Where there's smoke there's fire??

Trains Magazine General Discussion
1

I was just over at railpictures.net and saw a couple of really amazing pictures!

Both were NS GE engines (#8648 & 8655) and they had fire shooting out of (I assume) the exhaust almost as high as the engine itself! Lots of black smoke too.

What causes this? Is the local fire department on the way? Is there any danger that the engine will catch on fire? Or has it already??

I can’t imagine what it would look like to actually see this happen.

2

Could be a number of things, blown turbo, carbon buildup, or fuel issues could cause this, I’m sure there are other causes as well. Randy?

LC

3

I haven’t seen any flames out of any unit yet, I have seen a turbo go on an SD60 (I have shots I might post later), the unit was close to flaming up but it didn’t.

4

NS’s ex Conrail units often do that particularly their old GEs. Even the C40-8Ws are no exception. You can usually tell the units that smoke alot because the horns squeek before they sound.

5

This isn’t uncommon for GE locomotives, on the older GEs it is possible to get a good fireball out the stack just by using the layshaft and over fueling the engine. GEs are very sensitive to injector problems , an engine with a bad or a few bad injectors will load up the engine with carbon and raw fuel, especially when the engine is idleing. When the locomotive is worked the excess fuel in the stack is burned off. If a turbo on a GE is bad usually they won’t have flames… won’t have any power either. Watch out for the lube oil coming out the stack, don’t park your car too close.
Randy

6

The railpictures link is :

http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.php?id=18458

The NS unit "belching"fire is 8655,the other unit does not appear to be.[:)]

7

Haven’t we talked about this picture before? Sure looks familiar!

8

Larry,
You are absolutly correct,that’s how I managed to have that link.

9

Still looks fake to me.

10

OK, here are the links to the pics.

http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.php?id=18458

http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.php?id=40361

They are the first two in “Most Popular of All Time” at

http://www.railpictures.net/showphotos.php?popular=true

Is this one of the causes of locomotives catching on fire?

11

I wonder if that where the “blow my stack” came from.

It looks like a Hellfire unit to me. Anybody have marshmallows?

12

Also in the all-time favorites:

http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.php?id=38646

This time they got a hose on it…

13

It’s such a common problem, that some RR’s will even abbreviate it FOS (Fire out stack)!

14

Usually when a GE blows fire out of the stack, It’s a siezed turbo so there is not enough air.

15

Ummm, If an engine is burning like a blow torch I would say that there is plenty of air, like an acetylene torch ? I bought some B30-7s a while back, all of them had turbo’s jammed, they ran fine but the turbo speed sensors were reading zero , so even though they purred like a kitten, no HP
Randy