Plugged Nettings

Kelly's got it.  Thanks, besides he has a LOT more experience with coal fired steam locomotives than I do. I never experienced any of that on the BC&G, nor any of the other  coal burners I was on. 

Well Hot!, I figured you would have had some of that, hand firing the old engines of the BC&G. This probably wasn't as much of a problem, as was with cinder control, and keeping the fire box like "Baby Bear's Porage". There is quite a bit to firing and running a steam locomotive, than ringing the bell/blowing the whistle/waving out the windows to the general public. Thank you Kelly, it's hard to believe, that those paper tickets could pass that quick thru that fire box, running hard, and plugging the netting, w/o burning up. Shows what kind of draft that goes thru those fire boxes, and not much residense time there at all.

With that said, I remember a posting of a steam engine billowing flaming embers out the stack, I think it was in China somewhere. That could have been improper mixture on the auto stoker, but probably a mixture of several different things. I remember my step dad talking about how identical locomotives, would ride different, fire different, when running the same road. He said that some of them it was like reinventing the "proverbial wheel", as what you did last time, wasn't working this time!..........................Brandy

Part of my daily warmup routine with the locomotives I work on is to open up the front end, sweep off the screens or beat on them as Kelly noted depending on how bad they look, and scoop out the cinders that collect in the smokebox (our locomotives aren't worked very hard).

We also occasionally operate one of our locomotives in stationary boiler service to supply steam to our steam crane when it is operated.  In that case I would go open the smokebox when they'd break from running the crane and sweep the screens off to clear any blockages.

What's the process for opening a smoke box door?  Looks like you'd have to loosen up a couple dozen nuts to allow it to open.

That pretty well covers it.

There was an article in a magazine last winter - perhaps Classic Trains? - that relayed the story of a fireman on a local Erie freight locomotive that had to stop at Silvercreek siding near Wadsworth, OH after taking far too long to make the trek from Kent on account of badly plugged screens.  The engineer - an old head - convinced the fireman to take a bucket of ballast up and dump it in the stack.  The story indicated that this worked as advertised and the train was able to continue at a much improved pace.

I thought I'd post a not so great quality photo of what the netting in question looks like.

This was taken while I was doing my morning prep work to get our 1873 Mason 0-6-4T ready for the day.

What was the purpose of the netting?  I thought that was one area you wanted to have free flow of air and used steam.

To prevent the escape of embers. Older engines had their spark-arresting devices in the stack--hence funnel and balloon stacks.