If a museum or private railroad with mainline had an engine that was returning to active service and they wanted to "upgrade" the loco by installing a mechanical stoker to meet the needs and demands of the engine AND it was a sure fire money maker, how hard would it be to do so when it never had one in the first place?

I believe the stoker conveyer just bolts on to the back of the boiler. then there is installing the trough in the tender and the stoker engine, plus finding all these parts.

Also, I suspect the firebox door openng on the boiler may have to enlarged horizontally.

What system are you thinking of?

maybe for today scrounge around farm parts, you will have to make a trough in the tender and channel piping to the engine and make steam spray nozzles to knock the coal into the firebox.

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You can buy a new or rebuilt stoker from China. A stoker can be retrofitted on any boiler with a good boilermaker and blacksmith just as it was done in the old days. Yes, WMSR did install a stoker on the 734. Please note I did not do any of the work and I don't want to say anything is easy when I was not involved. With that said someone told me her sister engines were built with stokers and her installation might have been easier since the basic design was such as to accommodate a stoker.

I seem to recall some scuttlebutt a couple years ago about stoker problems with the two QJs that came over, ran a bit and have not been heard from again recently. Anybody involved know what's going on with that?

dave

When the Milw 261 crew was running Henry Posner III's QJ's a few years ago, the stokers in both engines were inop. We had to hand bomb them. I'm told the Chinese prefered to hand bomb them anyway because they could fire more efficiently that way. I don't know if that's true, but it's possible I guess.

I was also told that the stokers in Posner's QJ's were not QJ designed. They had come from a smaller type, I think SY if memory serves.
I suspect that by now they've worked the bugs out and the stokers probably run fine.
When we ran them, they were pretty much fresh right off the boat.
Mark D.