From: Glenn Shaw (mpmutt@mtaofnj.us)
Date: Wed Dec 01 2004 - 21:50:48 PST
Hi
In my railroad experience I would have to say that the coal story is
probably an old wives tale. All American built steam locos made in the
1900's were required to be built with automatic overpressure bleedoff valves
as well as backup emergency safties. The overpressure valve is the one you
hear cycling when a train is sitting in a station with the fired loco
idling. It does not matter how much or what type of coal you stuff into her
the pressure can not exeed safe levels. The problem sometimes came from
another source however and did lead to some boiler explosions. That was
crews who were trying to get more power than designed from the loco wiring
down the relief valves. This will give you quite a bit more power until you
blow up if it isnt your day. They used to refer to it as WEP (War emergency
power).
Glenn
-----Original Message-----
From: Jim Webster [mailto:james.webster@iomartdsl.com]
Sent: Wednesday, December 01, 2004 10:54 AM
To: Military Vehicles Mailing List
Subject: Re: [MV] MVs On Train Pics
Larry Tighe wrote:
> I had read that the Brits were having problems with the American steam
> engines exploding initially. Apparently our engines were designed to
> operate differently than the Brit's engines.
Oh! Oh! Oh! I remember reading something about this - IIRC there were
some problems as nobody realised that british coal generated a higher
thermal output than the equivalent american stuff. Once this was
realised and the amount thrown in the boilers was adjusted the problem
went away.
TTFN
Jom
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