[revich]

Excellent! Thanks for the reminder of what a nice route the Allegheny Rails is for screen shots. As for those the trainset, I'm downloading those files right now! :unknw:

Rich

[B & O GUY]

Apparently not all N&W engineman adhered to that dictum of gray smoke is waste. I don't think I've
ever seen coal burn and make white smoke. Not unless your using a fume scrubber or some other
device. And not many railroads in the steam era had those. If you want to go, you gotta make heat
and plenty of it and the way to do that is burn something. Most fossil and organic fuels make other
than white smoke. I think that when the engineer cranked the throttle and the fireman cranked the
stoker before some grade in Virginia or West Virginia, not much thought was taken as to what color
the smoke was. And then there was the other consideration. N&W was smack dab in the middle of
coal country. Do you think they were worried about short fuel supplies? Here's some pictures of
engines making other than white smoke. White smoke is really escaping steam.

Allen

[dantheman]

those are 2-8-8-4s (or 2-8-8-2s) to

[B & O GUY]

So what your saying is that the N&W's equipment was in 100 % first rate condition all the time. They didn't have dirty flues or steam
leaks or any of the other maladies that steam locomotives had in their lifetime. I know for a fact that when you run boilers with all
kinds of different water conditions and different mineral conditions that boilers tend to build up mineral deposits on flues and the internal
shell. Those deposits build over time and make a boiler harder to fire requiring more heavy firing. And then there's the top rate coal
question. Do you think that they always got coal at the service area? No. They made a pass under the same coal tipple that was filling
the coal cars they were pulling. Why make a special trip somewhere else for a fill up.

Talking to an engineer of an excursion train doesn't mean a thing to me. He's running a piece of equipment that see's little use and
is kept in top condition with regular maintainence and kid glove care. That's not the real world. And besides. In the 30's, 40's, and 50's
nobody worried about green house gasses and worm holes in the ozone.

I've lived in the Salamanca, NY area all my life. I remember steam locomotives very well. The old BR&P main ran behind my house about
300 feet away. We had a light gray roof turned black and soot abounded on everything outside. My mother had to dry clothes in the garage
as they still didn't have dryers then. Oily water rained on everything outside and my fathers white clapboard sided house was always streaked
and dirty. Then came the clean diesels and everything was better. No more sulphur smelling air and dingy laundry and outside things.

Allen

[B & O GUY]

And another thing. I didn't say black smoke. Black smoke is a low light condition of the underside of a heavy gray column. Black smoke came
more from oil fired locomotives especially just before a heavy grade when the fireman would sand the flues so they would have maximum
heat absorbtion. The sanding operation removed soot from the flues. It was performed with a shovel full of sand held in front of the firebox
door and the air rushing through the door would pull the sand from the shovel and through the flues, cleaning them.

Allen

[streamline]

Hello,
here you can look at some photos of some engine crews cleaning the boiler tubes in that manner: http://www.bundesbahnzeit.de/Galerien/Mit%...and/galerie.htm
The oil fired class 012 Pacifics belonged to the shed of Hamburg-Altona (not Altoona on the PRR :huh: ), and a favorite place for this action was Hindenburg dam on the way to the island of Sylt in the North Sea.

Keep on steamin'!
Dietmar

[B & O GUY]

Hey Dietmar

Long time no hear from. Those are some great pictures. I wish I could read German so I would know what the information was on each
locomotives. Yes! That's what I was talking about. I don't know what the air velocity was through the doors but it was enough to suck the
sand right off the shovel, through the flues and up the stack. The railroads managment didn't approve of such actions as it was very hard
on the flues and led to their premature failure. I used to punch flues on two industrial boilers every Saturday morning in my younger days.
A nasty job. Took all the rest of the day getting the grime out of your hide. The brush was pushed through to the back sheet and then
pulled back on which the blades would open and pull the soot and sulphur back towards you. On exit the sulphur would drop straight to
the floor, but the soot would swirl around on the air currents and cover your face and everything else in the area. To bad Mike Rowe
wasn't around then cause that was a real "Dirty Jobs".

PS: I pulled all the other duty on those boilers. All the dirty parts anyway.

Allen