Steam & Excursion > Average time it takes to fire up a steam locomotive

About how long did it take? I assume bigger engines took longer? Any answers would be appreciated

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NS9743 Wrote:
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> About how long did it take? I assume bigger
> engines took longer? Any answers would be
> appreciated

Back in the old days, the shops/roundhouses could fill the boilers with hot water, attach house steam, and fire one up in a matter of hours. 

Now, without a shop full of boiler makers and spare parts, firing up VERY SLOWLY is what's really important. We take up to 24 hours to fire-up 4449, as an example.

NS9743 Wrote:
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> About how long did it take? I assume bigger
> engines took longer? Any answers would be
> appreciated
>

It depends....

How fast do you have to have it done?  And what resources you have available to do it.  You can push it, but it's hard on the boiler.  Boilers don't like uneven temperature changes.

Suppose you're sitting with a boiler filled with cold water to the bottom nut in the waterglass.  By cold, I mean somewhere in the 40-50 degree range generally available from groundwater sources.

Someone else will have to describe oil firing.  Real firemen burn coal.

Start by covering the grate with a thin bed of coal, say 4 inches thick.  In the middle of that build a small wood fire and start it with the help of some fuel oil or kerosene.  DON'T use gasolene or other flammable liquid that can flash back on you in that confined space!  Keep sprinkling coal on that fire and letting it spread to the rest of the coal on the grate.  Heat the boiler slowly.  The firebox will heat up long before the front end of the boiler, causing clicking, cracking, and popping sounds due to thermal expansion.  Keep those sounds to a minimum, and don't force it.  In about 2 to 2 1/2 hours you should finally see the needle on the steam gauge lift off the pin at zero.  Then control your fire and blower to not raise the pressure more than 2 psi per minute.  Slower is better.  Should get you up to working pressure about 5 or 6 hours or more after starting.

That said, there are other methods.  Starting with an empty boiler, you can remove the washout plugs at the bottom of the firebox and hook a high pressure steam source, such as another hot steam locomotive, with a rubber hose and pipe live steam into the boiler.  This will uniformly fill the boiler with saturated steam and warm the entire boiler uniformly, allowing the condensate to drain out the washout opening.  When water ceases, the boiler is hot enough to reinstall the plug, then fill the boiler with pressureized steam and turn on your injectors, which will quite nicely fill the boiler to the waterglass with 180 degree water.  Then you can build a fire and raise pressure quite quickly.  I've seen the C&TS use this method to have an engine ready in about 45 minutes.

On the North Shore Scenic RR we take the engine over to a nearby power plant where they charge the boiler similarly.

-John
 



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/13/15 14:51 by LarryDoyle.

On the other end of the steam engine food chain, we fire up 12" Ottawa 4-4-0's in about 2 hrs. We have to start with cold water, and use wood scraps soaked in diesel. We have an eletric blower stuck into the stack. In 30 minutes or so, if the fire is hot enough, we start putting in a little oil soaked coal. Around 50-60psi, we start the blower, and try both injectors around 80psi. We can move the engine above 90-100, pops lift at 165. And we do mix in maybe 10% pet coke if we have it, burns a little hotter. We start with about 1/3 glass of water, and it expands up to about half when hot & ready. Right now though, we have some pretty good coal from Vinita, OK, so don't need the coke as much, but it's dirty, and sometimes we have to stop and rod out the flues if they start getting hard to fire.

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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/13/15 15:37 by ddg.

I used to run a 15" gauge Thornton 4-4-0, and did exactly the same - except I wasn't given any coke.

You can force those smaller boilers more.  Ya gotta listen to the boiler - she'll tell you when she's not happy.  If you hear clicks, pops, or pounds - SLOW DOWN!

-John

ddg Wrote:
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> On the other end of the steam engine food chain,
> we fire up 12" Ottawa 4-4-0's in about 2 hrs. We
> have to start with cold water, and use wood scraps
> soaked in diesel. We have an eletric blower stuck
> into the stack. In 30 minutes or so, if the fire
> is hot enough, we start putting in a little oil
> soaked coal. Around 50-60psi, we start the blower,
> and try both injectors around 80psi. We can move
> the engine above 90-100, pops lift at 165. And we
> do mix in maybe 10% pet coke if we have it, burns
> a little hotter. We start with about 1/3 glass of
> water, and it expands up to about half when hot &
> ready. Right now though, we have some pretty good
> coal from Vinita, OK, so don't need the coke as
> much, but it's dirty, and sometimes we have to
> stop and rod out the flues if they start getting
> hard to fire.
>
> Posted from Android

We always allowed at least 8 hours from a cold start with 1522.   Originally, there was a company on the museum grounds that made roof trusses and would give us all the 2x4 ends we wanted and we fired up with them a couple times, but it played hell with the firebox floor.
We put a tee fitting on the oil line ahead of the burner valve and had an overhead tank with diesel in it and would light off with that and the help of a 200cfm air compressor would work with a low fire until the boiler was happy with it and then cranked it up a little.   6-8 hours later we were popping.  Never had any leaky flues and only replaced about 4 staybolts the whole time we operated.  It pays to baby that bottle.  Always had a good tight boiler, and could shut the fire down for long periods of time and hold good pressure.

When I did the Roaring Camp Engineer for a Day, RCBT #1, a 2 truck  Shay, was close to lifting the pops when I pulled up at 8;00 a.m.  The fireman,who was acting as hostler at the time, just lit off 2, a 2 truck Heisler.  The next crew came in to finish getting the second locomotive ready.

Around 12:30 or 1:00, RC&BT started running a second train.​  Guess what engine was on it?  It was #7, a 3 truck Shay, not the 2 that we left them with.  That means they dropped the fire in 2 then lit off the 7 and had it ready in about 3 hours. 

BTW, they have some kind of gas (natural or propane) to start up their locomotives.  Once any pressure shows on the gauge, they cut over to oil, but I don't know if it a specific pressure.

These are all narrow gauge engines, they are smaller and might be a bit more forgiving than the big mainline Northerns...

​

Jim Montague
IRVINE, CA
Train and Nature photo Art

3751_loony Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> When I did the Roaring Camp Engineer for a Day,
> RCBT #1, a 2 truck  Shay, was close to lifting
> the pops when I pulled up at 8;00 a.m.  The
> fireman,who was acting as hostler at the time,
> just lit off 2, a 2 truck Heisler.  The next crew
> came in to finish getting the second locomotive
> ready.

What you don't know is how hot those engines were when they started.  Perhaps they had spot fires in them to keep them overnight???

On a coal burner, you can put a bank in 'em when you go go home at night, and when you show up in the morning have, if you do it right, nearly 100 psi in the boiler, 1/3 glass of water, and enough coals still in the bank that you can be ready to run in about an hour or hour-and-half - just about the time it takes to do daily lubrication and inspection.

A lot depends upon who built the bank.

-John

 



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 10/13/15 16:51 by LarryDoyle.

My core experience is with oil buring locomotives.  The key is to light off with the smallest fire possible until the boiler is more or less evenly warm from top to bottom.  Once the boiler gets up to about 50psi during this process the fire can be bumped up.  The low and slow approach is easiest on boiler and extends their life.

Standard Gauge Steam:

The 60 ton praries would take about 3 hours from cold to out the door.  The logging mallet was about 5 hours.  The P8 pacific was about 7 hours.

Grand Scale Steam
On 15" gauge oil burning locomotives its about 90 minutes to 2 hours.

From famed NKP boilermaker, Joe Karal, ( High  Iron Co's Boilermaker and Doyle's friend and mentor)..

Joe related the procedure used in roundhouses of the era.

When engines arrived in the roundhouse, and the decision made to drain the boiler, a pipe with flexible joints was connected to the engine's blowdown valve.  This roundhouse blowdown piping was extra strong pipe and went into two "re-purposed" old loco boilers, ( tubes removed and ends capped----- the tank tops were vented) mounted vertically, outside the roundhouse.  
These blowdown tanks were insulated and held several boilers-full of hot water.l

After minor boiler repairs were completed, the boiler washed out, the plugged flues were all blown clear ( long lance-like pipes run down each flue --- if a flue was plugged, the boiler flue blower-guy would have to face that soot and air coming back at him, until he punched a hole through the 'plug' --- very hot and dirty work!

A thorough inspection was made of the grates, the ashpan, the front-end netting and baffles, the blower ring piping, the nozzle and petticoat pipe, etc.   The firebox's brick arch, typically, was renewed  At fire-up time, roundhouse live-steam piping was connected to the loco's blower connection as well as another steam line (under the cab) to the stoker steam supply pipe ---- the stoker's steam valve at the engine's steam turret
( Boiler top, in front of the cab's forward cab-wall) is closed during the fire-up process.

With 'house steam to run the stoker, the crew operated the coal auger and opened the stoker jets to blow the coal all over the grates.
Its dark in there, so they used lights to check the coal depth ----- 4 inches or so, is about right.

As this is going on, hot water ----from the blowdown tanks----- was fed back through the engine's blowdown valve.  
This still VERY hot water was brought into the bottom of the sight-glass and the 'house blowdown piping was disconnected.

Two long, pressurized, oil-fed burner pipes were inserted through the open fire doors, the pipes were arranged to have the flame paths cross over the coal bed, with the steam draught at the smokebox opened, the two burners were ignited and they started to blow her hot! ----- with plenty of fire.

Immediately the coal bed was ignited, the blaze spread, the steam pressure came right-up, and soon she was on her own
stoker's steam supply.

Such "hot water fireups"  could have her "road ready" in 30 minutes, or less.   
This was hot work, but the thermal stresses of uneven boiler expansion/contraction forces were minimized.
"Boiler washes" were routinely completed in a short time and the same engine sent out on the next westbound out of Conneaut!

Man!  That's livin'.....

Joe also said the flue-blower guy was never harassed by the roundhouse bosses ------ whenever he was taking a break...
The guy would be at the windowsill of those huge open windows ( at the outer end of engine inspection pits).
He was catching some fresh air before blowing flues of another Big BERK!

Wes C.

 



Edited 5 time(s). Last edit at 10/14/15 14:12 by wcamp1472.

Lurch Wrote:
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> Grand Scale Steam
> On 15" gauge oil burning locomotives its about 90
> minutes to 2 hours.

And for 7 1/2" gauge it's about 40 - 45 minutes with a moderate fire. Which is just enough time to oil around and get everything ready.

The smaller live steam boilers typically have a much higher factor of safety than full size (mostly due to wall thickness compared to boiler diameter) so they don't really care as much, but most of us still treat them gently. A friend performed form-4 calculations on my 10 1/2" dia boiler some years ago just for the hell of it, and figured it was good to about 900 PSI. I run it at 125 PSI.

-Mike

Mike Massee
Tehachapi, CA
Photography, Railroading and more..

Thanks all for your replies! Learned a lot, just wish I lived back when steam engines were the norm!

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