Wood burning

Charcoal is just wood with the volatiles (including combustable volatiles) driven off, at significant expense.

Coke is simply coking coal that has been heated in the absence of oxygen, again to drive off the volatiles, leaving a smokeless fuel. The volatiles driven off were what was used to produce coal gas (aka 'town gas') for use domestically before we went over the North Sea gas (methane). A function of coke is that while it burns smokelessly it's harder to light, has no real flame to speak of (the flame is the combustable volatiles burning), and you definitely wouldn't want to be breathing the fumes.

Other by-products of the coking process were various oils and tars that could be used to make plastics, the famous coal tar soap, and feedstock for chemical industies.

Useful stuff, coal. You could do a lot more with it than just set fire to it.

 

I think that for wood to be a practical fuel for locomotives generally it would need to be dried then compressed about 20-fold would probably do - at which point it would look suspiciously like lignite -so on the way to being coal! If carbon can be compressed to the point where it turns to diamond, I can't see why it couldn't be compressed to the point of resembling coal, but I guess its the volumes involved that make it impracticable.

 

I visited the Suodlahti Harbour( Finland )Steam Festival in July 1998. All the loco's present were wood burners ,appart from o-6-0T 789 ,class Vi,which was a coal burner, In steam and working trains were V1 665 0-6-0T ,TK3 1150 2-8-0 , HR1 1009 4-6-2, which worked in from Helsinki, and as mentioned 789.I had the privilage to ride on the footplate of 2-8-0 1150, back to Jyvaskla ,about 30miles ,the load was 6 heavy-weight coaches.No problem was encountered with steaming ,in fact just before departure there were about half a dozen burning logs laying on the grate.The firing to me seemed to be a lot easier than shoveling coal. Three photo's 1150,tender of wood ,coal burner 789.

 

Lovely looking loco 1150, though I could see the height of the spark arrestor being a problem in the UK. Weren't some GWR Pannier tanks fitted with them, not for wood burning though I guess?

Anyone know what the extra cylinder shape is on these engines, i.e. what looks like a small piston valve setup?

Dave

 

Most likely steam by pass when drifting.
Winterthur,Karl -Schultz and Trofimow are other names for same job.
Best was the russian Trofimov but Finns do not use russian ideas.

 

Certainly when working at the RNAD depot served by the sometime CM&DPR. Rather a fugly addition that design was.

 

Thank you. Finns not using Russian ideas, can't think why

Dave