DISCLAIMER: From the rumor mill. Not derived from an official press release or other first-party source.

I don't normally post water cooler conversation-type stuff, but I don't know if the below is factual, or if this is non-factual rumor-mongering.

As posted on Trainorders, Tom Payne (of the RDG #2100) has been hired/contracted for the conversion of the #4014 to oil firing.

Ummm....

True, or not true?

Trainorders thread: http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?10,3533455

Its already been talked about they will convert 4014 to Oil.

I wouldn't touch it with a 20 foot fire rake.

I dunno what is true anymore. I do feel something is 'wrong' at UP steam but I think Hotwater especially is loosing a lot of credibility with all the strange things he posts. I'm 100% convinced the ONLY way we will know the truth of what is going on over there is to wait 5 years and see where UP steam is at then.

I find it coincidental that the discussion on 2100/Payne came up in the last couple weeks and suddenly that's "Ed's choice" for the conversion expert.

I think we all learned a lot about the best way not to convert a coal burner with a huge firebox into an oil burner.........and that's worthwhile. It still leaves the door wide open to other interesting mistakes.

dave

2 things:

1) The post on TO says he has been "contacted" not "contracted". Big difference.
2) While there's definitely something not right in the state of Denmark at the UP steam shop many of the people on TO just complain consistently about Ed Dickens. If there is actual news about things going on, like when Todd posted pictures of the 844 tubes, that's one thing but they just do everything they can to drag his name through the mud. It's really quite childish.

Given the experiences UP suffered with 3985 setting large swaths of grass fires wherever it went in its short tenure as a coal burner in the 1980s, as well as the simplicity of fueling with diesel fuel instead of finding and bringing to site suitable coal, I have trouble fathoming that the UP didn't plan for oil-firing of 4014 from the very first inkling of an idea for operation of any Big Boy.

The only real question is, is the firebox of a 4000-class suitable for conversion to oil, and in what manner? Anyone with an iota of foresight would have found a way to crunch the engineering numbers and have a plan for this in advance of pursuing a Big Boy.

The cynic in me suggests, nefariously, that UP may have contacted Payne and the 2100 crew, gleaned information from them, thanked them, then turned around and said "Okay, whatEVER you do, don't do that!!!!"

Yeah, something like that or maybe, as a TO poster put it, a cynical way to probe for information leaks.

In fairness, the mistakes that were made by Dickens were poorly conceived attempts at improvements. It wasn't known in advance they'd cause harm whereas to do anything based on Payne's methods have already been demonstrated to cause damage and not steam the engine well. And that's not even as large a firebox.

Steve

I don't want to start something here that will end up getting the thread locked, but
nearly everything Dickens changed were things that he was warned work well and
should be left alone.

Some of the things he tried and that failed had been tried as far back as the 1930s
and been proven time and again to fail or not give the desired results. This was very
well known and documented. The information on so many things was readily available, but was ignored. So he plunged ahead and did it anyway, and got predictable results.

For those just starting out, this, along with a couple of other restorations that began with great fanfare and ended in failure, should be good object lessons.

There are a couple of operable engines that go nowhere now, because somebody was going to "show everyone else how it should be done!" Not coincidentally, they also
tend to blame their issues on everyone else but themselves.

I never knew the 3985 burned Diesel fuel, don't you mean fuel oil?

and I never heard getting coal was a problem because when it ran it's first trip in 1987 it used coal on a trip out of Denver to Laramie in Oct 1987 that used the 6936 on the first and last legs in Colorado.

Bob H.

Using clean and lighter fuel oil (relative to bunker or heavy or waste oil) leaves a lot of more efficient technology available apart from the old style Van Boden burners......one would hope advantage would be taken of something like vaporizing burners used in multiple clusters in a firebox as large as this one. The Brits and the Swiss are light years ahead of us in that regard.

dave

Back in the early 1980s, UP and it's lab developed a spec for fuel oil for it's
steam locomotives. The viscosity, flash point, etc. we're very similar to #5
fuel oil, which is much cleaner and easier to get and to handle than either
bunker C, #6 or plain old unprocessed waste oil.

As the years went by, several other oil-fired steam operations adopted the same
spec or something very close to it.

One of the changes made in 2011 was to use #2 diesel instead. I have never heard
why that was done, but it had predictable results and resulted in some warped
side sheets in 844's nearly new firebox that had to be repaired. They also suffered
a lot of leaking gaskets and other undesired side effects.

Large locomotives do not like straight #2 diesel fuel. It requires a lot more of it, the fire has to be forced, there is too much smoke, etc. In an emergency situation, such as unexpected delays, using some #2 will get you to the next place where you can get the proper fuel, but that is about all it's good for. Finally, #2 is a lot more expensive in the first place, and the fact that it takes so much more of it to get the same results as smaller quantities of heavier fuel pretty much wipes out any perceived cost advantage. In the long run. all things taken into consideration, #2 costs a lot more.

This is known, and has been known, for at least 3 decades, but was cavalierly dismissed.

As far as I know (which admittedly isn't very far) UP very quietly went back to the old spec for steam locomotive fuel after this unnecessary trip up the learning curve.

Sigh.

Like most things it depends on how you do it. #2 can be used properly if you are set up to use it properly. Burning it in a setup based on technology designed for bunker or heavy oil will of course not work as well. Try running your gasoline engine on lamp oil......

dave

Disney is a big proponent of no. 2 in their engines. Much smaller fireboxes of course. Is the volume of the fire a big factor in this discussion?

Story is that Disney uses no. 2 for cleanliness.

Thanks for all the responses!


Now, how did that "r" get in there?

Oops!