Re: Interesting incident on oil burner

Man your lucky to have been able to fire those classes of locomotive. Someday " />
Ive only had one time with the decapod that I could barely keep up with the demand for steam and water, and it was a day we had sticking brakes and a foaming problem, so water was being wasted out the stack as wet steam. Man I shoveled like crazy on that trip. What I meant about feeling fortunate about learing hand firing on such a large engine , was that I became good at throwing long distances and gettin it where I needed it. It has about an 8 by 8 firebox, so id guess without doing the math that it was about a 10 foot throw to the front corners. Not a huge distance at all, but it helped me learn to swing a scoop with the least amount of force, not use muscle to heave it, which I would guess I might have done had I had a smaller firebox to learn on. Thats only speculation tho since I learned on what I learned on. I have run locomotives with smaller fireboxes, and your definately right about having to fire smarter. Unfortunately, I have never fired a smaller firebox on a locomotive working at near maximum tonage. I envy you for having done that. Hopefully some day ill get to work at least a season or more in Durango. Its interesting to note, one of the shop men in Chama, Ed Beard, used to work on the decapod with me. His opinion of those mikes is that it isnt any harder firing one of them up the hill outta Chama than it is to fire the decapod out here in Illinois. I dont doubt hees probably right, It may not be physically any harder, just different. Thanks again to all for this conversation. I love the narrow gauge and reading about it here. Its also nice to be able to learn from other locomotive crews in a setting like this!
Brian