Talking of boilers.

We are getting into a more detailed chat about loco boilers on the 60163 temp withdrawn thread.

To me it makes sense to keep the general discussion on boilers going, (I will learn a great deal from it!), on a new thread. Amongst other things that should move us a little bit away from all the current discussion being aimed at mainly the one loco.

I'll wake Ralph up and ask him if he doesn't mind moving some of the chat over here! (wink).

 

Give to poor old fella time to take his medication eep:

 

Anyone got a link to a decent description of a main line steam loco boiler? When talking about injectors a couple of very good links were posted that gave a good diagrams of what they looked like, along with a description of how they worked. I presume somewhere, similar information is available on line, presumably with more then one diagram for something so much bigger.

 

There are 4 good photo's of the sectioned "Ellerman Lines" at the NRM -> here <- if you can bear to look!

This is pretty good, the image enlarges if you click it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_locomotive_components

And though it's getting a bit away from the boiler, this animation shows how the boiler's steam output is used to drive the wheels:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Walschaerts_motion.gif

Plus a good page about boiler stays:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Andy_Dingley/My_created_pages/Stay_(boiler)

 

The Steam Dreams website has some interesting information regarding the boilers that have been fitted to 60019 Bittern during it BR days.

Bittern has had fourteen boilers in her career, these were: 9020 (from new), 9025 (from the ill-fated 4469 Sir Ralph Wedgewood after she had been destroyed at York depot during the 'Baedecker' air raid.), January 23, 1941; 9018 (from 4462 ), May 22, 1943; 8952 (spare), October 14, 1948; 8905 (from 60011), July 28, 1950; 29317 (new build boiler), February 12, 1952; 29298 (from 60020 Guillemot), June 12, 1953; 29279 (from 60009 Union of South Africa), November 30, 1954; 29320 (from 60020 Guillemot), May 25, 1956; 29315 ((from 60022 Mallard), September 6, 1957; 29319 (from 60009 Union of South Africa), December 13, 1958; 29355 (newbuild boiler), March 16, 1960; 27971 (from 60017 Silver Fox), April 27, 1962 and finally 29332 (spare), March 24, 1965.

Apart from the war years, 2 years for a boiler looks about average between changes.

 

The essential thing to remember is that in those days an engine might be in steam for 10-14 days at a time, run daily throughout that period and boil a lot more water per cycle. IIRC correctly it would run about 70,000 miles between shoppings. On that basis, some engines, such as WD 3672 (with a steel firebox!), in preservation have considerably outperformed what might have been expected, by running over 100,000 miles in the course of a single boiler ticket. 80135 is another steel fireboxed-engine that ran a high total. These are exceptional examples, however, and it would appear that, on the NYMR at least, most locos will run 60-80,000 miles between major overhauls, more or less in line with BR days, but they'll do it over a longer period.

 

I find that very interesting. Other than the new builds and spares, presumably the other boilers used were ones that had been fully overhauled after their previous use?

I wonder how many other classes of BR locos had boilers changed at a similar intervals.

 

The Bulleid Society lists the record card of 21C123 and shows it had 5 boilers. 1st lasted 71K, second 82K. third 291K, fourth 305K and the final one 170K plus wat ever it has run on the Bluebell. 34059 has only had 3 boilers.

 

I think we also tend to forget that it wasn't just boilers - it wasn't uncommon for the LNER pacifics to receive new cylinders at overhaul.

 

I wonder what the mileage at Wolsztyn is for it's ol49's.

They tend to do 2-3 weeks at a time, at circa 200 miles a day, on an all steel boiler.

 

A recent advert for the Wolsztyn experience gave their annual mileage as 75,000, but I don't know how many locos that is spread across or how evenly it is spread. As a total, it is only a little more than the top UK heritage lines steam fleets (NYMR and SVR are both just over 70,000 per annum miles in theory).

Presumably, the German narrow gauge locos also have all steel boilers and those around Dresden are about the size of an Ivatt 2MT, so what mileage do they do per annum and between overhauls?

As the Germans developed boiler technology beyond what we did in the UK, I think it is safe to assume that there isn't a universal problem with all steel boilers. Trying to use a steel inner box in place of a copper one posses problems (stay spacing should be different but the outer wrapper is already drilled for the copper spacing and any change would need lengthly insurance company approval), as can the wrong mix of flexible and non-flexible stays in a all-steel box(I am not engineer but know what has happened in preservation in these circumstances).

The A1 Boiler was clearly re-designed from the original with a copper inner box (I presume), so the stay spacing will be correct for an all steel box. It remains to be seen if there are further stay problems but of course we are not used in the UK to the hollow "tell-tale" stays, so small numbers of broken stays are normally less obvious.

Steven

 

Steel fireboxes seem to have become the norm in Germany beginning with the standard Deutsche Reichsbahn locos of the 1920s, but still rivetted construction. All-welded steel boilers in Germany are a post-1945 development, apart from a few wartime built ones on Class 52 2-10-0s.

They did come seriously unstuck there when from about 1937 they changed from the then normal St34K steel to the high-tensile St47K for boilers as used on locos like the 01.10, 03.10, 41, 45, and 50. These suffered cracking of the plate problems, and by 1945 if they hadn't been shot up by the RAF, they were laid up out of use with boiler defects. There were at least two cases of these boilers exploding post 1945 to my knowledge, 03.1046 in East Germany, and a class 50 in West.

Wartime class 52s reverted back to the St34K material, and when the Deutsche Bundesbahn scrapped theirs, the boilers were retained and many class 50s were fitted with as a replacement for their originals.

 

This just goes to show just how different things were in steam days! A ready supply of overhauled boilers ready to fit (many classes had a small 'float' of spare boilers to allow this) , new cylinders could be fitted - after all there were foundries at the works, just melt down the old cylinders and cast new ones, the moulds and workforce were there. Add to this fully stocked stores of spare parts and a large workforce and you can see why overhauls could be so quick.

Today we have to repair the original items using volunteer labour in the main part and relying on people giving up their spare time, a fact many of our armchair enthusiasts just do not seem to appreciate.

 

Let's not forget that from what I've seen, (lineside and on train), a good number of the much decried "armchair enthusiasts" are customers. Customers who pay to travel regularly on the trains that keep a lot of today's steam locomotives able to earn some of the revenue that enables them to stay serviceable.