A Manual of Instruction for the Economical Management of Locomotives (1891)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: when their grates become choked with ashes and clinkers, than when air has free access through them. But the dread of having to hoe out the ash-pan, causes them to prefer to shovel a double quantity of coal, rather than engage in a task so disagreeable. Whoever desires to adv ance, and excel in his calling, should never allow the dread of an unpleasant task to cause him to shirk his work in any way, or stop short of doing the very best thing, whatever that may be, to make his work as excellent as possible, feeling sure that success is only the result of careful work. We have dwelt at some length on the necessity for a free admission 61' air through the grates, but it must not be taken that the more air the better, for all in excess of the quantity to supply the needed equivalent of oxygen for the carbon and gaseous portion of the coal, lias no effect except to absorb the heat of the fire and carry it off. Care, therefore, must be taken to keep the bed of fire thick enough, and of uniform depth over the entire grate surface to prevent access of too much air. The time to guard against this most carefully is in shaking the grates, which,while running, should only be done after a fresh fire has been put in. Even then care must be taken not to shake them so hard as to injure or make holes in the fire. During the first twenty or thirty miles of a trip, while fire is light and thin, it is advisable to run with front damper closed, if engine steams freely, to prevent access of too much air. From the combustion of the diamond a useful lesson should have impressed itself upon firemen of the necessity of breaking the coal into small pieces. A dusky diamond in a fire-box, after its gaseous matter is expelled, is burned under exactly the same conditions as the brilliant ge...