Re: 489 First Revenue Run

in my 10 years at the Loop, I've only seen one tie fire that actually caused flames. That was from sitting for a long time during a station stop, and was prompty put out by the attendants at the station. Smoking ties (cooking out the oil in the tie mostly from radiant heat) isn't uncommon, but its not a fire.

40 is annoying at times, as her firebox and airbox sit lower then 111, so she is prone to smoking ties simply from radiant heat. Her airbox is only 2 1/2 inches over the railhead, bare minimum, but that's just how she is designed from Baldwin. If it was made higher, we would lose air volume coming into the firebox. We added a water sprayer off the tender, piped into a spray head we added to the front of the airbox to douse the area ahead of the damper with water. its only needed when you sit for long periods of time, such as a station stop where you have a hot fire to build water (for us, thats only at devils gate station really).

As far as I know, there have been zero lineside fires at the Loop, at least in the 10 years I have been there.

I will speak for myself, I did have a hard relight with 111 on her first trip down to devils gate. The result was very similar to what you see with 489. At that time I was well versed in Oil firing, but 111 was new to me, and new to our railroad (she had not run in 50 years after all), and caught me off guard. 489 is new to the C&TS crew too, they have to learn her tendencies, what she likes, what she does not like. Don't be hard on them their first time out, unless you have some experience to stand on.