inside of a train boiler

Re: inside of a train boiler

They are amazing inside, aren't they? They have one on permanent display at the National Railway Museum in York - and it is wonderful to watch the faces of people that are seeing the inside of an engine for the first time!

Re: inside of a train boiler

Just a bit of further info, we are looking there into the smoke box, and those tubes that you can see are connected to the firebox in the cab and are surrounded by water which is then heated up to form the steam. When I briefly worked with locomotives in the 60's we sometimes had to replace those tubes when we refurbished the boiler, and a rotten filthy job is was too....

Re: inside of a train boiler

Wonderful and solidly built engines. Rocket is coming to York soon.

Re: inside of a train boiler

Thanks for the heads up, Nom, will definitely go and see that.

Re: inside of a train boiler

High tech of its day. I often wonder when I look at some piece of engineering, how on earth does someone think up the idea, design it, and then actually manufacture it?

Here are a couple I saw earlier on the East Zumerzet Railway.






In the last picture you can clearly see the two blast pipes. These are the vents from the cylinders so that after each stroke of the pistons, a jet of stem shoots upwards taking smoke with it. This is what gives steam engines the very characteristic chuffing sound and individual blasts of smoke from the funnel, which are actually a mixture of smoke and steam.

The exhaust blast also causes a vacuum which helps draw the heat from the firebox through the steam tubes, improving efficiency.