6)
Of course what it comes down to is the man behind the shovel. You don’t need A1-prime coal to get the job done (although it can make it easier) when you know what you’re doing. Full sized steamers typically use lower quality coal than we do, mostly because they need more of it, it is less expensive, and most importantly it WORKS.
I could have gone on and on about firing techniques, but each person has different techniques which are most easily learned through hands-on expirience. For more on “standard” techniques I recomend “Firing with Bituminous Coal” by George Baker.
Steam Locomotive Coal - as history used it, has evolved into “complex coal products” used in modern power generation such as “clean coal.” It is currently an enviornmental “politically incorrect” fuel product under process of being banned by the Federal Government Enviornmental Protection Agency and its activists.
Once widely understood, COAL is a subject today needing some modern explanation. Many steam railroads historically used the cheapest coal products they could get away with because of the fuel costs. Northern Pacific used on line Lignite coals that were unburnable by most railroads, Union Pacific used similar “cost saving” on line products with sometimes questionable performance. It is felt this was the reason that the UP 4000 series “Big Boy” 4-8-8-4 locomotives did not generally effectively compete with C&O 1600 “Allegheney” 2-6-6-6 engines in their horsepower generated.
Several railroads developed unique firebox designs like the Wooton firebox (Reading Railroad 2100’s) just to effectively use the coal they desired to burn.
The Lackawana Railroad advertized that it used just the expensive “good stuff” ANTHRACITE COAL. A Lackawana Railroad advertisement of the 1890 vintage used a young woman - Gibson Girl - in white formal dress who proclaimed on billboards across the region, “My gown stays white both day and nite, Upon the Road of Anthracite!”
On the whole it is felt that the Eastern US Railroads had access to better quality “on line” coal deposits in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee. Lower quality bulk coals were often found in the Western States. Just how true t
Dr D wrote the following post 5 days ago: [Copied in part]
"…A FEW THOUGHTS ON HUNGRY STEAM ENGINES!
Steam Locomotive Coal - as history used it, has evolved into “complex coal products” used in modern power generation such as “clean coal.” It is currently an enviornmental “politically incorrect” fuel product under process of being banned by the Federal Government Enviornmental Protection Agency and its activists.
Once widely understood, COAL is a subject today needing some modern explanation. Many steam railroads historically used the cheapest coal products they could get away with because of the fuel costs. Northern Pacific used on line Lignite coals that were unburnable by most railroads, Union Pacific used similar “cost saving” on line products with sometimes questionable performance. It is felt this was the reason that the UP 4000 series “Big Boy” 4-8-8-4 locomotives did not generally effectively compete with C&O 1600 “Allegheney” 2-6-6-6 engines in their horsepower generated.
Several railroads developed unique firebox designs like the Wooton firebox (Reading Railroad 2100’s) just to effectively use the coal they desired to burn.
The Lackawana Railroad advertized that it used just the expensive “good stuff” ANTHRACITE COAL. A Lackawana Railroad advertisement of the 1890 vintage used a young woman - Gibson Girl - in white formal dress who proclaimed on billboards across the region, “My gown stays white both day and nite, Upon the Road of Anthracite!”
On the whole it is felt that the Eastern US Railroads had access to better quality “on line” coal deposits in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Virginia, Kentucky an
When I was a student in Junior High School back in 1963 my Natural Science class did study the nature of the coal industry in the United States.
How profoundly the textbooks declared "The United States has enough Coal reserves that our nation is self sufficient and beholding to no other nation on earth for its energy reserves!
And, the WW2 and Baby Boom generations have blown that one into the weeds! America can’t even think of its energy future without dependance upon foreign energy! And no one cares! The new oil fracking boom in the United States has been stalled - because the OPEC countries have discounted their oil and stalled this newly developing boom in US energy independence!
The days are here now when coal is a politically incorrect energy source on the EPA hit list - before the days of “clean coal” however, a good Anthracite was expensive and the best product - Lignite was unusable for most railroad usages and Bituminous was the common product in New York Central Railroad grades of “freight coal” and “passenger coal.”
TODAYS COAL FACTS -
90% of coal reserves in the USA are found in 10 states. Coal is mined in 27 states and found in many more. US Coal resources constitute 12 times more of the energy found in the earth than all the oil in Saudia Arabia!
Coal is the USA’s most abundant resource! and why abandon this as an energy source - when it seems engineering it into a modern fuel is what American genius is called to!
US Geological Survey records we have 1.7 trillion tons of identified coal resources - measured in reliable location, rank, quality and quantity. More coal is also likely to be found an