Steam era question

I've heard the word "waste" used in few old steam engine books. It's used such as a fireman throwing a ball of waste into the firebox to help ignite the coals, or even an engineer putting some waste on the floor of the cab for his dog to sleep on. The master mechanic keeping tabs on how much waste the crew was taking with them on a trip.

If you know what "waste" is, please let me know.

Waste is usually a fabric material and is pretty useful stuff. As mentioned, it can be used lighting the fire, I've seen it packed into journal boxes to help with lubricant distribution. Where I work, we use cotton shirts that are no longer wearable, soak them in a fluid that makes the shirts come apart into long thin threads, and then let dry.

Probably a contraction of "cotton waste". The equivilent of todays paper towels?, it was used for wiping all sorts of things when I first started work.

Chris.

According to an expert ...


" By parts, as Jack said ... the Ripper
In a locomotive that burned coal you had to light the fire with wood and a burning cloth, for example (about 3 hours of heating), and in a fuel, you had to open the fuel valve and light it with a burning cloth too .
Those of fuel, in addition, needed to preheat the aforementioned fuel (the fuel at room temperature is very viscous and can not be properly sprayed in the burner), for which another locomotive or a steam generator fed them until they got enough pressure as to feed themselves.
The shutdown, in the case of a fuel oil, was simply to close the passage of fuel, and a coal, let the fire go out, always taking care to leave the boiler full of water. "

Great ! Thanks a lot for the info. It all makes sense and ties in well with the context the books used it in.

included in our weekly issue of general cleaning materials from our toolstore in the steam loco depot was a bundle of waste, that looked like strands of different coloured cotton , and a jug of yellow softsoap . The waste was used for cleaning, wiping, applying cleaning stuff to the boiler claddings, steam crews for general cleaning in the cab and outside , fire lighting etc. Almost every maintenance department on the railway used waste.