Does anyone know of any still-active fireless steam locos in North America? A nosecount 20 years ago showed about 15 then, but one by one they seem to have gone away. Fireless cookers have been a lifelong interest of mine and I'm always interested in swapping info on them. There were about 194 of them built in USA,mostly by Porter, others by BLW, Heisler, Vulcan, and Davenport. Fortunately many lasted long enough to make it to preservation.

K3PRR@verizon.net

> Does anyone know of any still-active
> fireless steam locos in North America? A
> nosecount 20 years ago showed about 15 then,
> but one by one they seem to have gone away.
> Fireless cookers have been a lifelong
> interest of mine and I'm always interested
> in swapping info on them. There were about
> 194 of them built in USA,mostly by Porter,
> others by BLW, Heisler, Vulcan, and
> Davenport. Fortunately many lasted long
> enough to make it to preservation.

At the power plant where I work for MIRANT
we had three fireless cookers at one time,
A Vulcan , a Hiesler and a Porter. The last was retired and removed from the property about 1996
One was cut up and the other two were given
to Preservation groups. They were thought to be
to light to move cuts of 100 ton hoppers/ gons

They were charged off a 400 psi reheat steam header. They could run about five hours on a
charge. They were replaced by an Alco S-2 which
itself was replaced by a SW-7

One the Porter is kept on a farm not to far from
my home in Southern Maryland.

Bill Miller

Ebteng18@aol.com

I belive a preservation group in Rochester NY has an active "fireless cooker" or is in the process of making it operable. The name of the operation slips my mind at the moment.

Wowak,

Yes, the Rochester & Genesee Valley Railroad Museum in Rush, NY (just south of Rochester) has a fireless Heisler that we are currently evaluating for possible return to operation. We have already gone through the expense of having the lagging professionally removed, and we are making progress in understanding what we have and how we might make it work given we need to be concerned about the loco and an external source of steam.

Please contact me if anyone has any additional questions.

Until later,
Chris Hauf
Manager - Railroad Equipment
R&GV RR Museum


Steam engines at the R&GV RR Museum

crhauf@frontiernet.net

I have a nominee for "last active fireless steamers":

The Pennsylvania Power & Light power plant in Shamokin Dam, Pa. had two 1949-built Porter 0-6-0F's in service from 1950 to 1973, and retained them in standby/backup service after an Alco switcher was acquired in 1972/73. The locos were last used in 1988 when the Alco suffered a terminal breakdown. They were replaced by a former SP SW late in 1988; as I recall they *might* have shared some winter duty in the winter of 1988/89 when hard freezes necessitated two locos, one for dumping and one for switching the steam-heated thawing sheds for the coal hoppers.

Both these locos are "preserved" in a sense, albeit in open derelict condition in two separate locations--one on a remote track in central Pa. (it had been stuffed and mounted at the plant entrance until the plant changed hands in the mid-1990s), and the other acquired in the late 1980s by one of the Blue Mountain & Reading steam crew and relocated to a back line in the Hamburg, Pa. BM&R steam shops where it may still languish today. Maybe Wayne Laepple can update us on any recent happenings with these locos? I had heard a report/rumor that the Hamburg loco's owner had passed on......

LNER4472-NOSPAM-@bcpl.net