Joe788 wrote:
On May 5, 4:59 am, Joe788 wrote:
Beautiful restored 1927 4-8-4 steam locomotive that on May 1st 2010
made a special overnight trip to San Diego.
My new girlfriend and I were walking in Cardiff By The Sea on Saturday
when it passed by. Just an awesome sight to behold.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5VG5OQwTNE
Apparently this steam locomotive sat for years in a park of some sort
before it was restored and put back into occasional action.
Things like this aren't meant to be on display. They're meant to run.
The latter maybe just my opinion but it should be fact.
Here are some questions for those who wish to share their knowledge or
do the research:
How do they put the water in it? I'm not aware of any water towers
that are located next to train tracks in the San Diego, California
area.
How much water does this locomotive hold and how often does it need to
be refilled?
In "steam days", railroads had many water sources ... usually large
elevated tanks with large diameter drop-down spouts for quickly filling
loco tenders.
Alternatively, the water from the tanks could be piped to large "water
columns" ... vertical pipe-stands alongside the tracks with a rotating
cross-pipe on top allowing the end to be positioned over the tender's
water-hatch. Again, the diameter was large to allow a high flow from the
reltaively low pressue source. One water tank might serve multiple
water-columns.
Today, with few water tanks left, filling the tender is often done by
the local fire department. Despite their powerful pumping trucks, it
takes a LOT longer (a half hour or more is typical) than it did with the
old RR water spouts (a few minutes). Fire trucks are set up to deliver a
lot of pressure at relatively low volume ... just the opposite of RR
water facilities.
How much does that loco's tender hold? I don't know, specifically, but
several thousand gallons. It's almost always marked on the outside of
the tender, usually on the rear face. It varied a lot with the size of
locomotive, the RR's water policies, and the countryside the loco was
designed to run through. In most cases, the tender could hold enough
fuel to evaporate several loads of water. Thus the loco had to stop for
water far more frequently than for fuel. The exact proportion of water
to fuel varied with the intended service.
For example, locos operating the southwest, like AT&SF, had large
tenders that were mostly just big water tanks. Water is scarce in that
area, water tanks further apart, so they needed to carry a lot of it.
Extra water-only tenders ("Auxilliary tenders") were fairly common in
such areas.
Back east, say on the NYC, they often had tenders with huge fuel
capacity and realtively small water capacity ... water was plentiful.
Also of note was NYC and PRR had extensive "track pan" systems that
allowed them to scoop water into the tender while the locomotive was
moving at a reasonable speed. Thus they could add water "on the fly"
whenever they needed it, without stopping.
The track pans were LONG narrow troughs set between the rails in
appropriate locations, and kept full of water by a supply system. The
loco tenders had an air-operated scoop that could be lowered into the
trough by the loco's fireman. The motion of the scoop rammed the water
upward into the tender's water tank with great force. Movies usually
show the tender water-hatch being blown open when the tender reached
capacity. Too high a pick-up speed (usually about 40 mph was used) could
actually burst the tender. The scoop also had to be lifted promptly when
the end of the trough neared or BAD things would happen. The scoops were
designed to break away, but a derailment was always a possibility.
One other variation was the use of condensing systems. Widely used on
ships and stationary steam plants, these were never very effective on
railroad locos as the only available cooling source was air that had
relatively poor ability to carry away the large quantities of heat being
dissipated. At best, only some of the water could be recovered and
reused. Condensing locos were tried, and used, but rarely, and only
under special conditions. In the USA, Union Paciific trid two GE
experimental steam-turbine-electrics that had condensers ... they were
failures. The only big, and mostly successful, condensing steam loco
operations I know of were in South Africa. There, they had to cross the
Kalahari desert where almost NO water was available. They had a fleet of
large steam locos with HUGE condensing tenders that operated
succcessfully until displaced by Diesels.
Dan Mitchell
============