A little more on my thoughts on oil burning engines.
The Huckleberry runs five days a week with a limited staff, ie no overnight hostlers. By burning coal we are able to bank the fire and maintain pressure overnight and reduce the thermic cycling of the boiler. Oil fires cannot be left unattended which would mean an increase in staffing or shutting the fire off at night and allowing the boiler to cool.
On 464 with her short fire box, 68" front to back, (I'm off today so I can't go out and measure) and no combustion chamber, which leaves a very short combustion path in the fire box. This means you have to burn alot of fuel in a very small area. The firebox of WP&Y #69 showed signs of impingement, where burning oil was hitting the sheets and burning the staybolt heads.
Then there are the environmental issues. I think that every railroad that has an oil burner has stories of what shouldn't have happened. I have also been down wind of engines burning waste oil, and the smell can be rather revolting and the posibilities of might be contained in it even worse.
Now in defence of oil, the larger the engine, the better fuel it becomes. Especially when the firebox is long enough that a fireman can't hit the front corners with the shovel. At that point oil is the fuel to use, besides then you can eliminate the stoker which in it self can be a mechanical monster.
There have been some major advances in burner design that improving the effeciency and shorting the flamepath for smaller fireboxes. A subject that I will freely admit to knowing very little.
Only during the Halloween and Christmas trains with the long runs will you see the pile of coal over the tender sides. Having too much coal in the tender acts like a sifter and forms a hard packed deposit of slack in the bottom of the bunker. No fun to fire and during the winter it freezes.
And on "how do you shovel oil?" We encourage the firemen to keep the cabs clean, and on more than one occasion the comment has been made that oil burners make for nice clean cabs... with butterfly doors, a coal scoop and a pile of coal in the tender.
