Re: Shaking the Grates

In South Africa we witnessed "fire cleaning" and engine servicing at regular stops. One of the more famous locations was Orange River, about half-way between De Aar and Kimberly, on the doubletrack mainline that had 4-8-4's in regular service the longest.
At Orange River ALL TRAINS stopped, and had their fires cleaned, by personel that were there just to do that at Orange River. Meanwhile the engine took water, and in some cases the grates were shaken by the fireman, or he used the poker from on top of the tender.
The neat thing was that at times this would be going on 3 to 5 times simultaneously with that many trains. If you are not familiar with these engines they had 60 inch drivers, on 3 foot 6 inch rail gauge. They were stocker-fired coal burners. Most of these stops wound up being 20-30 minutes for each train.
Greg Scholl