At 12:17 PM 8/21/01 -0400, you wrote:
>I can tell you that they start to smell like roasting electronics when the
>water gets too low... I shut it down then, it had been running out of
>power and I couldn't figure out why turning up the heat made little
>difference. Oh but if I had years more experience! ;]
Re Low water . . . . . I have a slightly modified black Pannier which
I just love to run it because it runs sooooo good. Despite my unabashed
affection for it, my practice, which flies in the face of the conventional
wisdom spouted by the current gurus of the hobby as the Accepted Rules for
Steaming Up, is to fill it completely full to brimming with fluids (water,
oil, spirits) and run it until one of them is completely used up; that's
invariably the water. In that instance having a full charge of steam in
the boiler is as good as having water. The heat is absorbed in
superheating the remaining steam. Remember our thread a while back on
"zippiness" in locomotives? That's when my version of 'zippiness" occurs,
just as the last drops of water and boiler full of steam is taking on
superheat from the burner. Throttled back the Pannier will kick its heels
for 1-2 track circuits on that last superheated charge, but the moment that
charge is exhausted the trouble can begin because there is nothing left to
absorbe the heat but the loco itself.
My practice is to avoid overheating by pre-shutting down the fuel feed
shortly before the water is used up and before arriving at steam only left
in the boiler. (Yes, unfortunately, that involves actually "driving" the
loco and tending to its needs.) I had one near-miss when I forgit to
pre-shut down the fuel and the fire extinguisher I'd been borrowing had
been packed away, but other than that I've been running it in this way and
it hasn't been hurt it in the least. BUT the last thing in the world I'd
want to do is endanger my loco so when I have fire I always take care to
have two other things present: something in the boiler to absorbe the heat
(water or steam), and movement (or blower). Otherwise i'm inviting
bar-b-que'd loco.
This leads me to another thought I had lately, which is that of the
areas of our hobby that present potential problems, it seems to me fueling
and firing activities, and the construction of fueling components, present
a much greater potential for damage and injury than do boilers.
Cheers,
Harry
