Re: Of Course This Crew Is Proud Of Their Assigned Locomotive!

pd3463 Wrote:
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> Was this duel throttle set up used this way
> through out their use with all of their homes?
>
> Phil

There was only one throttle. Baldwin made a serious design flaw in the boiler design, in that the crown sheet was way too high and when the mallets tipped over the top of the hill on Baxter Pass the water all ran to the front of the boiler leaving the crown sheet dangerously close to being uncovered. If the water level was where it covered the crown sheet, the water was up into the steam dome. According to Bender's book, the solution was to rebuilt the firebox with a lower crown sheet, then adding a second steam dome further back and moving the throttle to the rear dome. All this was done in Atchee at the URY's shop.

This modification came very early in the locomotives existence.

The most baffling thing is 2 years later the Baldwin built the 51, with the SAME flaw in the boiler. URY had to make the same modification to 51 after it showed up at the URY.

I hope BLW gave them a discount for bad design.....



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/23/2017 10:57AM by Earl.