What kind of coal do English engines burn? Do they burn a soft or hard coal? I have noticed that most of the engines I see on youtube have a beautiful clean white smoke. I wonder if it is the coal you are burning or your firing technique.
Thanks
Dusten
Dear Dusten,
I'm currently looking around the Internet for files of information on your subject. While searching using the Google's search engine, I came across this interesting United Kingdom website. Although I will continue to search websites for you requested information, I thought that you would like to showed this website.
http://www.collieryroad.com/online/catalog/show/product/CR1005/flying%20scotsman%20steam%20locomotive
Sincerely,
Josh B.
Dear Dusten,
I could not find any article for it. Please wait for some one with more knowledge on United Kingdom locomotives give you your answer.
Sincerely,
Josh B.
I see that they give the left to right dimensions, how come no right to left?
I would think that they would use their own local coal , probably soft bituminous . Steamers steaming white are probably not under heavy load. If you look at DVDs of steamers in action you see the variations in smoke stack emissions in color and intensity depending on the load being placed on the engine . Remember the Industrial Revolution started in England because of the material and technical resources of the area were all there.
Ok, thanks ya'll, the engines I have viewed are not under a heavy load. They are hauling passangers. Even under a wheel slip and tough grade I do not see any sign of smoke change. At Tweetsie Railroad in NC, #12 a Baldwin 4-6-0 does not pull a heavy load around the mountain but the smoke is a dirty black color. The coal burnt at Tweetsie is a Soft coal. So I am still wondering if Britain is using a hard coal or their firing technique?
Thanks for the Info so far.
Dusten
Btw, doe's speed have anything to do with, Im pretty sure it does.
It depends.
The UK used many, many types of coal from numerous coal fields. Each railway had it's own supllier.
Typically the "best" coal was used in the top "Express" passenger trains with lower grade coal used for freight and switchers.
A typical 'engine shed' say with an allocation of some 50 or more steam locos would stock two grades of coal and have two bunkers in the coaling tower (if it had one) or two bunkers in the coaling stage. One bunker would contain coal for the passenger engines, the other for freight and switchers.
Passenger coal was large lumps, well over fist size upto six inches or more. Freight coal was smaller lumps to dust, rather like steam locos in North America burnt due to the use of automatic stokers. Another cheap fuel used, and hated by the crews, was briquettes. This was coal dust held together in 'briquettes' about four inches square that fell apart into dust of struck with a hammer or hit the sides of the firebox when being tossed into the 'box. It also stung the crews eyes. As I said, they hatred it.
The "best" steam coal in the world came from Wales and was used extensively by the Great Western Railway which was the main railway company serving the Welsh coal fields.
Thanks Rogertra.
That helped out a lot. I might have to go and look in to the brickets. That is something I have never heard of before.
Thanks for the information supplyed
Dusten
Hi Dusten, i think the coal they used to use in UK is called ANTHRACITE you can Google it under Anthracite Coal,most of the deposits came from Wales.Regards Bryan
Quote from: Dusten Barefoot on August 16, 2008, 10:18:16 AM
Thanks Rogertra.
That helped out a lot. I might have to go and look in to the brickets. That is something I have never heard of before.
Thanks for the information supplyed
Dusten
Dusten, if like me ,you were a boy in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia in the 1960s you would have known all about "briquettes". They were dreadfull things, made in Victoria from brown coal, which is very soft and has a very high moisture content. Compressing the brown coal into briquettes was necessary as it was too soft to be easily handled. Brown coal was (and is) mainly used for electricity generation, but was also used by other industries and, as briquettes, domestically. Domestic use included for hot water sustems (we had a briquette water heater) and burning in combustion stoves and firepleaces. "Briquettes" were hard to light, smoky, and handling them left you covered in coal dust. I was very glad when we converted to an electric hot water service as lighting the briquette hot water heater and cleaning out the ash was one of my jobs.
As far as I know these briquettes were not used for steam locomotives as the quality was too low, black coal (soft or bituminous I think) being used by the Victorian Railways for their locomotives. However I believe in europe and the UK coal briquettes may be made from black coal dust and this type could be suitable for locomotives.
In relation to UK locomotive coal I understand that both hard (anthracite) and soft (bitunimous) was used, depending on the part of the country from which the coal was sourced. A UK poster might have more information.
Hamish
I know the big words for coal ;D.That was probably the only thing I paid attention to in Earth Science. Yeah Lignite is the Brown coal you are talking about about Hamish. ;D
Dusten
Yes, brown coal is lignite, but in Australia, outside of scientific circles, it is simply called brown coal.
Hamish
The amount of smoke generated is a function of the way the locomotive is being fired and the capacity of the boiler to generate sufficient steam to do the job the locomotive is being asked to do. British steam locomotives sacrificed easy maintainability for greater efficiency, therefore used less coal than their North American counterparts, but spent more time in the engine sheds. A properly fired steam engine should only show a slight haze coming from the stack.
Most tourist railways purposely overfire their steam locomotives because the tourists expect to see black smoke. If you see "white smoke", that isn't actually smoke, but exhaust steam, which is a lot more visible in cold weather.
Dusten, to throw a little more into the fire (pun intended) the PA coal fields are replete with Anthracite Coal which is the "hard" coal and very low in Sulphur. Burns the cleanest of the North American coals. Stephen
Thanks for all the helpful info. Too bad to say that a lot of tourist railroads do overfire for show. If you ask me, a clean white smoke, or vapor belowing out the stack is more beautiful that seeing black smoke. But what the public want's they get.
Take it easy ;)
Dusten
Thick Black smoke comes from a bad firing technique. If there's not enough draft through the firebox grate, the coal cannot be burned thoroughly, thus the unburned carbon escapes up the stack. This is what I gathered from a week at Steamtown talking to a No Hope & Disneyland Engineer/Fireman.
I worked on boilers in the late 60's and any time we smoked black it was because the forced draft blowers needed to be running faster. Nothing worse than a cloud of black smoke rolling over a flight deck when a plane was trying to land.
Dunsten, most of the coal fired in English locomotives came from northern or Welsh pits. Most of this coal was hard black coal called Anthracite. In the days of the the "Big Four" the railway companies had coal mines they sourced their coal from. When BR came into being in 1948 they broke the system up into regions. In the begining the coal was sourced from the same pits but as mines started to close coal was sourced from other mines and from overseas.
Depending on the firebox the coal was generally in 2" to 4" lumps. Later as the coal quality decreased more processed coal was used in the form of oviods and bricquettes. Bricquettes were the worst as this was coal slack formed in cubes. These broke up easily and was usually formed from high ash, high sulpher content coal.
Nearly all English locos were hand fired using the little and often method. Generally you tossed an couple of shovelfuls into each corner, a shovelfull along the edges, two under the door and a couple in the midlle and left the door open about a quarter. This method generally worked well with the BR standards with locos from the big four you had to adjust this method to suit. Only a couple of locos had trials with stokers. Berkley mechanical stokers were fitted to three class 9F 2-10-0's in 1958. Wether it was because steam was on the wane or due to the fireman's inexperience with such devices they were removed from the locos in 1962. Steam finished in the UK on August 14th 1968.
Charles Emerson
Queensland
Australia
Quote from: Dusten Barefoot on August 14, 2008, 09:45:11 PM
What kind of coal do English engines burn? Do they burn a soft or hard coal? I have noticed that most of the engines I see on youtube have a beautiful clean white smoke. I wonder if it is the coal you are burning or your firing technique.
Thanks
Dusten
Quote from: Ozzie21 on August 22, 2008, 06:49:29 AM
Dunsten, most of the coal fired in English locomotives came from northern or Welsh pits. Most of this coal was hard black coal called Anthracite.
Of course, this reminds us that in the U.S., the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad promoted the clean-burning qualities of anthracite ("hard") coal as part of its advertizing. The Lackawanna used the fictional Miss Phoebe Snow as the symbol for its passenger service. The Lackawanna burned anthracite in its locomotives, and Miss Phoebe was able to keep her dress clean and white because she traveled on the Lackawanna, "the road of anthracite," instead of on a road that used bituminous, or "soft" coal, which, the Lackawanna implied, was dirtier, producing more soot than its own anthracite-burning engines.
Phoebe Snow is not a fictional character. She is a well known singer in jazz and pop. Look her up on the internet.
Don 8)
Phoebe Snow the singer may lifted her name from the fictional Phoebe Snow who was portrayed wearing white and carrying a white parasol. The idea being that if you travel on the DL&W you'll keep clean because they burned anthracite. The Lackawanna ads were around long before the jazz singer Phoebe Snow was born.
There was talk at one time that Conrail, as the successor company to the Lackawanna, was going to sue her for copyright infringement since Conrail owned the name. The lawsuit went nowhere (like some of the Conrail lines.)