Location of Washout Plugs on 9351, and the GW Prairies.

A thought arose the other day, whilst watching some video of the WSR's 9351:- as the normal location for Firebox Washout Plugs on fireboxes was covered by the side tanks, how are the fireboxes on said locos (and that on 9351) washed out?.

 

As you can see from the attached picture, there are washout plugs in the radius between the sides and top of the firebox. There are also W/O plugs in the backhead; there may also be a couple in the throatplate. There are mudhole doors in the bottom corners and also in the centres of the backhead and throatplate (from memory!).

 

Thank yo

Thank you .

 

I forgot that there are also W/O plugs in the front tubeplate, towards the bottom, to wash out any scale towards the firebox.

 

The two holes on the top radius of the firebox are for mud hole doors.

 

Indeed they are although it's interesting to compair those two mud holes with say a 4mt standard tank with it's two mud holes (in roughly the same position as that Gas Works engine) and a row of (4ish) wash out plugs just above the line of the side tank. Now it's been quite a while since I've washed out any engine but IMHO those plugs above the tank are in a far better position to achieve results than to just use the top mud holes. I suppose we can mark that down to yet another example of design inferiorority on loco's from the western!

 

What a load of horse s**t…
There is indeed a row of four washout plugs on the side of a GW number 4 boiler as pictured and these can be used on a mogul/City where there is no tank in the way, this particular loco has them plugged and riveted over as you cannot get to them when the big tanks are in the way. The GWR obviously had no issue with this as there does not appear to be any historic evidence that these boilers were difficult to wash out and had issues with crown sheets overheating as a consequence of not getting washed out properly, you just need the right tools for the job!
As for a standard class 4 boiler, they are built incorporating all the Churchward/Swindon boiler principals anyway!