The "touch" with injectors

Lifting injectors can be difficult in hot weather and when the water level in the tank is lower than the injector itself . There are a number of little tricks , and a sensitive hand helps . As Steele noted if you had the "touch" you could get the "gun" going when others could not . Injectors started to have problems if they had bad nozzles ,leaks, stuck boiler check valves ,among other things .The main problem that would manifest itself is the injector would fail to prime ,i.e. no cold water was flowing though the gun ,out of the overflow pipe . That was the most obvious sign of trouble .Some engines ,like #484 ,just had problems with their "guns" ,no matter what . There might have been reduced steam flow from the fountain . One time Marvin Casias stopped a double header because both guns stopped working .I tried my hand with the engineer's gun(the hardest of the two to prime) and got it going the second or third time .Marvin smiled ,and shook his head and said(in jest),"I hate you ,Coke!" Incidentally ,Lifting injectors ,which were one piece units , were superceded by the far superior non-lifting injector,as what is on the 470s and 480s . They were two-piece units with an overflow appliance below the tender level(beneath the cab) and a ram appliance ,in the cab . Older engines like the C-class 2-8-0s ,the #463 ,and the 490s had the lifters . Old timers told me they never highballed Cresco tank with a 490 , as there would be serious problems with the injector by the time a train rached Coxo . I made a point to stop every trip at Cresco with #497 .I told Earl I was going to do that and he said that was o.k. but wondered if I could start the train again on grade .I told him that after stopping on grade every day at Needleton , an engineer got real good at getting out of there if he wanted to eat lunch at Silverton . A trick was to open the cylinder cocks ,let the train roll back a couple of feet , and then rip the lungs out of the throttle ,closing the cylinder coks at the same time with his foot ! If done right ,the valves would not "dead center", stalling the train . The conductors were dialed in that the start could be a rough lurch ,and they would instruct the passengers to hold on . Once at Needleton ,I was on #480 ,an engine that loved to "dead center" ,because of screwed-up valves . A jerk on the Cinco Animas was instructed to sit down ,which he refused to do . Unfortunately ,he got a broken rib when I got that recalcitrant loco to finally move .I think it was the only injury I was responsible for in my railroad career .