Steam & Excursion > This Is Certainly Not The Kind Of Message Any Engine Crew Wanted!

Railroads have always been conscious of costs and how they can keep them down.  The single biggest cost has usually been that of fuel both in the days of steam and in the modern diesel era.

In 1927 a superintend ant of the Southern Pacific railroad did a little auditing of fuel consumption records for crews in his territory and this is what he found.  Singled out for having used far more gallons of fuel oil than other crews on similar engines were the crew members of SP 2-6-0 #1781.  The fine photo of #1781 was taken by Bob Hanft at Exeter, California 21 years later in February 1948.

Maybe there was a good explanation they had and would be giving back to the superintendent.  I wonder what they said in response.

Martin



Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 08/29/15 04:40 by LoggerHogger.

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     Seems that with out the additional information of what other crews were using, it would be difficult for the crew to make a decent decision. Unless they were just blatantly wasting the oil.

Your mileage may vary.   

Lack of details notwithstanding, I suspect that the crew addressed fully understood the message.

Gordon

Might be the same guy who ordered engineers to not use the steam whistle and blow the air horn instead to reduce the use of steam and improve mileage......Arlen

I know an engineer that regularly uses more than 50% more fuel than other engineers on the same run with similar train.  It's just bad handling of the engine.

-John

LarryDoyle Wrote:
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> I know an engineer that regularly uses more than
> 50% more fuel than other engineers on the same run
> with similar train.  It's just bad handling of
> the engine.
>
> -John

Exactly. Not much that the Fireman can do if the Engineer never hooks her up.

Amen, Jack.

Martin

"It wasnt full when I got it"
RB

One of our three engineers had a penchant for running the fireman out of steam, the tender out of water and caused the whole countryside to be smoked up.  Wonder why?

Along the same line of "Letters" was one from an RFE in the SJ Valley to Engineers in his district. This was after Krebs was at his beach house in Aptos one weekend  and saw the Santa Cruz Local heading through town with 2 engines and 1 car. 

Well he got on the horn right then to the City and demanded that this waist of fuel be stopped right now.  Well the RFE in the Vally put out a letter that stated, "As of this date, All locals and yard jobs  will have no more or less, than 1 unit."


Ah!  FUMU

Nudge

I recall an article in Trains years ago about an SP engineer who managed to win a fuel economy award by turning the tank heater on full blast the last 1/2 hour of the trip.  They managed to expand the oil a bit and add a few hundred gallons of water to the bottom of the oil tank.

I pity the poor guys who got the engine on it's next trip..

Divisions would often compete with each other for the annual fuel conservation award. I made a comment earlier about not wanting to have a headlight on during the day in the 40s  to save on steam but was quickly rebuffed.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 08/29/15 19:14 by wabash2800.

Earlk Wrote:
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> I recall an article in Trains years ago about an
> SP engineer who managed to win a fuel economy
> award by turning the tank heater on full blast the
> last 1/2 hour of the trip.  They managed to
> expand the oil a bit and add a few hundred gallons
> of water to the bottom of the oil tank.
>
> I pity the poor guys who got the engine on it's
> next trip..

From discussions with a former SP engineer whose dad had a 1906 date, this was quite the common practice to win one of those shiny SP Locomotive Engineer badges in the 20's.  

It's in Ted Benson's Sept / Oct 1983 TRAINS article about "On-Time Tyner."

© 1983 Kalmbach.  Fair use brief excerpt for review and comment.

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I remember reading an article about the Locomotive Valve Pilot in a Trains 'Steam Glory' special issue where they said that some older engineers didn't like to use the reverse lever to adjust cutoff.  There was some mention of Johnson bars on very old power "kicking back", and potentially injuring the engineer. Rather, they relied on the throttle to maintain the desired speed and ran with a long cut off.  This resulted in wasting steam for two reasons:  1) the steam pressure was reduced before it entered the steam chest (wasting energy), and 2) because of the long cutoff, much more steam was consumed filling the cylinder for most of the stroke, rather than allowing the steam to expand once the valve cut off the flow.  Hooking up the reverse lever was a much more efficient way to run.  Maybe this crew ran this elderly 2-6-0 the "old school" way, wasting a lot of steam (and oil) in the process.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/02/15 07:30 by sgriggs.