Tornado

The scenes were done in Union Pacifics "depot come small town", and a specific building was fitted out with a steam generation unit, will have a look on internet tonight, and see if i can see a clip of the process.

Edit : here you go, 4 parts on youtube...

part 1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esJAvb81EPA

 

Without any great knowledge of marine boilers Frank, do they require washouts, tube cleaning etc that steam locomotive boilers need?

 

Thanks for the link. That's a fair sized steam generator and I can't see one of these being available at every main line steam centre in the UK somehow.

 

Would think they would slowly bring it up to 400, no go straight to that temperature.

Be interesting if somebody from the US working for UP could comment.

 

At atmospheric pressure water boils at 212ºF so that's the minimum temperature if they are pumping in steam from the word go at one bar so even then it's ambient to 212º in one hit. One assumes that the narrator got his facts right in the first place when he quoted 400ºF.

 

I have been following US steam for some time and the UP guys know what there doing better than many. I suspect the details given to the program (I haven't yet watched it) are brief and basic and designed for drama and impact (as most US documentrys seem to be) The actuality may well be that they bring it up slowly and not blast it straight in. As others have said, this would be foolish and the UP team and anything but that. Back in regular steam day in the US, especially those road that had oil burning locos, the roundhouses had a separate boiler and once the locos were on she they got "plugged in" to keep them hot and in steam, but had their individual fires out. Another US outfit, the Friends of the 4449 have a special coach with steam raising boiler in that they use at their base and they take days over steaming their engine. In Europe SLM sold an electric pre-heater conversion, that pugs into the boiler also, to keep the boilers hot and save fuel. Several people have used this.

 

A lot of good sense there Bryan and basically I agre with most of what you say. Resources should be concentrated on a few good locos and steam men, like Bob M. Otherwise main line steam will be gone in a few years.

Don

 

Got to admit the idea of linking the loco to a live steam source, to keep the whole thing at a set temperature sounds like a good idea for the boiler in the long run.

Know their would be "issues" with location of said sources, but the NYMR steam heat their carraiges with portable generator sets.

Better to offset the costs for one of these units against stay/boiler maintenance work.

One other item on the UP steam guys, the temperature in their shed will not be -15, or whatever we had to do with nov/dec this year.

The temperature of the metalwork would be certainly "warm tothe touch", and therefore another stress would be taken away.

As has been mentioned, you feel the documentary has glossed over certain steps in the warm up procedure, as blasting steam into a possibly cold boiler would be against their gentle awakening of the loco..

 

I'd have thought that using steam would be almost as gentle as you could get, certainly kinder than lighting a fire in it. It isn't going to be much hotter than 100°C and probably sparged through the water, in any case.

 

In the case of 844, UP are warming up just the one loco. How do you suggest some of our heritage lines that may be steaming 4 or more locos in peak season go about it?

 

Is it necessary to worry about locos on heritage lines? I can't think of many that have suffered in the way that 60163 seems to be doing, een though some (e.g. the NYMR) throw out the fire at the end of the day and start from fresh next day. I think it would be better to leave a dying fire in, but that would necessitate someone staying on watch, apparently.

 

The idea is meant to be pointed towards main line based locos, who lets be honest normally start from a regular location prior to their work. Carnforth, Tysley, WCRC London etc.. As other people have pointed out heritage stuff is put under no where near as much stress as a mainline performer.

 

A multiple engine heating facility wouldn't be difficult technically, but it would be pretty expensive. You could use a flash steam generator such as this Coil Boiler and a suitable header across the shed etc. Safer than a shell boiler due to much less stored energy, so can be left unattended.

 

I read that in East Germany, many steam sheds had plumbed hot water fed to the boilers of out of steam locomotives to keep them good when the fire was out for short periods.

 

The big difference between mainline and heritage line work is surely the number of times a loco is lit form cold. Where possible we try not to light up a loco for less than 3 days work on the NYMR, and even with the fire being thrown out, the loco doesn't fully cool down (I have discussed the leaving in of small fires with one of our firemen who spends a few weeks a year with us but works regularly on a line that leave a "small fire2 in - it took a while to standard the concepty of a "small fire" and avoid locos being nearly ready to blow off when the next days crew came on!)

Heritage line locos work reasonable length days of reasonably constant work for several days at a time. Much mainoline work involves a single day working trains, often for part of the day but going full pelt when they are working, and being lit from cold each time. To be fair, there does seem to be a bit more planning and the summer regalars provide more constant work but only Fort William and The Cambrian are anywhere near a full week.

That said, I am not sure that this is directly the problem for 60163 any more than for all "mainline mainly" locos - just think of the number of tube problems etc. in recent years for those locos whose lives arec almost entirely one or two days at work periodically.

Steven

 

Maybe if locos were kept hot, the otherwise wasted energy could be used to heat premises, sheds etc - to offset other heating costs. or even generate a small amount of electric? Portable steam turbines? how much?.....

 

A lot of pipe dreaming going on here. To do any real good, the boilers need to be kept at working pressure and to keep the costs down, any idea of using the steam should be forgotten; just use sufficient fuel to make up for the inevitable heat losses to the surroundings and leakage.

Why at working pressure? Ideally, once up to pressure, this should be maintained at all times. It is pressure variation that does much to reduce boiler life, probably more so than temperature variation for most components. A stay, or any other component, that is kept at a constant stress level is not going to fatigue and fail and the stresses in stays are primarily due to pressure. Fatigue is essentially caused by stress fluctuation. A lot of small stress variations is as fatigue inducing as fewer large variations. The fireman who constantly lets the boiler pressure fluctuate between blowing off and (say) 120psi is doing his bit to reduce the life of the boiler.