Re: SVRY 250-251

Dennis...your comment about 204 drumming when the fire is forced was a very common condition down there that I & others experienced also. In March of '73, Al Shelton & I were standing just off the highway several hundred yards above the track watching an uphill train work its way to the summit at Cumbre below us. Not only could we hear the drumming, we both could feel it against our chests! I kid you not. Engine was 178, one of the postwar Baldwins built in 1946, I think.
My feeling was that those narrow fireboxes could only take so much atomizer before they would begin to talk back. Thing is, it worked down there. I know ideally you're not supposed to force fires, but you also have to do whatever it takes to get over the road & this drumming from heavy atomizer/firing rates is what was required on a daily basis on these particular machines.