Its cold out and I am bored, but out of curiosity, does anyone have any details of firebox construction on Tee boilers as were used on early geared engines. Specifically, were the fireboxes completely circular including the rear tube sheet? If they were, it seems to me that rolling tubes could be VERY interesting.

Any detail drawings on the net?

Boot boilers always seemed to be a real hard way to design and build a boiler, kinda like wet bottom traction engine boilers seemed a needless complication.

lorija799@aol.com

> Its cold out and I am bored, but out of
> curiosity, does anyone have any details of
> firebox construction on Tee boilers as were
> used on early geared engines. Specifically,
> were the fireboxes completely circular
> including the rear tube sheet? If they were,
> it seems to me that rolling tubes could be
> VERY interesting.

> Any detail drawings on the net?

> Boot boilers always seemed to be a real hard
> way to design and build a boiler, kinda like
> wet bottom traction engine boilers seemed a
> needless complication.

The fire boxes are flat in the tube sheet area, and circular below, as though the top 1/2 of a pop can was partly squished to form a flat on one side to make a kind of a reverse combustion chamber. I think that the idea behind the design was intial evolution from a vertical boiler, with the goal of keeping all of the heating surface below the water line.

> The fire boxes are flat in the tube sheet
> area, and circular below, as though the top
> 1/2 of a pop can was partly squished to form
> a flat on one side to make a kind of a
> reverse combustion chamber. I think that the
> idea behind the design was intial evolution
> from a vertical boiler, with the goal of
> keeping all of the heating surface below the
> water line.

You, sir, are a gentleman and a scholar! That is what I had figured.

Now for the really esoteric;was it as much an evolution of the vertical boiler or the earlier Bury type?

lorija799@aol.com

> You, sir, are a gentleman and a scholar!
> That is what I had figured.

> Now for the really esoteric;was it as much
> an evolution of the vertical boiler or the
> earlier Bury type?

If you really want drawings the California RR Museum Library has several Lima drawings. I've never heard the reason they built this type of boiler, as conventional locomotive boilers were the norm at that time. (1870- 1900). Maybe it was the large steam space above the firebox?
Mike Nix


http://members.aol.com/aqualieb/projectspage.html
2rivers@upstel.net

> If you really want drawings the California
> RR Museum Library has several Lima drawings.
> I've never heard the reason they built this
> type of boiler, as conventional locomotive
> boilers were the norm at that time. (1870-
> 1900). Maybe it was the large steam space
> above the firebox?
> Mike Nix

I think the main reason is that Shay (followed by Lima) had no previous history of building locomotive boilers, and may have been more comfortable with the "tee" design than with the convention stayed locomotive boiler.

As the firm became more "mainstream", and built larger boilers, they probably then decided to switch to conventional stayed locomotive boilers.

At least one builder of portable steam engines in France (Merlin) also used "tee" boilers. One thought is that does seem to be an extension of the vertical boiler, which both Shay and Merlin may have been comfortable with. A picture of a "Merlin" is included in "Surviving World Steam Vehicles".

-James Hefner
Hebrews 10:20a

Surviving World Steam Vehicles
james1@pernet.net

Lima was building conventional rod locomotives with conventionally stayed fireboxes right alongside the earliest Shays, if not before. From an engineering standpoint, a Tee boiler is quite different from a verticle, the tall firebox section not with standing. Heisler and Climax both built tee boilered engines with a "flat sided",radial and sling stayed, not round tall firebox section.

lorija799@aol.com