Ross,

I believe in an earlier post that on one of the Port Jervis trips you said the 614 broke a piston ring and required diesel assist to finish.

During operation, how do you tell that a piston ring is broken? Is there a marked loss in power? Does steam vent from both cylinder cocks when they are open? I am curious.

From my tech library resources it appears that modern locomotive pistons, in the case of the 614, are of the Timken variety? It appears the rings are segmented and are retained by an internal spring retaining wire. If you break a ring, do the pieces fly out of the piston grooves? It would seem can the pieces could score the cylinder or valve sleeves or worse, break or peen over the sleeve port openings. Sounds like a nasty and possibly expensivee problem.

I would be interested in how these get repaired and how quick could you do it in the heat of battle? Do you keep spare ring segments on hand in case this happens? Did you experience this during the January 1985 tests?
It would be interesting to hear your experiences while out on the road.

I assume pulling pistons from the 614 requires some serious midwife skills....not for the timid.

Thanks,

Randy Musselman

An article in TRAINS soon after these trips describes the failure and the repair in the field.

When a piston ring lets go there is an immediate loss of power and a loud pronounced blow by in that piston with a commenserate loss of power. Fortunatly that ring self destructed into very small pieces and did not do any appreciable damage to the piston chamber etc. With the help of an auto wrecker and a near-by siding we were able to disassemble the piston, replace the ring and reassemble in about 6 hours. Thanks to having protect engines running only a couple of signal blocks ahead of us (by plan) the delay to the train and its 1200 passengers was minimal and that trip arrived back in Hoboken on time. Trains Mag. did a full story on the incident with photos in I think the Nov.'98 issue??
Upon investigation we determined that the tempature of her superheated steam was in the range of 750 degress f and that was marginally beyond the safe zone of the oil we were then using and what happened was that when she was pulling hard at track speed with that 24 car train the oil flashed and ran the piston dry for a nano second which is all it took to ruin that ring. We obviously upgraded the oil thereafter.
Ross Rowland

Ross, I would be very interested in how the 750 degree was determined. (Does the 614 have a pyrometer on it?) Since we occasionally run longer consists at track speed, (22+ cars, the longest being 31 on the New River train in '94) I would like to know if we are subjecting our locomotive to the same conditions as you experienced. With our steam pressure of 250# on the 261 and a temperature of 400 degrees of our saturated steam, I assume our superheated steam would never get over 600 degrees, but we don't have a pyrometer installed to check that.

Ed Selinsky

Ed,

FWIW, steam tables indicate that at 250 psi and 250 degrees superheat, the steam temp for 261 would be 659 deg F. 250 deg superheat should be easily obtainable on 261. 700 degrees total temp would take about 290 deg superheat at 250 psi.

We reached back into the voluminous records that were collected during the ACE trial runs in W.Va. in 1985 and kept by the design engineers from Foster Wheeler and supervised by the late Dante Porta. At that time the 614 was equipped with a variety of thermocouples, strain gauges,opacity meters etc. etc. Amongst the instrumentation were thermal couplings at the superheater header, the entry to the valve chamber,entry to the main cylinder housing etc. etc.
On the heavy pulls eastbound from Huntington to Hinton(trailing tonnage ranged from 2500 to one train of 5378 tons) the steam temp. in the valve chamber was a constant 765 degrees f, and in the main chamber 750 f. It turns out that the valve oil we were using in W.Va. had a temp.rating of 800f and somehow we ended up with oil on the NJTransit trips with a 700f rating.
When we do the next FRA work-up on her we will shorten the superheater units some so as to reduce the steam temp by 150f as we don't need that hot a steam to pull the relatively light pssgr. trains of today, and that will allow us to use the much more available and more reasonably priced 700f oils.
I'm not sure, but I think David Wardale(then Dantes Assistant) wrote about this in his long book about steam development??
Ross Rowland

Dave and Ross, ,
Thanks for your replies and info. In the back of my mind, from my reading during our rebuild 14 yeaqrs ago, I thought I recalled that the Elesco Type A superheater added 200 degrees with a max of 250 degrees when working all out. I guess it's time to dig out my Wardale book ( and my magnifying glass) and refresh those thoughts.

Ed Selinsky

Wardale notes that steam temperatures were between 400-405 deg C ( about 750-760 deg F) during the first few tests in 1985. After that, some firebox leakage reduced the steam temperature to a maximum of 370 deg C (698 deg F) for the remainder of the tests (The Red Devil...., Wardale, pg 401). His entire commentary on the tests is extensive, covering pages 363-412

Where would one go to get a copy of David Waredale's book?

Ryan

There may be some copies left from a US supplier (David Goodheart, PO Box 47131 Chicago Illinois 60647-0131). The last place to order could well be Camden Miniature Steam Services -

www.camden.co.uk

They have/had some of the second printing of the book at 27.95 (British Pounds). A friend of mine just received a copy last week. In spite of the observation that our two countries are divided by a common language, they're pretty easy to do business with!

Greetings,

In the previous post, it was stated ".........some firebox leakage......."

I do enjoy this post because we can explore and dialog about a subject we all enjoy. I would hope we can keep this dialog positive and that we all can keep the spirit of the cause alive. I am starting to see references here that could turn ugly real quick. I have observed these forums for years and seen the discussion head south so many times. I never engaged actively until now. Lets remember those among us who have made the effort, sometimes it wasn't always perfect......but the effort was made.

As for me, if one party had not made this effort, I would have never witnessed 90% of the mainline steam events in my lifetime. To that effort I am greatful.

I was not 20 years old in 1945....to witness American steam power in its zenith, but I have had the privilege to see a slight glimpse of what it must have been like.

Thank you.

Randy Musselman

Perhaps rather than lower the superheat it would be possible to improve the method of lubrication and reduce rubbing surface temperatures. The Bosch system of 'between the rings' lubrication used on Class 23 German locos and cooled valve liners come to mind.

"No horse will run faster than what is the limit of a poorly fitted horseshoe spike." - L.D. Porta

I was paraphrasing directly from Wardale's book and gave the page number(s). I also gave a source for ordering the book, which would put his comments in context. Anyone on this thread should try to read the pages cited. Wardale was there, his observations are first-hand. He's qualified to have an opinion. Stuff happens, steam locomotives are complicated.

Ross has helped me off line many times over the past years in my efforts to try to understand and quantify steam locomotive perfomance. Believe me, I'm not taking shots at someone who has been there and done big things, many times over for all of our benefit.

In railroad history we have to be able to work with contrasting opinions in an even-handed manner. Wardale has stated his opinon in print. Let's see where that leads us.

And, if Bill Pettijean has his ears on, perhaps he could chime in with some information about oils at high steam teperatures.

dave

In regards the month long ACE test program conducted in Jan. 1985 it is very important to remember that one of the main reasons the tests were conducted was to allow the design engineers and softwear writters from the Foster Wheeler Corp. to experience in real life what the demands were upon a mainline locomotive and what they had to address to produce a new generation computer controlled unit that would be able to perform successfully in that enviornment. Remember we pulled loaded trains eastbound(some full tonnage, some less)3 days a week and came back with 100-110 empties 3 days a week. Sundays we had to go to church and do repairs. It so happened that we picked what turned out to be the coldest month in over 100 years and on a couple days the wind chill went as low as minus 50f.
Leaking staybolts, frozen lines, frozen hydrants, freezing hands, stuck lubricators,zero vision windows etc.,etc., etc. were all part of that real world challenge. The bottom line is that 614 didn't miss a single assignment day, always got to the other end unassisted and trust me taught those Foster Wheeler guys a ton. Matter of fact on one of the coldest days 614's train was the only move to get over the division on a/c the diesels all stalled a/c fuel turning to jell in the bitter cold. A lot of the credit goes to the great crew on her and their determination to make it happen!! Had the world price of oil not decided to plummet from $32/barrel to$9/barrel the big boys would have funded the first prototype and todays fleet might well look totally different and we'd be using about 4 BILLION less gallons of petroleum.
Someday someone will succeed in returning the rails to coal as the economics are so strong they will cause it to happen. Hope it's in my lifetime??
Ross Rowland