Chinese steam

This has probably been posted before but it's worth a view:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=366&v=8grHpQAB1jA

Pretty interesting.

One word describes it:
AWESOME!

looks awesome but when the spark arrestor plates in the smoke box are defective and have holes larger than normal in the sparks that fly out the exhaust sets the veld on fire causing much damage, which caused much unhappiness and claims from farmers residents along the lines where steam operated.

I bet it burns really soft 3rd rate bituminous coal

Wow.....that's crazy, I have never seen a Steamer Spark out like that............

man, that is incredible steam action, I am also amazed the sparks along with the smoke coming from the rear engine did not start a trackside fire.

There is probably not allot to burn ... aside from snow ... and withered stunted crops

I love Chinese people ... They don't even know what General Tao's Chicken is ... as it wasn't even invented until 1938, in a struggling San Francisco restaurant, post WWII

cascaderailroad said:

I bet it burns really soft 3rd rate bituminous coal

Click to expand...

I'm no steam loco expert but one comment on the video page made sense to me in that the ash pan hadn't been dumped lately. The increase draft with the engine working hard then pulled cinders off the pan through the tubes and out the stack. The poor coal, as you say, probably contributes to the rapid build up of the ash hence the flying cinders.

Just my guess.

Such locs in chinese mines are/were used to be heated by used tyres too.

It's because it's burning very very low quality coal, by the looks of things mostly coal dust. This would mean the fireman has to shovel almost continuously. The small size of the coal means it burns very quickly, and is so light that the exhaust (when working even remotely hard) sucks the still burning dust through the boiler and out the stack before it can even burn completely. Since it burns so quickly and is sucked out the stack even quicker it doesn't provide as much heat as a regular lump of coal, which means the fireman has to add even more of the bad coal. This can snowball if the engine is worked hard for long periods on nothing but dust. For reference the ideal size of a lump of coal for firing a locomotive is about the size of a fist. The coal that's being burned by that engine is probably similar in size to sawdust. With the coal being so poor the ash has probably solidified into clinker, either in the ashpan or worse, in the firebox. Clinker (being a metallic substance formed by a chemical reaction) is too heavy, large, and solid to be lifted up and sucked through the tubes to exit the stack.

-Ben