Steam & Excursion > WORTHINGTON feedwater heaters

A thread was just posted about a COFFIN feedwater heater. What can anybody tell us about the different types of WORTHINGTON feedwater heaters? I am asking this because I really don't know too much about them other than the SP guys I fired for years ago seemed to like them. I think we need a WORTHINGTON FEEDWATER HEATER 101 class.

Mr. MTMENGINEER, are you out there?


steamjocky

In the Coffin thread someone mentioned the Worthington heater installed on the left side of SP engines. I believe that is the "BL" type, as opposed to the "S/SA" type with the chamber at the top of the smokebox, as on NKP 765. If all Worthingtons were "open" heaters, what is the practical diff between the two types? N&W preferred the BL on the Y's, but used the S or SA on the A's and J's, but also put the SA on the Y6b, I think because the BL was no longer being made by then. Does that sound right?? Thanks in advance.

Worthingtons were a combined waterpump/heater. As you view one as hung on a locomotive, the heater is on the left while the pump is on the right.
At the top of the pump is the steam cylinder, which gets live steam from the boiler. The rod from it extends down through both the coldwater pump AND the hot water pump & drives them both.
The coldwater pump takes suction from the tender & delivers the water into a spray chamber where it picks up heat from the exhaust steam plus additional volume as the exhaust steam condenses.
This then goes to the hotwater pump where it is pumped through the boiler check into the boiler.
There were 5 or six sizes of these to accomodate boilers of different evaporative rates.
This type of device was sometimes referred to as a D.C. Heater or direct contact heater as opposed to the other type that used heat transfer via a heat exchanger (bundle encased in a shell).
To attempt to get rid of the entrained cylinder oil in the exhaust steam, a knock-out pot was plumbed into the steamline just before the heater casing.
I had the opportunity to use one of these a little when I worked for the GCR in '99 as we would test it in the morning while taking the locomotive over to the carshop.
Tom

PS I decided that I'd been lazy long enough & finally consulted my Worthington book. They had 5 sizes of both B & BL models:
1 2,400 gph
2 3,900 gph
3 5,400 gph
4 7,200 gph
4 1/2 10,000 gph

NYCSTL8 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> In the Coffin thread someone mentioned the
> Worthington heater installed on the left side of
> SP engines. I believe that is the "BL" type, as
> opposed to the "S/SA" type with the chamber at
> the top of the smokebox, as on NKP 765.

Actually, the side mounted ones could be Type B, B-2, BL, or BL-2. They also came in different sizes. Modelers and historians seem to have a greater than fifty percent chance of misidentifying the model. Is anyone interested in info on identifying the model?

> If all
> Worthingtons were "open" heaters, what is the
> practical diff between the two types? N&W
> preferred the BL on the Y's, but used the S or SA
> on the A's and J's, but also put the SA on the
> Y6b, I think because the BL was no longer being
> made by then. Does that sound right?? Thanks in
> advance.

Without digging out reference materials, the S and SA were later designs with improved features. The big thing with the side mounted ones are that the hot water pump, cold water pump, and heater are all combined in one unit with the weight all being on one side. With the S and SA, the components are separate, so you could distribute the weight better and also locate the components with efficiency in mind. I'd like to know the last new application of a B/BL-2 series type, but I would think that replacement parts were available until the demise of steam was inevitable.

NYCSTL8 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
N&W
> preferred the BL on the Y's, but used the S or SA
> on the A's and J's, but also put the SA on the
> Y6b, I think because the BL was no longer being
> made by then. Does that sound right?? Thanks in
> advance.


Jim, I'm not sure about the availability of the BL-2 at that point in time (I'll have to get my 1941 Locomotive Cyclopedia out and do some research.), but you're dead-on about what the N&W did. We definitely need MTMEngineer's expertise to help us on this one. I'm betting 4-12-2 could help as well.

Regards,

rcall31060
Bob Callahan
Monticello, IN
rmcallahan@hotmail.com

rcall31060 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> We definitely need MTMEngineer's
> expertise to help us on this one.

Just took a peek at the board during coffee break. Won't have time to respond until late tonite, or maybe not until tomorrow evening.

But, "yes" to other's posts on this subject - I may not be able to add much. :-)

MTMEngineer Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> rcall31060 Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > We definitely need MTMEngineer's
> > expertise to help us on this one.
>
> Just took a peek at the board during coffee break.
> Won't have time to respond until late tonite, or
> maybe not until tomorrow evening.
>
> But, "yes" to other's posts on this subject - I
> may not be able to add much. :-)
>

But what you do add, MTMEngineer, will be worthwhile and helpful. All the guys that post to this site (well... maybe not "all", wink, wink!) have forgotten more about the subject of steam locomotion than I'm ever going to know. Great stuff from so many of you.

Regards,

rcall31060

Thanks for all the responses. Can anyone think of a BL installation after the N&W Y6a? Also, any thoughts on why Illinois Central chose to avoid fw heaters of any kind? The heaters, Elesco, I think, on their Lima Berks ( incl the orig., the A-1 demo ) were removed, and no such devices were installed on anything during the massive Paducah Shops re-building program in the thirties and forties. Even the from-scratch 2600's had no fw heaters. Was coal so cheap that the maintenance expense on the heaters was deemed to be too high? Thanks again, fellow steam-heads.

NYCSTL8 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
Can anyone think of
> a BL installation after the N&W Y6a?

Jim, I am unaware of any such installations, at least on new power built in the time period after the Y6a's were erected. Doesn't mean there weren't any though. Really don't know. Plenty of retrofits over the years (B&M Pacifics and Consols, for example).

rcall31060

rcall31060 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> NYCSTL8 Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> Can anyone think of
> > a BL installation after the N&W Y6a?
>
> Jim, I am unaware of any such installations, at
> least on new power built in the time period after
> the Y6a's were erected. Doesn't mean there
> weren't any though. Really don't know. Plenty of
> retrofits over the years (B&M Pacifics and
> Consols, for example).

The Y6a's were built in 1942, IIRC. The Worthington material in the 1941 Loco Cyc mentioned the BL-2 as if it was currently available, but they were clearly pushing the SA. Also in the 1941 Cyc, a Chilean 4-8-2 built in 1940 appears to have a BL-2. I can't think of any domestic steam engines after the Y6a's that got BL-2's, but perhaps some export engines may have been so equipped at a later date.

I'll try to fire up my ancient scanner on an equally ancient Win 95 P75 machine and scan some examples of Model B, B-2, BL, and BL-2's in various sizes if anyone is interested. I need to get a new scanner and retire both of those clunkers. If I did that, I might be more prone to scan and post stuff.

ts1457 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> > The Y6a's were built in 1942, IIRC. The
> Worthington material in the 1941 Loco Cyc
> mentioned the BL-2 as if it was currently
> available, but they were clearly pushing the SA.
> Also in the 1941 Cyc, a Chilean 4-8-2 built in
> 1940 appears to have a BL-2. I can't think of any
> domestic steam engines after the Y6a's that got
> BL-2's, but perhaps some export engines may have
> been so equipped at a later date.
>
> I'll try to fire up my ancient scanner on an
> equally ancient Win 95 P75 machine and scan some
> examples of Model B, B-2, BL, and BL-2's in
> various sizes if anyone is interested. I need to
> get a new scanner and retire both of those
> clunkers. If I did that, I might be more prone to
> scan and post stuff.


I'm interested ts1457 and I'm sure the rest of the guys are too. What's a good scanner going to cost and what would you buy? Thanks in advance for the info.

rcall31060

"finally consulted my Worthington book. They had 5 sizes of both B & BL models:
1 2,400 gph
2 3,900 gph
3 5,400 gph
4 7,200 gph
4 1/2 10,000 gph"

The 1941 and 1947 Cycs just show the first three sizes of BL (maximum 5400 gal/hr), with the SA starting at that level and going up.

That sounds good. ca. 1928-1930 seems to be the transtion era. UP's first 4-12-2's were built with the BL mounted on the left side, but later order switched to the 5-S. The first NKP 2-8-4's were built with the S (1929?). Besidesn the simpler construction & maintenance the S had over the B/BL, the increasing size of engines probably made it harder to hang a B/BL on the side of a boiler. Some 4-8-2's had them, but no 4-8-4's had B/BL heaters. N&W may have applied them later just to standardize engines with earlier classes.

timz Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> "finally consulted my Worthington book. They had 5
> sizes of both B & BL models:
> 1 2,400 gph
> 2 3,900 gph
> 3 5,400 gph
> 4 7,200 gph
> 4 1/2 10,000 gph"
>
> The 1941 and 1947 Cycs just show the first three
> sizes of BL (maximum 5400 gal/hr), with the SA
> starting at that level and going up.

My book was printed in 1927...the smaller sizes would be found on locomotives like J. Neils 6, the last of 33 Willamette geared locomotives built & the only one to be equipped with this device.
Ed Hines Lbr. in OR also had a 70-3 class Shay that came from Lima with one.
You can see by the later date, that sales for these had slumped enought that the smaller sizes must have been dropped.


Tom

NRE973 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
The first NKP 2-8-4's
> were built with the S (1929?).

NRE973, NKP got their first Class "S" Berkshire from ALCO in 1934. Are you perhaps thinking about C&O's T-1 "Texas" type, 40 of which were erected by Lima and delivered in 1930 with the S type FWH? LIMA also erected and delivered 25 Pennsy M1a's with the S type FWH that same year. Was 1930 the beginning of production for the model S FWH? Thanks in advance.

rcall31060

Some of the Erie Berks, built in the late '20's, had the BL-type heaters on the fireman's side. Can't recall if all the Erie 2-8-4's had 'em. Erie had Berks from all 3 major builders, and don't remember if all the locos had BL's. Wish I had been in Galion 55-or-so years ago............

rcall31060 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I'm interested ts1457 and I'm sure the rest of the
> guys are too. What's a good scanner going to cost
> and what would you buy? Thanks in advance for the
> info.
>
> rcall31060

I haven't checked scanners recently, but I figure one will cost me 10-20% of what I paid for my scanner back in 1996 and it will be a heck of a lot better to boot.

To get back to railroad content, I have a Worthington Type "S" General Instructions for Operation dated November 1929 (W-220-E1A, superseding W-220-E1). Another manual on Maintenance copyrighted 1928 does not mention the Type "S", so I would guess late 1928 or 1929 would be a good date for the first Type "S".

NYCSTL8 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Some of the Erie Berks, built in the late '20's,
> had the BL-type heaters on the fireman's side.
> Can't recall if all the Erie 2-8-4's had 'em.
> Erie had Berks from all 3 major builders, and
> don't remember if all the locos had BL's. Wish I
> had been in Galion 55-or-so years ago............


Jim, all the Erie Berks had BL FWH's.

Regards,

rcall31060

This is a great thread!!! I'm only just now getting back to it after seeing a bit of it the first or second day. I would love to see more of this technical stuff!!

ts1457, your mention of the introduction dates of the Type S heaters has to be, at the minimum, close. I have Worthington's W-220-E1, the issue preceding your E1A. It is dated March of 1929. Unless there was an earlier series utilizing letters in the alphabet prior to "E" I believe the W-220-E1 was the initial book on the Type S heaters.

Looking into this caused me to have a glance at something I've never previously noticed. I haven't taken the time to pull all my Worthington manuals (and, please, I don't mean to make it sound like I have this massive library, seriously), but so far I've figured out that it appears all the early B/BL books bore the "BK-16**" numbering series. The earliest one I've found so far is dated October 1925 and is already BK-1608-E. I'll be interested to see if I have any earlier editions. If we consider it logical that Worthington began the "BK" series with number 1600 the B/BL's could go back a couple of years at least. Interestingly, the "BK" series books do not make reference to "superceding" any earlier editions such as the S/SA books do.

As I say, my 1925 is issue number BK-1608-E. Then, I have a May 1927 edition numbered BK-1608-F and my December 1928 book is numbered BK-1608-G. Right now I don't know if I have any later editions specific to the B/BL's.

Remember that some years later they advanced the B seried to add designations "-2", in both B and BL's. I did some research on this for a project some years ago but can't now remember the differences. They were largely confined to the steam end if memory serves. At any rate, the bunch of books I pulled a few minutes ago includes a 1942 edition treating Types SA, S-2 (an advancement on the Type S) and SCA-2. However, inside on the first page, Worthington states that the reader may see other Bulletins for General Instruction for Operation and Maintenance. Included in this list are editions for Types B and B-2 plus BL and BL-2 (W220-E6B). Note by the edition number that it appears Worthington had dropped the "BK" series books by this time, including the B/BL types in what began as the Type S numbering system (the W220 series).

I have later editions of the SA/S-2/SCA-2 books. I'll be interested to see if they continue to refer to the B's.

Frankly, I'd be very surprised if Worthington discontinued parts availability on the B/BL series pumps until at least the middle 1950's and likely later than that. Between the SP and Q there remained quite a few engines with these heaters into 1958, and even later in the case of the Q.

I know, I know! Who gives a rats about these book editions? I fear I'm revealing myself here! HA!

John

This has progressed far, and now I must show ignorance by asking dumb questions. I have many photos of NY Central S class Niagaras, and several of 6000, 6008 and 6009 show no protrusion in front of the stack for what was the classic giveaway for a Worthington FW heater. Did they have Coffins? Was the "cover" removed for some reason? The hot water pumps just ahead and above the Baker gear hanger on the fireman's side look identical to the ones with obvious Worthington heaters. Also have a few of Hudsons with what I am guessing is a Coffin, though different from the ones we discussed below, with a BIG eight shaped protrusion above the smokebox. Man, NYC used them all as far as I can tell.