steamer_ctn, on 04 June 2013 - 01:08 PM, said:
Thanks for that.
How do you determine how much to open the blower and/or the damper?
Mainly in the end it comes from experience, remember in a real loco one is VERY much in touch with the machine and one gets to know when to use either.
As state in my previous post the pressure drop that produces the draft is quite high, the dampers are used to control the size of the air opening into the grate area and therefore the amount of air passing through the fire, you essentially set the dampers to stop the draft "overdriving" the fire, ie putting out more heat energy than the boiler can use at that particular time. The blower is used to keep the draft up when the loco is not using steam (ie when stopped) and therefore the fire has no draft and the loco may have to take upload directly, its not usually required if the loco is just parked as the heat in the boiler will give enough natural convection. Its sometime used when going into tunnels is on occasion the sudden partial blockage can throw some smoke and gasses out of the firebox door and into the cab.
Lighting up some loco's can be a real interesting time as the smoke path is fairly indirect and until the boiler gets some heat into it its not uncommon to get a bit of smoke in the cab. Not to say having to take the cart over to the wood pile 100 metres or more away and get all the wood required over to the loco and _UP_ into the cab.
I do not usually drive steamers in a train sim as its so far removed from the real machine, one getting effectively none of the feedback in the sim one gets when ones in the cab of a real loco on the move.
Lindsay