How many Worthington BL Feedwater Heaters made it into preservation? Do any operate? We've seen many of them in historical photos, but would like to get a close look at one, if such exists.

Thanks,

JR

There may be others, but one I do know about is N&W 2050, a Y3a 2-8-8-2 at the Illinois Railway Museum, Union, Ill.:

http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPi ... id=1240428

Scroll side to side to look at this document (and to find its entry for the 2050):

http://www.rgusrail.com/ilirmshed.html

A variety of photographs of engines of this class from the N&W Historical Society archives:

https://www.nwhs.org/archivesdb/selectd ... pe=Picture

Greetings:
Western Maryland Scenic No.734 had one, it was removed, but last time I was at Ridgely, it was still lying on the ground near the shop.
All of the Lake Superior & Ishpeming 2-8-0s had them, although most were removed by the modern day operators except for LS&I No.33, currently under restoration at the Age of Steam Roundhouse.
Dick Jensen's No.5629 had one and it used to become "steam bound" (probably due to leaking piston rings in the pump). One of the "duties" of the Jensen representative riding on the locomotive was to get the pump working again when it stopped. The procedure was to go out and lay down on your belly on the running board and reach down and open up the steam end drain valves, the fireman would shut off the pump, once it stopped blowing steam, you would close the drain valves, the pump would be restarted and then would work fine.
J.David

Grand Canyon Railway locomotives #18 and #29 both had Worthington BL heaters on them and both operated with them for several years in service on GCRY. The one on 18 has since been removed and replaced with an injector. I believe, but am not certain, that the BL on 29 met the same fate. Both are likely still in storage somewhere there.

The BL contained the cold water pump, heating chamber, and hot water pump in one fairly compact unit about the size of a cross compound air compressor. Both pumps were driven by the same steam cylinder on a common shaft. It used an open heating system, meaning that the exhaust steam used to heat the water was in direct contact with the cold water in the heating chamber. One of the benefits of this is that some of the steam is condensed during the heating process and reused in the boiler. As I recall, Worthington claimed something like a 12 to 17% savings in water. That was an attractive benefit on a railroad where water was very scarce and expensive like GCRY.

When everything worked as intended they functioned well. They did have a few quirks that took some getting used to though. If, for some reason the cold water pump lost its prime the fireman had to crawl out on the running board and open the vent cocks on the pump to get it to pick up again. Not fun at track speed. When the heater was working, the heating chamber was operating at whatever the cylinder back pressure was at the time with the water being heated to something over its boiling point. Any change the engineer made that reduced back pressure, such as reducing the throttle or even hooking the reverse up a notch, would cause the heated water in the heating chamber to flash to steam and the hot water pump would be trying to pump steam rather than water. This caused the pump to race until the heating chamber filled with hot water again which, for some reason, often caused the cold water pump to lose its prime. Not something you wanted to have to deal with while climbing the 3% grade to Apex.

They required fairly regular maintenance of the check valves to keep them operating properly. I suspect GCRY decided they weren't worth the effort required to keep them in operation.

Russ

"Not fun at track speed". Joking, or did you really climb out their underway?

Baldwin 60,000 in Philadelphia has one.

Ex-SP 2472 at GGRM.

SP 2-10-2's 982 and 975 have them...

I thought that the BL was a closed system in that they used a bundle in an enclosed package to heat the water where the SA was an open system with exhaust steam mixing with incoming water. The SA also has a vent so oxygen can be driven out, open to the atmosphere. However I do not know much about the BL either.

No, not joking. We really did.



The BL heater works essentially the same as the SA heater. Cold water is sprayed directly into the heating chamber which is filled with exhaust steam. Otherwise, the SA system is a completely different animal. It is, in my experience, more reliable.

Russ

My understanding back then was that the Feedwater Heater on WMSR #734 was damaged and deemed not repairable as to why it was removed and not replaced during the rebuilding.

LS&I 35 at IRM has one as well.
http://www.irm.org/cgi-bin/rsearch.cgi? ... hpeming=35

Jeff

N&W 2156 still has a BL.

Didn't Cass Heisler No. 6 have one of these when it was owned by Meadow River Lumber Co.?

Yes. There is a photo of it at RailPictures.net taken by Tom Sink.

Don Fenstermacher