If one is suffering hearing loss from an atomizing oil burner, then A, you are running the atomizer to hard, B the burner is too small and you are being forced to run the atomizer too hard. Either situation is remedy able.

Just how big a locomotive are you planning on building? Will it have a Code Boiler?

I have ridden many oil burners and the small sized ones seem to roar the loudest. Working on a puny 2-4-2 at Six Flags Tx. was the pitiful locomotive that damaged my hearing. We really had to turn up the fire at night to use the steam-turbin and after a few hours of that, when I'd come home at about 1:00 am, I could hear nothing but "roar" that never stopped, after a few weeks that roar I heard at night never stopped again. OSHA came out and shut it all down and made them issue us hearing protection but it was too late. I didn't call them, but someone must have.

I don't know what type of burner it had, but it was sort of quiet at "idle", but roared when running. The Austin steam train association has an SP 2-8-2, and I was offered a cab ride in it and declined because I got in the cab and it was too loud for unprotected ears, but I think it might have been a little bit better than the Six Flags locos, there are two, both loud. I think the larger fire boxes of the bigger locos helps to send the sound out the bottom some how. I guess the larger mass does not vibrate like the smaller thinner boilers seem to do, and that sends off the sound waves into the cab and your ears.

I'm hoping to get started building a 2/3-scale 24" gauge version of a D&RGW, 3-footer here this year, have not decided exactly which version. I doubt I could make it livable (non-hearing protection needed) as an oil burner. Please prove me wrong I'd love to burn oil, I have barrels of the stuff that I get for free from various people that own bull dozers and heavy equipment, they give me the old oil in the barrels.

If it's not "coal" quiet I ain't burning it. I want a calm, "non-ear covering" experience.

I'm not the one to know - half deaf from all the associated barrage of sounds inherent in railroading, heavy machine shop work and takiing shows out on the road. All in all, could be a lot worse an effect given the decades of enjoyment...........I suppose I am like previous generations, accepting that a toll will be taken as a natural consequence of a life of productive effort.

That being said, there's no positive correlation between burning oil and painful ears. Of course, one needn't be married to seat of the pants combustion engineering, flame thrower burners, and marginal drafting arrangements either.

Work it out. If it's too loud, you did it wrong, do it over.

dave

I was at Six Flags last week, performing their annual inspection. Those little engine have burners that are too small, and they have to force fire them. I have let them know that there are other ways to burn oil than to use the atomizer as a jet engine. The engines had suffered in the past from flame impingement, due to the overfiring, but as a boiler inspector, if it isn't a safety issue to do with the pressure containing items, all I can do is suggest. You are right, they overfire those engines, and the burners are LOUD.

The Reader engines all have their original burners that they got in the old days, and unless one is hammering along it is not hard to have a conversation in the cab, at least not anymore than one would in a steam locomotive.

If you are serious about building an engine that big, PM me...if you are in Dallas I am not far from you, (Blue Ridge), and there are several of us in the area that have some expertise in what you are going to try to do. PW Traubert in Plano has built a couple of real successful oil burners for steam service that certainly weren't jet engine like, and he should be able to help you cook up a good brick work as well. He burns nothing but used motor oil-cleanly and quietly, I might add.

BTW I am a Boiler Inspector for the State of Texas, so make sure you get your boiler from a Code shop. I will help you any way I can.

Yep those locos are loud and they only burning "easy to atomize" #2 diesel, if they were trying to atomize bunker C oil it would deafen the passengers on the last seat in the last car!

I'd like to look at a few more oil burners and measure their sound output. I'll admit it, I'm a sceptic, but I'll look at them again.

The supposedly quietest burner is called a "Diffused-flame vaporizing oil burner" and its pretty neat. I posted this link when I was trying to find a quiet oil burner. I investigate everything twice, before i go one to a better solution;

http://www.chaski.org/homemachinist/dow ... hp?id=2717

The design is by a Mr. Edgar T. Westbury. This burner is reported to be almost completely silent, very quiet anyway, so it’s the burner design I could start with. It will create huge BTU from a single tube version also.

I hope you can see the descriptions of the components, that’s the interesting part of this burner. The large loop of tubing that is above the vapor tube is a preheater that allows the fuel to be heated to a near boiling temp prior to its admission into the vapor tube where its mixed with air from the venturi tube. The vapor tube dampens any sound of the expansion and mixing then the fuel/air mixture exits the top of the vapor tube, in the slots above this is where the mix is burned above the burner. So the "mix" is expanded internally and the sound stays in the main slotted tube. THis is easily the neatest highest potential oil burner I've ever even heard of, but I've never even heard of one being in use. I sure would like to see one in action before I tried messing with one.

This burner does require a small fuel tank pressurized to 15-40psi to hold the fuel prior to its admission into the burner, that seems to be the aspect that would really complicate the plumbing and make this not so desirable. I suppose I could try to regulate the pressure to correspond with some aspect of the draft and vary the fuel pressure with that. Maybe that could diminish the need to move the oil lever every 2 seconds (memories of those junkers at Six Flags creeping back again!)

I still think good coal is the way to go, but this burner would be cheaper thats for sure!

Oh I forgot to tell you the guys, at the six flags Mid-America" (I think it was) the guys there came by our TX location to visit once and told me that they had LPG or propane firing on their loco (crown maybe) and that they used ear plugs and head sets over them to dampen the impact on their hearing! They described the sound like an F-15 taking off! What is with these amusement park steamers?

Post script..........if you are going 24", and going to build an outside frame engine, you might consider a full size replica of a little 0-4-4 that Dickson built for Southside Plantation in Louisiana...a k28 or such of the size you are talking about would be quite a project, and would be really complicated.

I can't remember the engine number, but the Narrow Guage & Shortline Gazette published a pretty good set of drawings for it back in the May-June 1982. Really a nice, simple outside frame Forney, with an uber-cute arch windowed steel all weather cab.

Just a suggestion.

You can get away from the pressurized tanks by just preheating the oil in the firebox itself. You should investigate the burner that Martin Bayne did for the Grand Canyon.

BTW actually, heavier oil is quieter, because you don't halfta use as much of it due to its greater caloric value. Just make sure it flows.

Look at the design closley, its not a simple as it looks. This one has to have prsssure.

I'll look at the Martin Bayne Grand Canyon design.

They are all the same. a flat pool and a ripple or two, a side skirt, maybe its covered, etc.. those are still loud. Do you have an old "Shop Services" catalog, it shows all the most sucessful type burners from all the oil burning rr's, those are still the state of the art in non-presurized burners, I'm told. How do I contact Martin Bayne. I heard the GC quit steam.

http://www.martynbane.co.uk/modernsteam/nday/gc/oil.htm

Mybad-it was Nigel Day, and not Martyn Bane.

BTW I was simply talking about using a regular atomizing burner and preheating the fuel...I am not big on compications.

But Martyn has a lot of relevant expertise - as does Nigel, and a few others.......I'd certainly not leave out the Sulzer clusterburners combined with a stainless steel arch, or the Welsh Highland centrally mounted vaporizing design either, set in a firepan with a swirling imparted draft.

Crowns used the Leahy burner, an off the shelf industrial design. Has anybody tried to remanufacture the FEC centrally cored shotgun design, or the Liberty Ship version?

dave

The burner that appears to have the most potential is the;
but, I think its missing a couple of features that could silence it. I might just put all this together and come up with a better mousetrap or silent simple (needing little adjustment) oil burner.

Thanks for your help.

It is all about sizing, burner upkeep and drafting! In '02 or '03 I made a burner(of standard baldwin design) for a large 0-4-0 on the new hopw valley railroad in NC. It was made based upon the sizing chart in the baldwin spec book, It was not loud at all.
At six flags over georgia the atomizer screamed unless at a low fire, the engines had no petticoats and did not draft worth anything. On the grand canyon railway the atomizer was never louder than the locomotive exhaust. In fact, often times one could not enev here the sound of the atomizer. On the GCR note, it was Nigel who designed the burners and the were then produced by GCR machinists.
I would say that if the burner is properly sized and the locomotive is drafting properly that the issue may well be that the burner is either worn out or not adjusted properly(if it is of the ALCO design with an adjustable plate for maintaining proper slot gap at the atomizer opening).

Just a few thoughts.

Hello Jason,

I can verify from first hand experience your claims about the burner at the New Hope Valley Railway. It is still in use and while it is difficult to hold a conversation in the cab going upgrade with the train, it is not due to the action of the burner; steamers are just plain noisy machines! Your burner is easy to use, easy to clean, has no moving parts, is predictable and makes training new firemen in the theories of combustion enjoyable. We've toyed with the idea of running a loop of stainless pipe in the firebox to superheat the atomizing steam but so far that hasn't been necessary. Keeping the burner clean and the combustion space clear of accumulating carbon deposits is all it takes to keep it burning properly and quietly.

Now if we can just get our front end adjusted right. =)

Mike MacLean
Manager, Steam Operations
New Hope Valley Railway

PS. Jason, next time you are in town, you should drop by the rr.

High noise levels on oil burners are caused by.

1 high atomising presures
2 wet atomizing steam
3 poor burner design.
4 burner layout where the equivilent of a hole in the fire bed on a coal burner ocurrs

GCR burners are weir type. My prefered round flat burners are not used there.

Dave mentioned the FEC burner; I used to fire the 148 and I don't remember it being loud at all. Of course it was thirty-odd years ago- This whole thread about oil burners being noisy was a revelaton to me.