Northern Central York Steam Into History Photo Charter

Very nice photos and a great way to describe the day. I was really surprised by the weather. Even when it did rain, it wasn't that hard of a rain.

Michael, I didn't know you were coming out for this.  You should have come over to introduce yourself.  I was the guy with the big video camera, who was making a land-speed record to relocate in mid-afternoon.

Kevin

Very nice! They sure are over-firing that poor little American. Talk about sooting up the tubes.

If I would have known their was another forum member there, I would have. Usually I wear a hat with my OGR Forum Member pin, to try to meet other members, but I left it at home. I was the young guy with the point and shoot camera on the tripod to record video (and a better camera shooting photos).

haha.  Yes, it was popping off on a regular basis.  It was being overfired on request for the photographers.  It usually runs very clean.

Kevin

well, if you end up on any of the steam charter scene, especially on the east coast, look for me.  I tend to get to most of them, and most of the regular "charter scene" know me by name.

That was one long 2 days.  Drive to PA from NC, sleep, do charter, and drive back to NC that night.  Got home about 1:15 on Sunday AM.  Was a much better plan when it was supposed to be 2 days back-to-back in February and didn't involve 2 trips to Pennsylvania!

Kevin

Yes, from all the various photos I have see so far, she does burn pretty clean, but then that should be expected since she is burning #2 diesel. On the other hand, it never ceases to amaze my why those various charter trips insist on such huge quantities of thick black smoke. Maybe I'm wrong, but I tended to think those high end charters were trying to duplicate "steam back in the day" types of scenes for the photographers. I'll certainly agree that "visible exhaust smoke" is desirable to PROVE that the locomotive is actually working, but that black whipped cream, certainly isn't characteristic of the "good old days", unless they are sanding out the flues/tubes on an oil burner (or maybe an SP cab forward ascending Donner Pass).  

They told us that she is burning recycled motor oil. Would that make a difference in the smoke?

I'm sure I'll do another one. Both of these trips were within 3 hours of my house, so I just drove out for the day, but I have to agree that it would have been nicer to do this all in one weekend.

No, not really. We have been using recycled waste oil as fuel for SP 4449 for more than 15 years, and it can burn cleaner than #2 diesel fuel, and cause far less issues with the firebox, i.e. less "hot & cool spots" within the firebox.

That's a tricky question, and I don't think there are any solid answers here.  Having done enough of these charters to have some idea of the logistics behind them, and also having many of these conversations with the "regulars" on the steam charter scene, here is the general consensus.

There is a fine line between "enough smoke so that the engine appears to be moving in still photos" and "burning of Rome".  Too often, it edges towards the latter.  To an extent, it may simply be a learning curve with the railroad and crews having never done a charter before, so when you call for smoke, you either get a clear stack by the time the engine reaches the photo line, or the black blob.  You are asking the crews to do something that they don't have a lot of experience in, and getting the light-to-medium haze over the course of a 1500ft photo runby is an acquired skill.  Add in a light load, minimal drafting since you aren't working the engine hard enough, and level or even downhill trackage, you end up settling for one extreme or the other.  I think at this point, people tend to prefer the burning of Rome over nothing at all, even though the preference is somewhere in between.

Taking this in a slightly different direction, I'm not entirely sure what the "average" smoke output would have been back in the day.  The minimal experience that I have seen seems to suggest that wood burners were generally pretty clean, although I believe the type of wood had a lot to do with it.  I remember reading turpentine was notorious for black clouds.  Just because of the wood-burning era basically being over by the time railfan photography started, there's just not a lot of true operating images to go on.

Honestly, another fact clouding the mess is that I believe a lot of the photo charter organizers (and historians also to an extent) tend to use the Lucius Beebe/John Krause pictures as "guidance" for a typical steam-era scene without realizing that a lot of the smoke output then was done intentionally for photographs.  These days, it's kinda the blind leading the blind and the "burning of Rome" photograph wins out, even though it isn't historically accurate, but it's what people think is historically accurate.

That is one benefit of running in the fall/winter as you get the steam in the air without having to overfire the thing to death.

Kevin

Kevin,

You bring up some very logical points about crew inexperience. On the other hand, I have seen photos of charter events, where the operating crew has been doing photo charters for many, many years, and the massive amours of thick black smoke are also present. Obviously the folks running and paying for those charters actually REQUEST/DEMAND that much smoke.  

What can I say?

Well, a lot of the major photographers (aka paying customers) that I have talked to tend to prefer a lesser amount.  Now, charter organizers might be a different answer altogether--and that may be part of the problem also.

There are certainly a fair share of charters where the smoke does tend to stay on the heavy side, even when it's a place that is used to doing photo charters.  On the other hand, the Strasburg photo charter that I was on back in February had the engine popping off every couple of minutes because of the overfiring and they still couldn't make black smoke.  Sometimes the coal works against you, even on a day when everything around was white--white smoke, white sky, white snow, etc.

Kevin