"Hey, back off on the oil valve, Hans...."

http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.p ... 898&nseq=1

Wow, that must have been an exciting lightoff. Usually fire shoots out the vents and firedoor and flash pan along with all of that. I've never seen it make it up the stack before unless the thing was hopelessly sooted up. I assume the Germans sand flues also?

Among the best lines I've ever heard dropped in railroading (in response to a heavy firing hand): "The Germans will never find us now!"

Kudos to Fritz the ashcat on the relight.

I did that once when I was about 18 trying to relight the fire off of the red hot firebrick. I know better now. All you need is a burning paper towel in there to avoid that situation.

Reminds me of the Chesapeake and Allegheny live steamers night run over 10 years ago where a member with an inch-and-a-half scale oil-burner had a flame out while running and didn't just turn off the oil and stop for a re-light. Had to try one more time to get it to re-light, after the tubes and smokebox were full of raw fuel. Being night it was a rather spectacular (and fortunately fairly harmless) result. Blew the entire smokebox cover off the engine (there were only 3 actual bolts holding it on, and it ended up hanging on the engine only by the wires to the headlight.

By the way, my experience in the smaller scales leads me to believe that if you're building a live steamer, and it's not a model of an oil-burner, just make it a coal burner. Oil burners in the smaller scales are really touchy to get to work right. I believe that the lesson was learned in a larger size when they built the copies of the Golden Spike locos and decided to make them oil burners. From what I understand they were hard to fire, until they were converted to what the originals were designed to burn - wood and coal.

I've re lit them on hot brick before but I remember one time I had a student fireman on the engine (a locomotive notorious but putting herself out while on a spot fire) and I was standing on the ground when I heard the fire go out> I told him to close the firing valve while I was climbing up the gangway. Instead,he opened the valve wide open. The resulting BOOM enveloped the cab with fire and was heard a pretty good distance away,as well as had fire and a mushroom cloud come from the stack.( I was told this later by the train crew.) I yanked the emergency fuel cutoff,and saw the student running out toward the yard. He quit that afternoon.

My experience, don't use a fusee. Paper sand bags and a little bit of K1 work much better, when you have them.

We had a hard time lighting the 1702 one time in late October. Fought cold oil for a day and gave up before the needle even moved. (fussee flashback was just before this decision, and after we ran out of sand bags, incidently). We were supposed to get some warm fuel first thing in the AM, so why fight it?! Next moring the fuel truck showed up with 40 degree #4. Turns out they quit heating the oil just a few days before because it was eating up their transfer pumps. We spent the better part of that day with a rosebud propped up under the burner to keep the cab fires to a minimum, and keep our eyebrows. Took all day to get close to the pops. I vowed when we put her back together it would have a line heater separate from the blower manifold so we could line heat the oil as soon as we had a couple psi., while still using air to atomize and draft.

Some times it's just easier to have a shovel. . .

Ryan

We put a tee in the oil line between the tender and the firing valve on 1522 and lit her off on diesel fuel and compressed air. Burned that until we had about 30 psi and had heated the oil, then cut over. Worked like a champ. Before that we used wood, which is an awful way to bring up steam. Messy and plays hell with the flash pan.