I recently bought a nice book from Ken Wulfert (TLC Publ.) on servicing facilities for coal burning steam engines. There was also a short chapter on diesel servicing. I was wondering if there is a reference (Book, magazine, internet article etc.) on the servicing of oil burning steam locomotives?? Frisco and most other western and southwestern railroads stabled lots of oil burners, but there doesn't seem to be much information "out there" on servicing them. Any ideas? Thanks, Tom G.
Not a whole lot to service. Check the firebox to see if there's a "statue" on the firebox floor of built up carbon, break it up and get it out of there. Check the firebrick. Fill the tender with water, oil, fill the sand dome and the sandbox on the front of the tender for sanding the flues. Oil burners can be run into the roundhouse and the fire killed and the dampers closed. A good boiler will maintain pressure enough to relight for many hours or a day. Either in the roundhouse or on the ready track, if the engine will be idle for a length of time, it's preferable to kill the fire as to keep a spot fire someone should stay on it in case for some reason the fire goes out it can drool oil all over the place. Coal burners need a lot more attention. Clean the fire, empty the ash pan,bank the fire and fill the coal bunker and water.
Interesting thread. Since fuel oil for locomotives is more like a military JP8 grade, very thick, slimy, and smelly, I would imagine, but not sure, that they had dedicated petroleum cars for them and a pumping station to put the oil into holding tanks. I know that oil columns, very similar to water columns existed, albeit, I don't know if the Frisco had any of those. This is interesting since I have to put some oil columns and tanks on my layout as the SAP was mostly oil burners as well, with very few coal burners. Subscribed. Thanks to all who reply. Manny
I am sure the Frisco used oil columns for servicing oil fired steam locomotives. The problem was that the oil had to be heated or it would not flow very well. I am assuming that house steam was used to heat the oil, but I could be wrong about that. There were steam lines in the oil bunker on the tender so the oil could be heated enough to get it into the fire box.
Tom, I think I've seen an old Sanborn map or other reference for Chaffee from the steam era that showed horizontal storage tanks to be used for "fuel oil." However, this still doesn't answer your question about possible dedicated tank cars for delivering fuel oil to servicing points. On the River Division, most - if not all - of the oil burners were used in passenger service, and were run through Chaffee without servicing. While I don't recall any fuel capacities offhand, the old FEM's shows anywhere from 587 gallons oil used on #808 between Memphis and Chaffee in 1930 up to 1,470 gallons of oil used on #802 between St. Louis and Chaffee in that same year. Long story short, I'd think they'd have to top off the fuel bunker at Chaffee, and that any oil column would have been placed close to the main tracks and passenger depot for convenience. Best Regards,
I believe the oil used was Bunker C , a thick oil also used by many ships in the era of steam propulsion.
Tom, I believe the answer is yes, they did have tank cars assigned to fuel oil service similar to the way they had cars assigned to diesel fuel service. The difference was these cars were 10k ACF built tank cars equipped with high walkways. These cars were imported in brass HO by W&R many years ago and can be found from time to time. I did notice however that Funaro & Camerlengo is producing a ACF high walkway tank in a 8k version. It would probably be possible by swapping a larger 10k tank from a proto 2000 kit and placing it on a F & C frame for less money. Brad
