Steam & Excursion > 844 question

Steam experts: I'm looking at some of the footage shot of the 844 Centennial trip. I notice that steam blasts out from just in front of the cab at semi-regular intervals, like a geyser. I don't recall ever seeing this before. It's obviously different from the dynamo exhaust, and it seems too wimpy and regular to be the pop valves (and I can't believe anyone on the crew would fire that poorly to cause the pops to lift regularly.) Can anyone help me out on this?

Thanks -

That is the vertical steam exhaust from the Wilson blow down separator. When either the Engineer or Fireman activate their "remote control" lever of their respective side mud-ring blow-down, the saturated steam blows out the top, right forward of the cab/turret, while the sludge/water exit via a chute right below the Engineer's cab (thus the Engineer can actually see how bad the sludge is, and continue blowing down as necessary). Makes lots of noise too!

Thank you! I thought it might be something like that. I noted that the boiler looked like it was covered with chalk beneath this appliance, so I suspected that the water was unusually bad. I don't remember seeing this blowoff behavior - or the chalky boiler - on previous outings. Thanks again!

Use of the blow-downs (sludge remover in UP terms), has always been dependent on the quality of the water from local fire hydrants. The southwest has pretty bad water, and since a steam locomotive has no kidney like the human body does, blowing down is a way of life.

I've heard of foam meters that trigger an alarm, but I'm guessing this is different. Do you just blow down when you have a moment when you have suspect water, or every 10 minutes, or...? I guess having spent all that time retubing a few years ago one wouldn't want any more crud in the boiler than absolutely necessary, especially a long way from home.

Frequency of using the sludge remover, i.e. blowing down, is directly dependent of the condition of the sludge exiting the discharge chute on the Engineer's side. The worse the crap exiting the discharge chute, the more often she needs to be blown down!

Makes perfect sense. Thanks so much for this very useful info!

Nice that they out a blow down on the firemans side of the 3985 last time they worked it over.

Bob Krieger
Cheyenne, WY