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Manually shovelling coal on a steam engine. Is there another way?

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shakey1961

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Hi. Just been watching the Top Gear race to the North with Jeremy on the footplate of Tornado.

He stated that 30 tons of coal would have to be put in the firebox to get there.

Was wondering if there was another easier way to do it. Some sort of corkscrew system to move it along? Was any automatic system tried?

Just curious
 
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jopsuk

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Mechanical stokers found much more success in the USA where the vast steam locos ate too much coal to be feasibly fired by hand. The larger dimensions allowed the feed to be under the cab floor and for the firebox to be optimised for feeding this way.
 

John Webb

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Hi. Just been watching the Top Gear race to the North with Jeremy on the footplate of Tornado.

He stated that 30 tons of coal would have to be put in the firebox to get there.

Was wondering if there was another easier way to do it. Some sort of corkscrew system to move it along? Was any automatic system tried?

Just curious

Mr Clarkson is rather out on the amount of coal required as well. Tornado's coal capacity is 7.5 tonnes; I am uncertain what the A3 and A4 locos carried, but it still would have been 10 tons or less! But this is quite adequate to get from London to Edinburgh or Glasgow with something in hand.
 

Wilts Wanderer

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30 tons of coal was more than a little exaggerated (surprise surprise), I'd say 8-10 tons was more of a realistic figure.
 

TheEdge

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One of the locomotives at the National Railway Museum (York) has exactly that. Maybe the monster that ran in China?

Yea, I think thats the loco with it.

Mechanical stokers never took off in the UK. I think a few 9Fs had them, although they seemed to be BR's go to test bed class.
 

The Ham

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It is likely that automation would have gained ground as time passed, however it has to be remembered that for most of the time that steam it was relatively cheap and much more reliable to pay people to do things rather than rely on machines to do so.

One of the drivers of the change to diesel was that it allows automatic loading of fuel in a very easy to build and maintain system.

Now we are very much in the case of the opposite is becoming the case, where machines are reliable enough to be left to do their thing with little oversight. To the point where alough much as some sectors of society like to blame immigration for the loss of "British jobs" it is more likely that people have lost out to a machine rather than to someone from another country.

Often it will be by more transactions being carried out by the same number of staff, rather than straight job losses. In the case of the railways many stations have the same number of ticket office staff but they are supported by two or three TVMs per member of staff, combined they deal with significantly more tickets being issued than used to be the case.
 

route:oxford

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Was wondering if there was another easier way to do it. Some sort of corkscrew system to move it along? Was any automatic system tried?

There is. Powder the coal then blow it in. Same as in power stations and blast furnaces.
 

Dr Hoo

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Some countries used oil firing (even tried in Britain) but it still needed a 'fireman' to look after it.

Switzerland even converted a couple of steam locomotives to 'electric firing' (think of immersion heaters) for very specific local circumstances when coal supplies were restricted during wartime.
 

Wilts Wanderer

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High oil price and availability of cheap plentiful coal supplies put paid to the UK oil firing experiment.
 

broadgage

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There is. Powder the coal then blow it in. Same as in power stations and blast furnaces.

AFAIK this has never been done for a loco, but no doubt it could be.
The main drawbacks are that powdered coal is potentially explosive and not easy to handle safely.
Coal burning power plants almost invariably burn powdered coal but this is ground up from lump coal as needed, burnt within seconds and never stored.
Finding space for the coal "mill" on a locomotive would be a challenge, but not insurmountable.

Decades ago there was a serious proposal to build modern steam locomotives, in the USA. The proposal was to burn pulverised coal in a high pressure boiler to turn a steam turbine. This would generate electricity to power electric motors for each axle.
The whole weight of the complex multi vehicle equipage would thus be available for adhesion.
IIRC 5 vehicles were proposed, water tanker, coal "tanker", boiler, turbine and alternator, driving and control vehicle.
Every axle of each vehicle to be motored, total weight in working order over 500 tons, power output 10MW or well over 10,000 HP.

This was discussed in the aftermath of the 1970s Arab oil embargo when oil was scarce and costly. Came to nothing as it was too revolutionary and oil prices soon moderated.
 

43021HST

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Furthermore I believe manually shovelling the coal, means the fireman and driver can optimise the performance in ways that automation simply wouldn't be able to, like being able to finely adjust the amount of coal required, where it's distributed and how much to put in per 'shovelful'.

I believe the bigger american and Chinese locos were more rugged so required less fine tuning, which meant a mechanical stoker could be employed.
 

Phil.

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It's not a case of being more rugged. There is a limit to the size of the grate area that a fireman can manage. The limit was fifty square feet which was the size of an LMS Princess Coronation or a Peppercorn A1 or A2.
Picture a fire grate seven feet by seven feet. That's forty nine square feet.
 

Bevan Price

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High oil price and availability of cheap plentiful coal supplies put paid to the UK oil firing experiment.


Plus the fact that oil had to be imported, and the government at that time wanted to curb unnecessary imports.

(The imports / exports balance of payments was given higher priority in the past - "deficits" were "bad".)
 

TheEdge

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Furthermore I believe manually shovelling the coal, means the fireman and driver can optimise the performance in ways that automation simply wouldn't be able to, like being able to finely adjust the amount of coal required, where it's distributed and how much to put in per 'shovelful'.

I believe the bigger american and Chinese locos were more rugged so required less fine tuning, which meant a mechanical stoker could be employed.

It is one of the arts of firemanship (:lol:) being able to get the right amount of coal into the right bit of the firebox. Watch even a preserved railway fireman and every shovel load is different and put into the box differently. Some are thrown with gusto right to the back, some are flicked to the side and some are simply tipped right underneath the firebox door.

I'm not sure that foreign locos are any less needing of the correct style of firing but I suspect more the pure size of American locos especially made fitting the equipment needed easier.
 

broadgage

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IIRC, USA trade union rules required mechanical stoking and also steam reverse* on all double manned steam locomotives with a coal consumption of more than one ton an hour. The alternative was to provide two stokers, as firemen were known in the USA.

*Not the same as reverse gear ! "steam reverse" referred to the reversing control that altered the cut off being steam assisted so as to greatly reduce the manual effort needed to alter the cut off or change direction.
On a small engine this control is easily manipulated by hand, but the effort required increases on larger engines and becomes unreasonable on the very largest engines, unless power assisted.
 

theageofthetra

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There is. Powder the coal then blow it in. Same as in power stations and blast furnaces.
There were some ex Prussian locos which were converted to coal dust firing in the 30's & some more during the war, most survived up until the late sixties so must have been quite successful

Under Robinson on the LNER there were some experiments using a mixture of coal dust & oil but can't find any evidence it was successful, there were also some other powder/pulverised coal trials during both world wars when coal supplies and labour were scare.
 
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DarloRich

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An interesting question. i think these two answers probably sum up the reasons:

It's not a case of being more rugged. There is a limit to the size of the grate area that a fireman can manage. The limit was fifty square feet which was the size of an LMS Princess Coronation or a Peppercorn A1 or A2.
Picture a fire grate seven feet by seven feet. That's forty nine square feet.

It is one of the arts of firemanship (:lol:) being able to get the right amount of coal into the right bit of the firebox. Watch even a preserved railway fireman and every shovel load is different and put into the box differently. Some are thrown with gusto right to the back, some are flicked to the side and some are simply tipped right underneath the firebox door.

I'm not sure that foreign locos are any less needing of the correct style of firing but I suspect more the pure size of American locos especially made fitting the equipment needed easier.

Essentially one man can fire our trains and men were for a long time cheap. He cant do that on the bigger locomotives around the world. I wonder how the flow of coal was controlled via the automated systems to allow for a nice, even fire under the boiler.
 

talltim

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As ever, our small loading gauge held us back. The Pennsylvania Railroad introduced mechanical stoking as far back as 1905. Some of the US roads had been experimenting with (proportionally) very large fireboxes due to the poor quality coal they had locally, hence things like the weird and wonderful camelbacks
 

pdeaves

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I wonder how the flow of coal was controlled via the automated systems to allow for a nice, even fire under the boiler.

I would expect that the control would be 'something or nothing' and nowhere near as precise as skilled manual firing. A natural consequence would be a larger fire for any given heat output, leading to greater fuel consumption overall.

That said, I have no particular knowledge of mechanical stokers. They may have been far better than I imagine!
 

Taunton

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Most mechanical stokers blew the coal from the fire end onto the firebed with adjustable small steam jets. This allowed the coal to be directed where desired across what for US locos was an enormous grate. It will be apparent that this could not be used until the loco was in full steam, so initially at the sheds they did have to be prepared by hand firing. The stoker screw itself was also powered by steam.

Stokers worked better in the US where all locos at the depot had them and the coal stage had appropriate preparation facilities to screen the coal down to an appropriate size. Conventional British large lump coal did not work so well (as BR found with the 9F trial) as it would jam in the screw feed mechanism. The same approach is used in much larger stoker-fed fires, such as in steamships or power stations.

Like much of automation, stokers never work as well as precise hand-firing by a competent fireman, but they are better than an unskilled (or fatigued) one. The smaller coal also gives a bit of inefficiency.

The three BR stoker-fitted 9F's 92165-7 were based at Birmingham Saltley and worked daily overnight freights on the former Midland via Leeds to Carlisle, as a single lodging turn, which you can imagine would be a hard grind for hand firing.

Railroads in the US west also moved on to oil firing fairly early in the 20th century, being well away from good coal supplies but near to oil wells. In those times refineries were less efficient and there was a considerable amount of residual heavy product available very cheaply, known as "Bunker C". This is the same as the fuel oil used in steamships, which also very early in the 20thC converted almost entirely to oil fuel as well - the BR steamships on cross-channel services long used this before diesel engines came along. The use of Bunker C rather than much more expensive diesel fuel was behind the Union Pacific experiments with large turbine locos instead of multiple diesels in the 1950s.

I notice on current US heritage railways with oil-fired steam locos they have moved on to "recycled oil", which I believe is waste lubricating oil from oil changes at garages etc.
 
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joke2711

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A rather tongue in cheek question .. but when steam was replaced by diesel, how did the unions react? There would definitely have been be the loss of a train crew employee. Was there the same discontent to modernisation that the Railway industry today experiences? Not trying to start another union argument, just interested in knowing ...

Thanks
 

theageofthetra

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Most mechanical stokers blew the coal from the fire end onto the firebed with adjustable small steam jets. This allowed the coal to be directed where desired across what for US locos was an enormous grate. It will be apparent that this could not be used until the loco was in full steam, so initially at the sheds they did have to be prepared by hand firing. The stoker screw itself was also powered by steam.

Stokers worked better in the US where all locos at the depot had them and the coal stage had appropriate preparation facilities to screen the coal down to an appropriate size. Conventional British large lump coal did not work so well (as BR found with the 9F trial) as it would jam in the screw feed mechanism. The same approach is used in much larger stoker-fed fires, such as in steamships or power stations.

Like much of automation, stokers never work as well as precise hand-firing by a competent fireman, but they are better than an unskilled (or fatigued) one. The smaller coal also gives a bit of inefficiency.

The three BR stoker-fitted 9F's 92165-7 were based at Birmingham Saltley and worked daily overnight freights on the former Midland via Leeds to Carlisle, as a single lodging turn, which you can imagine would be a hard grind for hand firing.

Railroads in the US west also moved on to oil firing fairly early in the 20th century, being well away from good coal supplies but near to oil wells. In those times refineries were less efficient and there was a considerable amount of residual heavy product available very cheaply, known as "Bunker C". This is the same as the fuel oil used in steamships, which also very early in the 20thC converted almost entirely to oil fuel as well - the BR steamships on cross-channel services long used this before diesel engines came along. The use of Bunker C rather than much more expensive diesel fuel was behind the Union Pacific experiments with large turbine locos instead of multiple diesels in the 1950s.

I notice on current US heritage railways with oil-fired steam locos they have moved on to "recycled oil", which I believe is waste lubricating oil from oil changes at garages etc.

Yes they do use recycled waste oil- and it smells awful! Its big advantage is a lack of cinders and wildfire risk.
 
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