Thank you. It does help.bells and two tones is the company, they operate all over the UK
Hope this helps!
Welcome to the forum too.
Thank you. It does help.bells and two tones is the company, they operate all over the UK
Hope this helps!
Regarding the treatment of hard water for steam locomotives how did they cope back in the days when steam was king on the mainline or did hard water not exist back then or were they just not bothered about it.
From the very early days of the steam locomotive, the quality of water used has been of prime concern.
No water is perfect. Water obtained from lakes, rivers and reservoirs may contain organic matter while water taken from boreholes is usually very hard. Hardness, caused by calcium and magnesium salts is a major problem in a locomotive boiler as the previously soluble salts become insoluble as the boiler temperatures and pressures increase. Some of these salts fall on hot surfaces where they bake and form a scale while other salts sink to the bottom of the boiler as sludge. Since scale has a low heat conductivity and hampers the efficiency of the boiler, it can lead to the tubes in the boiler to overheat, resulting in buckling or in extreme cases collapse.
Another less common scale that can cause problems is silica, however, even carbon dioxide from surface water is undesirable since under the influence of heat, it gives off pure oxygen which causes pitting and corrosion.
Organic impurities could be removed by effective filtration and lineside water softening plants were used where the water was hard. In this instance, chemicals such as hydrated lime, sodium carbonate or sodium aluminates were added to the water. In British Railways Standard classes, these plants were replaced by water softening blocks that were added to the tender or tank water from perforated cylinders.
In recent years, preserved locomotives have had problems with excessive nitrates in the water supply. Acidic water is corrosive and reducing acidity by chemical means is quite simple, however some degree of acidity is essential to reduce the risk of foaming in the boiler, leading to priming when water is carried with the steam into the cylinders.
All steam locomotives needed a periodic boiler washout to remove sludge, where jets of pressurised hot or cold water are fed into plug holes in the side of the firebox. Due to the variation of water quality in Britain, boiler washouts were performed every 500 to 5000 miles and typically this work would be carried out every eight to ten days.
Steam loco boilers have to be regularly washed out to prevent buildup of sludge and scale
Source http://www.greatwestern.org.uk/basic14.htm
Are you sure it is fed from a spring, not a stream? You don't normally gets springs half-way up a mountain.
Quite, and I would have thought that "half-way up a mountain" is actually quite a good description of where you might find them. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spring_line_settlementSprings can appear anywhere where the geology/ underlying rock structures are correct. The distance of those areas up a mountain (or not) isn’t relevant.
Are you sure that the spring doesn't just add to what lands from the rain in that area? I would like to read a reference, as quick googling only mentions the rain and the bog!Sorry, but you can find springs at any level on a mountain, from the top to the bottom. It all depends on the level of the water table and the local geology. As an example, the Rivers Severn and Wye start from a spring fed bog at the top of Plynlimon.
More likely to be briquettes of water treatment chemicals. Lime would just make the problem worse, unless it was to treat very acid water coming out of a bog.It could cause serious deposits rather quickly, I’ve seen a film of lumps of lime/calcium hydroxide being tossed into the tanks to counter it.
Are you sure that the spring doesn't just add to what lands from the rain in that area? I would like to read a reference, as quick googling only mentions the rain and the bog!
Thank you and you’re welcome!Thank you. It does help.
Welcome to the forum too.
No evidence or back-up for that assertion then?Yes I am quite sure, thank you. Whilst it might rain a bit up here it isn't that much. There are plenty of small springs feeding into the bog.
but maybe there is a miraculous local microclimate and geology that you know aboutThe source of the River Severn is located in the Cambrian Mountains of Mid Wales, and it flows east and south to its mouth where the river joins the Bristol Channel underneath the Severn Bridges.
Upper course
The area receives excessive rainfall due to depressions from the Atlantic. The Severn swiftly grows and forms a V-shaped valley....
- The upper course has hard impermeable rocks. Here, vertical erosion has formed a V-shaped valley.
- The River Severn has many waterfalls in its upper course.
The Tallyllyn has a water column at Dolgoch fed by a spring
You're right. Just given Railway Adventure the once over. Now I need to remember where I got the ram idea from.
Pat
Swanage railway have a spring that they can get water from, whether or no0t they are using it yet I don't know. Previously it was just normal tap water, but this is supposedly not so good for the boilers.
Why would they not be happy then? Is it because they’ll not be receiving the (presumably high) income from a metered water supply?Wessex Water will be very unhappy.
As has already been pointed out, Dolgoch tank is fed from a stream, not a spring. The just-giving page for Ty Dwr says that this was fed from a stream, not a spring:And also had a similar installation at Ty Dwr on the Mineral Extension.