Hoe do you fire up a steam loco?

We do the following from a cold boiler:

Full glass of water.
Insert a Kerosene "turbo" heater (150K BTU) in the fire door for at least 12 hours, preferably 20 hours.
The side sheets should be hot to the touch before building the fire.
Get about 2 gallons of Kerosene soaked rags.
Remove heater and put rags on grates as near to center as possible.
Light rags and begin to add wood.
Burn a progressive fire getting larger with each firing until the grates are covered (usually about 4 hours)
Burn wood fire for 2 more hours, at least 6 hours total.
Start adding coal slowly until the bank is established at about 10-12 hours since starting fire.
Most of our boilers will have 100-150PSI at this point.

We hostle them at 150-175PSI.

The plan for the Black River and Western No. 60 that is expected to return to service in the Spring of 2010, after all danger of water freezing in the unheated engine house during the cold season, is for the process to be started mid-day or so Friday for service commencing with the first train out of Ringoes, NJ at 10:45 a.m. Saturday. Likewise, cool-down will take place as slowly as practicable after the last train on Sunday, probably lasting until some time Monday.

It's my understanding that the NYS&W No. 142 on the BR&W's sister railroad follows a similar protocol. As others have mentioned in posts, this is to avoid undue thermal stress to maximize the period before major repairs are needed, which took our volunteers some 8 years in the case of the 60.

Well,
here is another one... done today on many narrow gauge museal railways, and also able to do on normal gauge locomotives with a little technical background equipment.
This is called the fire-less fueling process.
It was developed usually for Oil-fired steam locomotives, but it was quickly expanded for coal fired ones,too.

At the bottom flush valve of the boiler a adapter socket is mounted. Also at the feed valves before the top clacks at the fire extinguish socket a adaptor is mounted.
So first the bottom valve is connected and than the top clack connection is screwed on.
Now the boiler is flushed by opening the bottom valve with the manual open valve. Any slush and scale deposits will be flushed out and pressed through the connected steam, temperature and pressure tight hose into the flush back container, till the container has reached boiler pressure, or if cold start the container is ful of boiler water.
Now the boiler is ready for external power.
A electric heating unit or external steam supply will now take the water from the container, heat it up by a heat exchanger and push it by a small piston pump back into the boiler through the top clack boiler inlets.
You now have a external heat up, which can be done electrical controller without any oberservation to about 60 up to 75 psi.
This pressure is enough to start any fuel or oilburner from the boiler itself, as the external controls also fill up the boiler to the maximum level.
And the circulator pump will heat up the water from cold slowly but continous, so the boiler will not have any stress.

In the morning you can build u a small wood fire and switch easily to coal, because the natural drought is present and of course you can open the extra exhaustor valve to increase the drought.
After having a good fire, you can switch of the external power, close the bottom valve and disconnect the hoses... Your ready to increase pressure and go out for duty.

If you will hold up the the heat over night, still connect the hoses as before.
Now the external unit will wait, till the pressure settles a little in the buffer container, will take the water, heat it up and push it back into the boiler at the top valve. So the operating pressure will sink, because the unit will fill up the boiler to maximum level, wich will slowly bring the pressure down, and after it will act only a heat conserving circulation pump, holding the boiler at 60 up to 75 psi by heating up the water if neccessarily.....

That was done at the end of the age of steam in Germany in some locomotive sheds, and they established with a stationary boiler a real heat conservation line, to which the loces were connected.
For the stationary boiler, the locos acted as 'hot wells', which is still today found in power plants, to buffer the quick increasing or decresing power demands, which the firing process could not follow that fast...

When a mainline engine came to the engine house at days end, wasen't the fire dumped? I thought the grates had to be cleaned and ashpan washed on a daily basis. If this is the case, how was the fire restarted? How long were the locos able to hold pressure? Was there enough pressure remaining to use the blower after servicing? I assume that the firebox had to be refilled manually. How much time is required to go from the pit to the ready track? How frequently did passenger express locos recieve rod bearing lubrication, more than once a day? I know that I've asked a lot of questions. It's not easy to find this kind of information. I'd appreciate any replies. thanks, Scot

The fire didn't have to be dumped. The grates were designed to be shaken under a working fire (for those of us old enough to remember home heating coal furnaces, the same applied). This was done periodically while the locomotive was in service. The ashes fell into the ashpan, under the grates. The ashpan could be dumped at the ashpit track and hosed out, again, under a working fire.

This should answer all of your questions except for the lubrication one- and the answer to that one would apply to all locomotives, not just 'passenger express locos'.

To build on what Marty says, current practice with South African preserved steam would be for the loco to remain in steam at least for a whole weekend, sometimes several days, but in the old days it might have been be two or three weeks.

The fire is cleaned regularly. The grates can be shaken to remove excess ash at any time, but after a certain period we would clean the whole fire. Fur us, running relatively short trips, with stages no longer than say 50 to 70 km, we tend to clean fire before a trip (to remove whatever has built up during the overnight firelighting) and at the end of each stage.

We would make sure that the boiler is full and we have plenty of steam pressure, open the blower, put on the injector and ashpan cooler, then shake the fire. After that one of the drop gates is opened and dead material is pushed out. Different firemen do it in a different order - front, back, sides of the firebox. The pricker is run through the fire to find chunks of clinker and push them out through the drop gate. Someone goes down on the ground with an ashpan pricker to keep the ashpan itself clear by poking it from the sides. If you're cleaning fire on plain track (on metal or concrete sleepers only, not wooden ones) rather than on an ashpit you usually have to move the loco a few metres a couple of times as the ash builds up on the ground under the hopper and blocks it.

Before cleaning the fire you put a bit of fresh coal on to make sure you still have a fire after cleaning. After cleaning you build up the fire again. If the driver helps, and especially if he's an old experienced driver, this can be done in just a few minutes, and some of the old timetables allowed only ten or twelve minutes for a loco to clean fire and take water.

Most of us have, at some stage, thrown out the whole fire by mistake and been left with an empty firebox, much to the disgust of the driver (and Afrikaans drivers have some choice ways of expressing their displeasure!) and the mirth of our peers. That's why it's important to make sure the boiler is full and pressure is high before cleaning the fire. Then you can collect odd bits of scrap wood to restart the fire, which can be done fairly quickly using the blower. Old firemen tell me they used to tear pieces of tarpaulin off the freight wagons and use that for restarting the fire.

As for lubricating the bearings, we tend to do it very regularly, at least once during and once after each trip. Even at signal stops you might turn round and see that your driver is no longer on the footplate and, looking out, you see him wandering around with the hard grease gun and feeling the bearings for any that are too warm. I've seen a preserved steam depot in the USA where the hard grease gun is worked by compressed air. In South Africa we only have hand-operated grease guns so it's very difficult to grease the loco while it is cold, hence we wait until the bearings have warmed up a little before applying grease.

Hello Scot,
here are some answers from the other side of the great sea, and let's see some differences:

pennsyscot wrote:When a mainline engine came to the engine house at days end, wasen't the fire dumped?

Well, Scot, this is a question, what is next for the engine. If there was boiler maintenance needed, like a wash-out or maybe a tube had to be fixed, the fire was dumped.
But for normal service, the fire wasn't dumped, it was cleaned.

I thought the grates had to be cleaned and ashpan washed on a daily basis.

There you got the answer to your question. Dumping means to abandon or get rid of the fire. This is done only for maintenance duties or in case of emergency. But for common task, the fire was cleaned, as the ashpan/ashbox was cleaned. The engine rolls at the end of the day or at the end of service to the ash pit.
In Germany we had no shake grates, so all work had to be done manually.
First you open clean the area and open the grate pit to the ashbox below.
Now you use several pokers to loosen hard clinkers of slag, some slag deposits are loose, so get crushed and maybe the get their own way through the grate bar chasms into the ash box. All larger lumps were pulled with pokers to the grate pit and dumped into the ash box. The grate bars were carefully scrated free from deposits with the pokers and the remaining fire was pulled and pushed to the firebox walls. Now the grate pit was closed and the ashpit pipes were opened to extinct the ashbox deposits. Now the ashbox bottom doors were opened and the ash was dumped into a ashpit...
Some houses had water filled ashpits, so here the ashbox doors were opened first, before fire cleaning, in most other cases below the ashbox bottom doors a small tippers was placed, were the ash had to be dumped in.
Now the fireman had to be go below into the ashpit and use again some pokers to clean the ashbox, on ashpits filled with water the firemen used the ashbox tubes to float all ashes from the ashbox into the ashpit.
After closing the bottom doors of the ash pit, the fire was given some fresh fuel, but only to ensure the hold pressure, but not to build up more. Also the boiler was feed up to maximum water levels.
The engine no was moving into the shed, were the chimney was placed under the smoke exhaust. Now all dampers and air flaps were closed, the handbrake was tightened... end of service was close.

- Don't forget: In Germany no self-cleaning smoke boxes exist, so here the ashes and fines had also to be removed manually before or after grate cleaning.

If this is the case, how was the fire restarted?

Well, if once, by a failure of the night watch or sheds fireman the fire of a loco has gone out, or the fire was accidently dumped, or had to be dumped, because of bad coal.... the fire had to be restarted with papir, matched and wood, like any common oven fired with coal had to.
If you were lucky, and a loco in the track beneth at the shed was in Service, you could take some shovels of coal from there and relight the fire.
But if not, well, start with the wood fire and change to coal.

How long were the locos able to hold pressure?

Depending on insulation of the boiler and the temperatures, as well as with how much pressure the loco was left and which remaining fire was set, there were about 4 up to 12 hours. After this time, you can't do any self-restart attempts, and you have to consider it as a 'cold start'.
Modern boilers are able to have more than 18 hours, till their pressure is to low for self-restart actions.

Was there enough pressure remaining to use the blower after servicing?

Yes of course!
Because fire cleaning wasn't possible without blower!

I assume that the firebox had to be refilled manually. How much time is required to go from the pit to the ready track?

Well, if the engine was only several hours out of service, like over night, the sheds fireman kept a special fire alive, which holds the pressure up to a certain level, enough for the boiler feed pumps and maybe the air pumps to be alive.
So only about 1 hour was need with such an engine to return to service, or less, if you got a good sheds fireman, which have the schedule tables in their head and do the preparations well.

How frequently did passenger express locos recieve rod bearing lubrication, more than once a day?

In Germany we had seldom grease lubricated bearings. Commonly oil lubricated bearings were used, so each longer break in service was used, to replenish the oil stocks in the oil tidies at the rod joint points.
Usually you do the job more often, because to run low on lubrication might end the travel much earlier and that's no good for the staff.

pennsyscot wrote:When a mainline engine came to the engine house at days end, wasen't the fire dumped? I thought the grates had to be cleaned and ashpan washed on a daily basis. If this is the case, how was the fire restarted? How long were the locos able to hold pressure? Was there enough pressure remaining to use the blower after servicing? I assume that the firebox had to be refilled manually. How much time is required to go from the pit to the ready track? How frequently did passenger express locos recieve rod bearing lubrication, more than once a day? I know that I've asked a lot of questions. It's not easy to find this kind of information. I'd appreciate any replies. thanks, Scot

In many cases, the fire was dropped and the boiler hooked to house (powerplant) steam to keep it hot and pressurized.

As far as firing up, in museum service (narrow gauge) we'd start the fire with oily rags and a little kerosene along with newspaper and small wood. We'd hook the blower up to shop air pressure to get the fire to breathe. We'd add bigger and bigger pieces of firewood as we went along. On our Shay, with a screen on the spark arrester stack, we'd open the screen to help with draft. We'd have either the whistle or the top gauge cock open to allow air to escape from the boiler as it heated. Once condensate was coming out, we'd close the vent, as the gauge needle was coming off the pin. Then we'd add coal in small amounts until the fire was all-coal. With the smaller narrow gauge boilers, we'd have about 20-25 lbs on the clock in about 4 hours. Once we got to around 50 psi, we'd blow the boiler down. Over 50, the steam brakes would work, so we could move the loco down to get coal, water, or to clean the ash pan.

During this time, we could oil and lube the locomotive as we kept after the fire.