In 1965, the Columbus & Southern Ohio Electric Co. donated a pair of Heisler fireless locomotives to the Penn Ohio Railfans, Inc. in Youngstown, OH. Penn Ohio is the predecessor to the Mahoning Valley Railroad Heritage Association. The locomotives were to move on their own wheels from Groveport, OH on the C&O to Marion, interchanged with the Erie Lackawanna and moved to Penn Ohio's siding in Canfield, OH.

C&SO No. 2 developed problems enroute and had to be loaded on a flatcar to make it the rest of the way to Canfield. The loading was done by hand by one of the members using borrowed jacks, cribbing and two I beams. Penn Ohio filed a claim with the EL alleging mishandling of the shipment, but the claim was denied.

I happen to have some of the correspondence between the EL and Penn Ohio regarding this claim, and have uploaded it to Flickr. These two locomotives still exist, one is at the MVRHA's facility in Youngstown, the other one is in front of the Old Station Express restaurant in downtown Sharon, PA.

I have a great interest in what I call the "history of preservation". Had I not salvaged these documents years ago the history of how these locomotives made it up here from Groveport would have been lost forever. But with them, we can visualize what that little Heisler must have been going through barreling down the Erie mainline with woefully off balanced drivers!

Enjoy!
https://www.flickr.com/photos/33523379@ ... 488383770/

I was just wondering, what does the "boiler" of a fireless cooker look like?

Obliviously no tubes, no holes in the tube sheet or the front sheet.

Does it even have a tube sheet?

Stays?

Throttle on the top?

No firebox.

Thicker or thinner boiler shell?

How do you get into boiler for maintenance?

Does it have washout plugs and blowdowns?

-Hudson

It's just a tank like those used industrially. I suppose you could go in through the dome just like on a boiler. I don't know if any were equipped with oval access hatches whose covers push outward from inside (so pressure makes them seal tighter). No tubes so no tube sheets. Nothing to stay.

Actually there are many similarities between a fireless cooker reservoir and a conventional boiler of a similarly sized locomotive. No, there is no firebox, mud ring, and stays, but the construction of the tank itself to include the butt strap, steam dome, and on some, the throttle valve, is all very conventional. Entry to the tank, as on a conventional locomotive, is via the steam dome. There are wash out plugs, water glass, tri-cocks, etc.

The real differences come up in other areas. On the small one that I was part of owner of, the drifting valves were built into the slide valves and breathed then via the exhaust pipes. Since there is no ash or cinders, breathing through the exhaust pipes made sense and the rattle of the valves in the steam chest was a very unique sound for sure. The Johnson bar quadrant also have far more notches than a conventional locomotive providing far more adjustment for the operator. On ours, she was charged to 150psi and came in for a recharge at 50psi, usually about four hours of operation.

The other nice thing is that with no soot and cinders, wear and tear on the running gear may not be nearly as bad as found conventional locomotive.

The attched provides a bit of detail.

Hi,

As you probably know, especially in Live Steam, you can have gas mechanical, gas electric and battery powered locomotive.

GAS may be changed for diesel.

The steam locomotive and the fireless locomotive are very similar (in my opinion). Both have steam engines (frame, pistons, rods and valve gears, etc.

Both have a pressure vessel (more frequently called a boiler).

Now then, in a diesel power locomotive, the diesel engine is roughly equal to the firebox. The battery is roughly equal to the pressure vessel.

To recharge the battery on your car, you use a battery charger. For a fireless cooker you use an external steam line to charge the pressure vessel.

Steam from the pressure vessel is used to drive the engine (as defined above).

A boiler is really the power generator (firebox) plus the pressure vessel.

A very rough equivalency but may help in understanding.

We call them steam engines or diesel engines when we really mean a locomotive since the locomotive includes the engine, transmission, wheels/drivers, cab, and other items. Tender for fuel in a steam locomotive and fuel tanks under the chassis in a diesel.

Sort of like we call the engine in the automobile a "motor" when it is really an engine.

In a steam locomotive, the "motor" is really the pistons and rods and valve gear. A diesel F1 or SD50-2 and an electric (Little Joe or GG1) has motors to turn the wheels.

Doug vV <GRIN>

Hi
Someone asked what does a fireless cooker look like, here a drawing I found on line. Pat

The attachment comes out a bit small, at least for me. Here's a link to the diagram, which comes out a good deal larger:

http://www.whippanyrailwaymuseum.net/im ... COOKER.jpg

Is there any operable fireless engines out there?

What was the typical range for one?

Whats the reasoning for the water?

The water continues to boil off into steam as the pressure in the "boiler" drops.

If you had just a tank filled with steam you would have a very short amount of time it would run.

From Wikipedia.....

WESP beat mne to it.....

As to the water, you have to keep in mind the basic premise that the temperature at which water boils rises as pressure increases. At sea level, its about 212 degrees, but under pressure of 150psi, the boiling point is about 350 degrees.

The energy stored in the fireless tank is not simply steam, its hot water under pressure. So, in the case of the little Apache #6, the tank was filled about three quarters full with warm water, then high pressure steam is fed in through the bottom of the tank, heating the water until the max pressure of 150psi was reached. The locomotive was now full charged.

As steam is used, and pressure drops, the water flashes into steam providing additional steam. Really the energy is stored in the tank in the form of hot water, say at about 300+ degrees. Its a very cool concept when you think about it. Again, the bottom line is that the energy is stored in the super heated water. If you just filled the tank with steam, it would not run for very long.

There are some fireless steam engines still running in Europe and someplace I read that new engines were being built, or older engines restored, for new applications.

The Apache #6 would operate for about 3-4 hours on a charge moving cars around in an explosives plant in Arizona.

Oh my, two other guys beat me ahead--oh well--



There are a number of fireless steamers in operation in Europe, some built as recently as the 1980s. Now and as before, they have advantages of being economical to operate if you have a large source of steam handy, and they have no exhaust fumes or fire hazard, and are in fact superior to diesels in that regard in a place that might have an explosive atmosphere, such as an oil refinery or chemical plant.

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_ ... locomotive

The Lake Shore Railway Museum does occasionally operate a fireless engine built by Heisler. From the videos I've seen of it, they run it on compressed air.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=voBKRe6V3tA

My YouTube search also turned up this machine; does anybody know where it is?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1eksTQLF19c

I don't know about "range" in terms of distance, which would be a bit academic given that these engines were used in industrial switching. What I have read about them was that they had a working time of about four hours or more, depending on use. This worked out nicely in that the engine could be recharged during lunch breaks and shift changes. I understand recharging time was about 20 minutes.

That water in the tank was an essential part of the stored energy in a fireless engine.

The principle is that water boils at higher temperatures than the standard 212F/100C when it's under pressure. That's what makes a boiler explosion so catastrophic; you might have 1,000 gallons of water in the boiler, maybe at a temperature of 700F, and it's like a coiled spring, instantly flashing to steam and expanding to 1,600 times it's volume as water in a fraction of a second.

In the fireless engine, the water is heated to the temperature of the steam above it. When the throttle is opened, pressure drops in the pressure vessel, and some of the water flashes into steam. This continues until either pressure drops too low to move the engine (typically about 50 psi), or until it gets too cool to flash into steam.

> My YouTube search also turned up this machine; does anybody know where it is?
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1eksTQLF19c

Yes, that was Apache Powder #6 which I owned with a partner, Dom Visconti, and which we ran on his farm here in southern NJ. Dom is seen running it in this video which was taken just about two weeks before he died suddenly. As a result of his death the little pot needed a new home and today is part of the Arizona State RR Museum collection. Going back "home" to Arizona seemed appropriate. A sister engine operates in Ohio.

J.R. May
Wall, NJ

I found this on some fireless engines running in Cuba back in 1998:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VixrQYaBvz0

I identified two of the three different 0-4-0F's in this video and, thanks to the info in Adolf Hungry Wolf's booklet "Trains of Cuba", the info is below:

Number 1169 was built by Baldwin in 1917 (c/n 46254)

Number 1172 was built by O&K in 1912 (c/n 5083) Note the cylinders under the cab!

I can't identify the second engine; the one with the large round dome. Mr. Hungry Wolf's book shows two other Baldwin's there; numbers 1170 and 1171. This video is interesting in that it shows the acceleration of these little tea kettles. Also interesting is that they "chuff" much more than Heisler number 6 at the Lake Shore museum. Could that be because they are running on steam, rather than compressed air? Finally of note are the spinning drivers, the "gyrations" of the one engineer, and the "bobbing" as the little engines went over this rough sugar mill trackage.


Les

Point not made further above: The operating pressure of fireless boilers were substantially above "normal" steam power. An ordinary 0-6-0 may operate at 175-250 PSI depending on size and age, whereas some of the last fireless locos built by Porter were designed for a boiler pressure starting from the charge point at 600 PSI, with reduction down to the throttle and cylinders.