[PRCo] Re: Steam, Strasburg

[Fred Schneider]

The boiler wash is how you clean mud and other foreign matter out of  
the boiler every 30 days.   If it gets really bad, Herb, you can blow  
the boiler down as you go.   All locomotives have a blow down valve  
on the front of the firebox mud ring.   If you look at any  
locomotive, you will see wash out plugs in all four lower corners of  
the firebox along the mud ring.   As you read on, you will understand  
how it gets the term mud ring.   There are usually several more  
washout plugs in the bottom of the boiler itself.   Part of the  
monthly inspection was washing out the boiler and blowing all the  
accumulated cinders out of the flues and tubes.   You can only  
imagine what the guys looked like who were feeding that long  
pressurized pipe into each flue and tube in the boiler looked like at  
the end of a day ... it was bar none the dirtiest job in the house.    
Coal mining had to be cleaner.   The air pressure forced cinders  
right through your trousers and your underwear.    I paid my dues and  
that's why I would much rather be twirling controllers today than  
working on steam locomotives.

But you try to treat water used in locomotive and stationary boilers  
so that you don't get scale.   However, you would not want to have  
those chemicals in your tea water.   When I worked at Strasburg the  
treating chemicals left just a thin film of rust inside the boiler  
after four years.   I was told yesterday that they are now using  
oxygen inhibitors as well so that they don't even get rust any  
more.   At the end of four years now, all they get after they flush  
the chemical residue off the inside of the boiler is bare steel.

The Strasburg has the luxury of being able to treat water from a  
single source.  But that wasn't the case with main line railroads  
where they were using from multiple sources.  They got all sorts of  
scale and crap and corruption.   Their water sources were often  
nothing more than the local creek, sometimes treated and sometimes  
not.  There was a water tank on the Pennsy's Cornwall and Lebanon  
Branch that stood along US route 230 near Elizabethtown PA until  
about 1956 or 1957 where water was simply pumped out of the Conewago  
Creek ... mud and all.   The track pans just west of Lancaster got  
their water from the Little Conestoga Creek.  The pans at Christiana  
got water from the Octoraro Creek.   The standpipes in Lancaster  
actually had rather clean city water.   I think the standpipes at  
Columbia probably took water out of the Susquehanna River.  River  
water was OK except at flood stage when it had a lot of mud in it.

On May 30, 2007, at 3:40 AM, Herb Brannon wrote:

> Since a steam locomotive is, simply put, a giant tea tettle and  
> since I have to clean my tea kettle every so often because of lime/ 
> calcium deposits forming then it would seem a steam locomotive  
> would do the same. Then is this "boil wash" the way they clean the  
> 'deposits' of out the boiler?
> Fred Schneider <fwschneider at comcast.net> wrote:  Subject is steam  
> locomotives, Strasburg Rail Road and my past. If it
> doesn't interest you, delete without going any farther.
>
> This is for Derrick and Fred Bruhn and any others of you who are
> steam types.
>
> I went to Strasburg today to patronize the book store ... needed some
> of those wonderful map books of our northwestern states.
>
> I noticed that 31 was in service. My God, that was worth pulling
> out the Nikon. That little 0-6-0 seldom runs. And with an 8-car
> train yet. Why, because 86 and 475 are in the shops and 90 was down
> for the monthly boil wash.
>
> I was intrigued that both 31 and 90 now had Nathan power lubricators
> on the air pumps. They were not installed when I worked. When
> were they put on? Some young wipper snapper said. " might have been
> back in the 1970s or 1980s ... before I came here." That long? I
> was feeling like an old fart. I was still around there as a
> brakeman in the 1970s and they were not there then and he probably an
> infant then.
>
> And there was 90 sitting in front of the house with all the washout
> plugs out and water streaming out of the boiler. It still had the
> flags on it from service yesterday. I looked at the driver tires
> and thought, my God, they had to have replaced them at Strasburg.
> They're two inches thick. I knew they now had that capability
> because there had been a picture published in the Lancaster New Era
> of them doing that to 89 ... with the gas jets all around the tire
> heating it. And why wouldn't they have put new tires on 90? I did
> some mental calculations at 60 miles a day in the summer months since
> it went into service in 1967 ... that beast probably has had a
> quarter of a million miles put on it at Strasburg! Who would have
> ever dreamed it?
>
> Then I went down to the shop and there was an old man still
> working. Glen Lefevre is 69. He was there as a young man when I
> was there. He is tearing the Russell snow plow apart and residing
> it. He told me this is the second time he has done the south side
> of it since it came there in 1967 but only the first time he has had
> to do the north side. I remember when it came. It had been owned
> by the Wellsville, Addison and Galeton (pronounced Gall'tun)
> Railroad. It was in such bad shape that the weigh bill said to ship
> at the rear of the train, just ahead of the caboose. Some numbskull
> coupled it behind the engine on a 100 car freight. It was delivered
> in pieces in a gondola. The Penn Central paid dearly for that
> blunder. Frank Herr and Glen Lefever cut it apart and then Sam
> Zimmerman welded a steel frame for each side of it. The frame was
> bolted to the original wooden underframe. Huge steel I-beams
> replaced the original oak plow timbers. Then Frank and Glen bolted
> 2x4s into the steel for nailing strips. When they were finished it
> still looked like a 60-year-old Russel plow but it was built the same
> way. Right now is the second time you can see it torn apart.
>
> The language was all new. I was told that 475 was in the shop for
> the 1460 day overhaul. What the hell is that. Flues. I had to
> explain that back in my day flues were done every four years, or five
> if you could account for twelve months in the first four years when
> you didn't use the engine. Now that the tourist railroads are the
> only people using steam, it was converted to days. If you use a
> steam engine only on weekends ...firing it up on Saturday, running it
> on Sunday and then dropping the fire ... and you do this only for
> three months in the summer ... looks like you can go for 56 years
> before you have to reflue an engine. I wonder if there is a
> statutory maximum???? But if you run it full time, it's still works
> out to four years.
>
> Of the 52 vice presidents that recreated the Strasburg in 1958, I'm
> not certain how many are left. But of those who were active in
> management, only two are still living and both are not doing very
> well. Huber Leath and Bill Moedinger are still alive ... barely.
> Bill has Alzheimers. I was told that Huber is very weak.
>
> What is the future for the Strasburg? Much the same as the trolley
> museums. They topped out at 425,000 riders per year in the early
> 1960s. People were visiting to remember steam. Then they brought
> their children. Then the grandchildren. I understand that
> ridership today is under 200,000 plus what they get out of Thomas the
> Tank Engine weekends. Thomas is good for several more million
> dollars and maybe another 100,000 people plus the rentals on Thomas
> from other railroads during the year. They know that once Thomas
> goes out of syndication on television, they are in deep trouble. They
> also have a wonderful machine shop that does work for anyone from the
> East Broad Top to the Union Pacific. Sitting in the back of the
> shop today behind their own 475 is Rio Grande Southern 20, the former
> Florence and Cripple Creek engine from the Colorado Railroad
> Museum. The tender is resting outside on one Pullman 6-wheel
> truck! I suspect the whole engine and tender would comfortably fit
> inside the firebox for UP 844.
>
> fws3
>
>
>
>
> Rise Up -- Go Cavs
>   Herb Brannon
>
>
>