Jing Peng hand firing

Bob,

QJ's were built with stokers, but the Ji Tong Railway took them out and used two firement to hand fire. They didn't have to maintain the stokers plus they saved coal by hand firing. You would think the firemen were being worked to death, but they double headed trains that could actually be handled by a single loco, so they were never working all out. This made it easier to fire.

In the summer time you could tell that they were not having to fire constantly. First one loco would smoke as the fireman added coal, then after awhile the other would start smoking, usually about the time the first loco went to a clean stack. Getting both engines with a column of smoke was a challenge in warm weather. In the winter you had billowing steam wich made for good photos.

Michael Allen