Question for 315's Firemen....

I know from personal experience every fireman who has hand fired
steam engines has worked out his own method of "putting in a fire"
on the power he has worked on. We were shown how to do it when we
made our student trips and then worked out the fine points for ourselves on the job afterward, particular to the type and size of the engine we were firing.

A small deckless-cab engine such as 315 actually "working" on a mountain railroad is pretty much a rarity anywhere these days.
Firing one under these circumstances would obviously be much different than on a similar engine running around a level loop in a park someplace.

I would be interested in hearing (first hand if possible) about the technique 315's firemen use with the long narrow firebox when putting in a fire on such an engine when she is working her best with tonnage on the grade.

Things such as:

How many scoops to a fire?

No. 4 Scoop? (probably as big as you can get in the firedoor)

No brick arch in the 315, I assume, like there is on a 480.

What pattern do you follow generally to keep the fire covered properly
in the long narrow firebox? One Foreward and one aft along each of the sidesheets, and heel the back corners every other fire or so?

Or just how?????

How about setting the injector after you get the first fire in when starting up a heavy grade? Do you screw down the water feed some and Will it keep up OK with the water used?

All the engines I fired when I worked on the D&RGW were larger and had bigger fireboxes....but they each took a litle different tecnique just the same.
You fired the 490's differently than the 480's, and the 470's a bit differently yet (similar to the 480's but easy to overfire if not careful). The draft was usually sufficient when the engine was working hard to pull the coal off the scoop...all you had to do was get it in the firedoor and twist it just rght to get it to cover the fire where you wanted it.
I worked over Cumbres Pass, over the line from Chama to Durango, The Silverton and Farmington branches. Never had any trouble keeping any of them hot.
Never got to work on a mudhen. And of course all those smaller engines were long gone before my time....

So I'd really like to know how it is properly done.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/15/2008 02:44AM by Etrump.