This came through on railpictures.net, I was wondering if she is still around. She was hard at working into the 1970's.

http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.p ... 61&nseq=22

Possibly this one

http://www.steamlocomotive.info/vlocomo ... splay=1521

There are a couple of other fireless cookers here and there in West Virginia also.

The total history for the St. Albans loco in the Steam Loco Directory of North America doers include "Appalachian Power (no #)". I say it's probably a match.

There are two other fireless Porter 0-4-0F's listed in Conrad's SLDNA in 1988, at Parsons Tanning in Parsons, WV (alleged by SteamLoco.info to be have been sold to a party in Phillippi, WV) and Ohio Power's Windsor Station in Power, WV. None of any of the above fireless locos were listed in the 1967 Koenigsberg US Steam Loco Directory. Koenigsberg does list three C&O Porter 0-6-0F's on the chemical plant island of Blaine Island near South Charleston; I have all three listed as scrapped, with a cryptic note "one poss preserv w/2700 Charleston as per Trains 5-86 p14"

But THEN there's this alleged Appalachian Power "Alco" 0-4-0F in Hinton:
http://www.steamlocomotive.info/vlocomo ... splay=6420
which does look, at a distance, to be a visual match to the RailPictures photo....

Curiouser and curiouser...........

I would say the one in Hinton is a match. Every detail of the compressor piping matches up perfectly. It's also interesting that she is an Alco fireless and not a Porter.

The "Alco" c/n provided does not match up with any such number provided in the SLDNA. 25425 would be older than any other Alco subsidiary loco preserved (Michigan Central 4-4-2 in Henry Ford Museum is 25887, 1902)........

My money is on her not being an Alco.

Guys, here is the report on the fireless Cooker up at Steamtown.


http://www.nps.gov/history/history/onli ... /shs2q.htm

Perhaps I can contribute some information:

Porter 7971 worked at Cabin Creek Jct., WV. I shot it there several times in the 1960s and early 1970s.

Alco never built a fireless loco to my knowledge.

Porter built the overwhelming percentage of North American fireless locos. Heisler built 33 under their name before selling the product line to Porter in 1941. Two or three Heislers under production at the time were delivered as Porters. Porter b/n 7330 is definitely one of these hybrids.

Baldwin built a few fireless for US buyers but their main market was Cuba.

Vulcan built just a few fireless and only one for a US buyer. That's b/n 4759, now preserved at Dennison, OH.

Davenport, after buying out Porter's loco business in 10/50, built a few more fireless to Porter designs. The last of those was delivered in 8/54 to Potomac Power in the DC area. It's been scrapped.

The Porter fireless at Parsons Tanning Co., Parsons, WV was b/n 7964. Supposedly sold to the touristy place on US 50 just west of Macomber, WV but it it ever went there it didn't stay long.

The Porter at Power, WV (along the Ohio River north of Wheeling) was b/n 7275 and was scrapped along with the power plant in the 1970s/80s.

To the best of my knowledge there is not an active fireless loco in the US at this time. If you know of one, educate us. (By "active" I mean in commercial use, not one that some museum pumps up once a year.)

It then sat on a siding in Hinton, WV for awhile before being moved to St. Albans. So, it is one and the same; the ALCO builder's information is incorrect, and the record itself is a duplicate.

Besides H.K. Porter and Heisler, Baldwin also built a few fireless locomotives; there are/were a couple of examples in Cuba. Baldwin and Porter also built compressed air locomotives; they were basically the chassie of a fireless steam locomotive with one or more compressed air tanks and a pressure reducing valve replacing the "thermos bottle." There were a pair of Baldwin built Plymouth Cordage Co. compressed air locomotives preserved at the Edaville RR.

As mentioned; ALCO built neither fireless nor compressed air locomotives.



It is now stored at the Blue Mountain & Reading, Hamburg, PA.

BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ. Try again.

http://www.steamlocomotive.info/vlocomo ... splay=1083

There's a LOT of "junk" hiding in South Hamburg, but I don't think they have an 0-4-0F. The two Sunbury Steam Electric Station Porters (Porter 8189 and 8190, among the last Porter steamers built for domestic use) are my "hometown steamers," so I tend to obsess over them............

According to one list I found online, Porter built 81 0-4-0F's and 33 0-6-0F's: http://www.catskillarchive.com/rrextra/portchrt.Html

According to my notes; the one in your picture is H.K. Porter 8190/1949, owned by David Shirey, and stored at Hamburg. I am familiar with it, due to my own obsession with steam pumps:

http://www.steampump.org/gallery2/main. ... temId=1254

http://www.steampump.org/gallery2/main. ... temId=1259

There is supposed to be another PA Power and Light fireless, the 0-4-0F that is the one from Parsons Tanning; stored there as well. Perhaps someone can straighten this out for us; it does look like I got the two confused with in my notes; but need feet on the ground to confirm it for me.

While Alco never built any Fireless engines, it should be noted at they were offered in their catalog....there were just no takers. I came across this while researching the "preserved fireless" columns that appeared in Railfan & Railroad earlier this year.

Here's a Plymouth Cordage engine preserved in Toronto:

http://trainweb.org/oldtimetrains/indus ... ordage.htm

OK, so maybe you don't count 'museums that pump them up once a year', but hey, are there any OPERATIONAL ONES AT ALL ANYWHERE except this Heisler one at Lake Shore?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZNlvDFzTa8

This has been a topic of debate on whether or not one pumped up with air is operational or not; i.e. if you're not running off of waste steam are you running?

To me the 'fuel' has nothing to do with it....this runs. And if anybody else has one or knows of one that still runs....let us know!

Here's the problem: Read up on "fireless steamers". They were NOT just filled with "waste steam;" to properly operate with a full "charge" they were filled with a combination of superheated steam and water to an extremely high pressure, usually much higher than even most mainline steamers. (The boiler pressure on Strasburg 2-10-0 90? 200 PSI. The BP on Porter 0-6-0F's 8189 and 8190 at Sunbury Steam Electric Station: 600 PSI!) The water was thus itself under pressure and superheated well above 100 degrees C.; as the steam was used and pressure dropped, more water would flash into steam. Therefore the vessel of a fireless steamer is properly a boiler. It's not something you can just fill up from Joe's traction engine or even another steam locomotive boiler. I saw, up close, the steam connections to the fireless steamers at the PP&L plant from which Porter 8189 and 8190 came; they were impressive with concrete foundations, like comparing a fire hydrant or fire engine connections to your garden hose.

The only kind of location where a fireless could be "properly" demonstrated would be at a location with a massive boiler, such as a power plant, refinery, or the like. That is far beyond the capacity of a typical preserved railway or thresher group.

I have a video taken by author Adolf Hungry Wolf of Cuba steam and there is a short segment which shows a fireless cooker in operation. Man, when that guy opened the throttle, that thing took off like a bat out of hell! I hadn't thought too much of those "stored steam" engines, but that little segment really opened my eyes!

Les