Re: Sparks from wood burners

Dan is quite right about the sparks. At night our W. H. Eccles Heisler looks like a rolling volcano. It has never set the depot platform on fire, but has set fire to the wooden walkway on a steel tank car as well as the cupola on caboose 5. It has also started a fire on the remains of Sumpter Valley Dredge #1, and a pile of old ties in the yard a McEwen. Both of these were about 60' from the track. Once I found a small piece of wood burning about 40' from the track, surrounded by a half acre of gravel. We used to have a squirt hose hooked to the right side branch pipe to deal with small fires, but now we let the fire patrol deal with it.

The oil burning #19 has only set fires between the rails, due to poor firing techniques.