Steam & Excursion > E.K. Muller: SP 4335 with whitened boiler?

E.K. Muller caught SP Mt-3 class 4-8-2 #4335 a couple of times in late 1955 with its boiler jacket fairly uniformly coated with some light-colored "stuff."  What might this stuff be, and how did it end up so uniformly distributed?  Photos from the Western Railway Museum Archives.

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Just a guess on my part. Perhaps it had recently rained on the locomotive and the white stuff is wind-driven dust, dirt, or powder from the surrounding agricultural land that stuck to the boiler until it could be washed.

Just to be clear, this is a genuine question on my part.  I don't know what the stuff is or how it got there.  I've seen engines with a coating of scale on the portion of the boiler jacket in the immediate vicinity of the blowdown separator's steam discharge, but this looks more uniform.

Could it have been behind a helper that had a lot of scale being blown out and gotten that way?  The dates aren't too far apart.  It appears to be on the front of the locomotive as well.  You've seen those photos of diesles covered in oil spewed from a leading locomotive.

How about bad water chemistry.

Evan_Werkema Wrote:
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> E.K. Muller caught SP Mt-3 class 4-8-2 #4335 a
> couple of times in late 1955 with its boiler
> jacket fairly uniformly coated with some
> light-colored "stuff."  What might this stuff be,
> and how did it end up so uniformly distributed? 
> Photos from the Western Railway Museum Archives.

Almost to thr end of steam on the SP, so probably a combination of
oxidized paint, dust and residue from the stack!!

Mike

I like it.  I ended up with both builder's plates from this engine (don't ask) and I have a painting of the same engine.  Always a favorite because of the plates I guess.

Could it be  ' Cement / lime stone' dust ???   are there any cement works in the territory this loco was operating in.   If the loco was wet and it passed through a cloud of cement dust you would get this sort of dust pattern on a loco.   I ran a 'lime stone' train for over two years and the locos [ diesels ] got dust on them like this.

 Malcolm
New Zealand.

Possibly a cleaning solvent sprayed on the jacket left it like that.

Bad Dullcoat. LOL!

Brian Ehni

Espee was testing on how to weather a locomotive.

TonyJ Wrote:
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> Espee was testing on how to weather a locomotive.

I agree, notice how they haven't finished yet. They have only treated one of the drivers. Guess they plan on finishing up the weathering job this weekend on the rest of the drivers.

I vote for the bad water chemistry idea.
Roger Beckett

I ended up with one of the class lights from this locomotive. Got it from masterphots a few years ago.

I think it is a water treatment issue. It appears this is a leak at the check valve and it is spraying back and spreading when moving at speed.

Posted from iPhone

My vote also is for some sort of cleaning solvent. Looks like it  was left to dry and didn't get hosed off. Looks like the heat from the boiler cooked it right into the finish.

Nudge

You don't suppose that this locomotive had recently operated over the Lucin Cut-Off, across the Great Salt Lake, during a storm, and has been severely "salted"? Also, maybe down near the Salton Sea area?

It looked about normal in June 1949 at Colton  but was just another helper on Beaumont Hill.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/28/15 11:48 by SP2778.

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Over on the Nostalgia board, check out the thread; "SLO, 1953"......where you'll see AC 4280 looking about the same as the Mt shown here.  One possibility.....by this date in the steam era, railroads were dialing back on maintainence of steam power, and, across the land, steam engines started showing up filthy beyond belief.  We could simply be observing the accumulation of dust/dirt over the greasy grime which has built up over time.  AA

Stanford White
Carmel Valley, CA

McCloud25 Wrote:
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> I ended up with one of the class lights from this
> locomotive. Got it from masterphots a few years
> ago.
>
> I think it is a water treatment issue. It
> appears this is a leak at the check valve and it
> is spraying back and spreading when moving at
> speed.
>
> Posted from iPhone

'Forgot I had one of those too.