I recall a situation on a turn of the century narrow gauge 2-8-0 with a long narrow firebox having a "dead grate" at the front of the firebox under the rear flue sheet. The idea being to reduce the tendency of the draft lifting the coal and fire in the very front of the box off the grates and plugging the lower flues, thereby forcing the draft toward the rear of the firebox.

The later owner of the engine, in an attempt to make it steam better, removed the dead grate and installed conventional grates increasing the live great area. The results were questionable at best.

PRR blanked the grates on its Camelback E1 4-4-2's around 1900.

In the 1890's the P&R-CNJ was cleaning PRR's clock on Phila-Jersey City and Camden-Atlantic City service with Camelback 4-4-2's and wide fireboxes burning good lump anthracite (the Wootten firebox was designed to burm culm, or waste anthracite). This would include B&O's Wash-JC trains as well.

PRR tried a number of different grate areas with their three E1 Camelbacks as the test beds. They blanked parts of the grate and fired them on bituminous. 66 sq. ft. seemed to work best. The E2, E3 an E5 4-4-2's all had 66 sq. ft. grates in mostly Belpaire but some round-top fireboxes. (off topic but PRR was so thorough they imported a French 4-cylinder De Glehn cmpound 4-4-2.)

Phil Mulligan

The 'fun' PRR experimental was the von Borries two-cylinder and 84" drivers with a Euro-style 3-axle tender. There are actually pictures of this pulling a passenger consist at speed, I think on the straight section in New Jersey. (This was the original class T)

I'd be interested to read about the Atlantic grate experiments -- are they in one of the sources like Railway Age Gazette?

Does anyone have a copy of Westing's book that contained the long runs without need for firing? The classes he listed would be the 'poster children' for effective grate and draft arrangements...

Does anyone have a copy of Westing's book that contained the long runs without need for firing? The classes he listed would be the 'poster children' for effective grate and draft arrangements...[/quote]

In "Pennsy Steam and Semaphores" Fred Westing gives some data on banking or coking method of firing of the E2 Atlantics in 1905. A quick look at the table of runs looks like the average distance without firing is around 50 miles. The experiment was ended when they looked at the extra labor in building up the fires at the engine terminals.

Experiments with blanking part of grates was done after some engine crews had done it on their own. PRR ran tests both on the road and on the Altoona test plant in 1907 on the E2 class. They compared grate areas of 39.5 and 29.76 with the full grate area of 55.5 sq.ft. The PRR considered that the experiment was a failure.

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Kelly is, of course, right. 7002 has 55 sq. ft. He had to have 7002 up and running every morning.

Classes E6s, G5s, H9s, H10s also have 55 sq. ft. grates.

Interestingly, a D16sb such as 1223 has 33 sq. ft.

Phil Mulligan

A point to remember is that a D16sb has a narrow, but deep, firebox -- like most other American types. These make far better use of the radiant heat (fourth power of temperature) evolving in the combustion plume.

One of the more interesting express locomotive designs were the various 4-8-0s Chapelon developed, which used narrow fireboxes and could handle substantial trains with good accelerating and grade-climbing power. (The French railroads under Blum et al. had a hard speed limit and this required running close to that speed as much as possible, a very different operating regimen from much North American passenger operation.