Steamshots USA..Lets See Some Steam Shots..

If you read railroad stories from the pre-1900s you will find many instances of boys being hired by railroads as wipers and going on to eventually become locomotive engineers. Working for 5 to 15 cents a day these boys (10-15 years old and sometimes younger) kept the locomotives shiny and oiled. Working for the railroad was a much sought after job, well paying and with many opportunities for advancement. At water stops Engineers would often pay boys to wipe down their locomotives, a good deal for both the Engineer and the boys.
 
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My mom had an aunt who lived in Pennsylvania in some valley. There were tracks coming out of the valley in two directions. Not sure where. When she visited the aunt she said the aunt was especially vigilant for the sound of locomotives on wash days, as what ever was on the clothesline needed to be taken in before the train came by or the whites would all become gray. I don't think the house was next to the tracks, but it wasn't very far away either. Apparently washing was difficult because there were quite a few trains coming through town. When they went up the hill, there would be a LOT of smoke.

In general, a fireman running a dirty stack burns more fuel than one who runs a clean stack. More fuel burned equals more money. Railroads hated spending money, hence firemen who used lots of fuel might get talked to about it. Several steam engineers I knew when I participated in the PRPA (the crew that maintains the SP&S 700 here in Portland, OR) said a fireman who couldn't keep a clean stack most of the time was likely to be fired. On the other hand, these guys were running oil fired steam locomotives rather than coal let alone wood fired ones. The fireman's job is/was difficult. Got to keep adding water to the boiler to match the water boiled away, but don't add too much at once or the boiler cools off and loses steam pressure. They had to anticipate when the engineer would need steam and get the fire going ahead of time. Once the throttle was opened wide was too late to stoke up the fire. But don't get the fire too hot, too much steam and the safeties are lifting and steam and fuel are wasted. In the days of wood burning 4-4-0's the fireman adjusted the fire by throwing logs into the firebox. Often the process consisted of chucking in logs as fast as they could grab them. I suspect that for heavy trains or when on an upgrade two firemen would be needed to throw the logs in fast enough to keep up steam pressure. Coal improved matters by having more heat in a shovelful than in a log. But coal produces much nastier soot than wood. When oil fired locomotives came into being, the soot became oily. When I was PRPA I spent some time in the firebox of the 700 drilling staybolts. The firebox on this locomotive is big enough to hold a mid-size car. The staybolts run between the walls of the firebox and the outside of the boiler. Their purpose is to keep the boiler pressure from distending the steel plates in the firebox and the boiler. Periodically these bolts can fracture. If enough fracture a boiler explosion can result. To determine whether they've fracture the bolts are hollow. If there is a fracture than steam leaks out. But the hollows plug up with glaze (like a potter's glaze - the soot, when super heated becomes hard and shiny). Hence the need to drill this stuff out every year. You haven't been dirty until you've done something like this. I'd get home and have to wash my hair five times before the rinse water would run clean!

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[back in the day, this stack would likely have gotten a fireman fired... in this case they sanded the flue to make extra smoke for me, the photographer - note this loco was built in the '30s, some 60+ years after the Jupiter and burns oil, not logs - btw is there a model of this loco, SP&S 700 online?]

Case in point about soot, when I moved to the Portland area in '96 it wasn't unusual for the SP&S 700 and SP 4449 to exercise on the Portland & Western tracks out through Tigard, Beaverton, and Aloha to the wye in Hillsboro. There are a several car dealers near (and next to) the tracks. The dealers complained bitterly when the locomotives ran because they'd have to re-wash every car on the lot. Of course by that time there were no professional steam locomotive firemen around so fire management wasn't the best. Also, firemen loved to show off for the steam-fan photographers who would flock to the tracks to take pictures, so there was a lot more smoke than there would have been back in the '30s when these locomotives were the pride of the fleet...

An exception to the need for a clean stack, was when heavy trains needed to climb a grade. At that point it was feed the fire as fast as possible to maintain steam pressure and heck with the smoke.

In the early days of the transcon railroad, tracks were not perfect. They were built in a terrible hurry because the CP and UP were racing each other to get the most miles from the transcon route because the government was giving them land for each mile of track laid. It wasn't until a while later (but not a long while) they went back and reworked tracks.

My impression is that in the early days tie plates weren't used and rails were spiked directly to the ties. However, the railroads, being cheap, realized that ties wore out very quickly, and since it cost money to replace ties they looked for a remedy and tie plates were born (at least in the north american continent). I'm not sure whether the original transcon tracks were laid with or without tie plates. Some of the 3' narrow gauge railroads ran several years without tie plates (South Pacific Coast RR in the San Francisco Bay Area is an example and that railroad didn't complete its main line until 1883 iirc).

Locomotive engineers were the rock stars of their day. The boys in town would be in awe of the man at the throttle of the trains. I believe the engineers took great pride in the appearance of their engines and he, his fireman, and front end brakeman (did they have front end brakemen in the 1860's?) spent time wiping their loco to keep it clean.

Just the brass and paint schemes of the locos of that vintage suggests they were intended to make a statement. Letting the brass tarnish and the paint get dirty was unthinkable for the engineers.

Sometime in the 1880's the fancy paint started to go away. Railroads being cheap decided the cost of maintaining the paint jobs (which showed soot like crazy) was too high. Black paint doesn't show soot as much. The smoke boxes at the front of the engine were often silver (as were the fireboxes) because they had much higher temperatures than the boiler which had steam, not fire or exhaust gasses in them. The black paint would blister with so much heat The silver paint stuck and lasted longer.

The film clip posted of the old time steam locomotive has little bearing on USA prototype locomotives as all the equipment in it is European and it was shot in Spain iirc.

Early locomotives didn't last as long as later models because the metallurgy of the day wasn't as good. Nevertheless, fixing existing locomotives was generally cheaper than buying new ones, at least for the first couple of decades. Without knowing for sure, I'd guess that locos would be repaired until the boiler wasn't "safe" (not that railroads cared much about safe in those days). Everything else could be fixed in-house by a crew with big machine tools (they had to be as locomotive companies didn't keep stashes of spare parts on hand that could be overnight shipped to where ever they were needed. The big wear points would be side road bearings, the seals on the piston, the inside of the cylinders, the slide valves, the bearings of the valve gear, and the tires (the steel or iron in the early days rims of the tires). All this stuff could be worked on or replaced at the railroad's shops.

Thanks for the photos Mr. Cartoon Character!!!!

HF
 
When the steam train came to town, you saw the smoke from miles away, and heard it barking uphill with lots of stack talk, and people closed their windows because of the huge amount of soot & smoke, especially when the loco's were working on even a slight uphill gradient … entire areas around the rail lines were many inch's deep (if not more) in smoke cinders … Altoona PA was a railroad smoke filled valley
Even in industrial Altoona that's pushing it a lot. But contrast this with what you're actually looking at for a second here. Altoona was in a smoky, industrial valley, with one of the largest engine shops in the world, burning bituminous coal in very primitive locomotives, even for the time. On the other hand, the CP and UP were ordering the best locomotives money could buy - locomotives made by Mason, Grant, Schenectady, Norris, and McKay & Aldus, mostly - and they were kept stunning. For example, the Champion, CP #50 and sister to the Antelope:
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Due to the glass-plate emulsion techniques, her striping is harder to identify, but you can still make it out pretty clearly, and she positively gleams. Note the clean stack, too - she's not cold; she's in full forward gear, at the head of a train, on a mainline, simply waiting while her train is unloaded to help build the town of Deeth. She's running that clean. Similarly, take a look at the Conness, a Mason 4-6-0 that was one of the CP's first two heavy freight locomotives:
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Again, she's not running cold there, but you can't see any escaping smoke or steam because her crew takes good care of her. The turntable is only temporary, but you'll see it's still well laid and balanced, and the trestle and fill work behind is quite immaculate. On the UP side, we get stereoviews by A. J. Russell:
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UP's track was a lot rougher, as No. 120's replaced lead wheel testifies, but even here you'll notice the engine is still very clean. There are water streaks down the smokebox and steam chest - UP wouldn't start treating its water until Jay Gould took over in 1873 and so locomotives got worn out much faster on the Utah Division than anywhere else in the country, sometimes needing boiler flues replaced after only a year or two - but the engine is still kept immaculate, and aside from the boiler blowdown going on in the photo, there are no steam leaks nor visible smoke from the locomotive. One thing you will notice that is "too immaculate" on my models of 116-120 is that I didn't include any wood on the tender - these engines were built for coal but crews almost always carried a lot of wood on the tender as well, because it was easier to find, easier to light, and burned much cleaner than Utah coal.
Similarly, here's one of the heaviest used locos on the Utah Division, No. 23, a snowplow locomotive that was also used by General Casement, and so saw more service than the other locos, which were already in service 5-6 days a week:
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Even the smokestack is polished, you'll see. The gold leaf appears pretty faded out but modern tests with glass-plate cameras have found that gold leaf doesn't show up well against dark colors after the emulsion. That's part of the problem with trying to ID things from photos, I'm afraid.
Finally, we get one photo in which a loco is burning dirty enough for smoke to be visible:
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And of course, it's not "belching" smoke by any means. You'll notice even the flatcars are pretty clean, and they didn't​ have to be washed every day. The UP cleaners were just proud of their railroad.
 
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Well … It must be the Trainz lighting … Sporbust used to get ribbed all the time because his locos looked like they had a pitch black overly dark thunderstorm going on under the train … these are exactly the opposite … looking like there are bright florescent bulbs lighting up the track, under the loco and railcar undercarriage … The undercarriage shadows are barely there … and too, a bit of smoke makes all the difference … An ALCO diesel without smoke, looks just toylike, a brightly painted brand spanking new loco just out of the showroom looks unnatural … the rollingstock with all too symmetrical tan painted wheels also makes the overall scene look like an HO trainset … I guess it just bugs me when I see a great looking train, placed on a scene that looks like it is running through Telle-Tubbie land with the Baby in the Sun gleefully looking over the hill at bunny wabbits' hopping around
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One thing I'd point out . Is most early steam was wood fueled . And dried wood burns pretty cleanly . The cinders and ash from these , didn't add up to much . Economics and a more relabel fuel source drove the change from wood to coal and oil . We all seen to only remember the 1920's downturn that helped shape these the image of dirty Steam engines . But there were more then a few before and after that helped ones opinions . The 1850's to 1890's , these Engines were the new technology. And were not just thought of as engines , but as beings with names . They were often taken better of then the the men that ran and maintained them . But even the 1920's Steam , with it's coal and oil were made presentable . A must for the named train . Be it Diesel, steam or electric . They were investments . That those who ran , worked or paid took large pride in .

Matt
 
An ALCo diesel only has the thick black smoke as the turbochargers speeds up or slows down to match the engine, it’s called turbo lag. At constant RPMs ALCos run just as cleanly as any other engine of their time. As for the shadows, most of the problems are caused by trainz environments being set up for the wrong version, if you use TANE environment settings in TS19, it look bad. I have seen shots of TS19 where it looks like you can cut the shadows with a knife, and obviously if you have them turned off there will be no shadows at all. The shadow is entirely up to the route environment settings. Trains screenshots have never shown light weathering well, so I’m not surprised you can’t see it from the screenshots, but they’re far from solid colored discs.

-Ben
 
a brightly painted brand spanking new loco just out of the showroom looks unnatural
Well if you think a prototype that's brand spanking new looks unnatural, then it's probably in indicator that my models (which are designed to replicate locos that were, in 1869, brand spanking new) are doing a good job that you think they look unnatural. If you think the prototypes look too clean, then if you thought my models were fine, that'd be an indication that I was doing something wrong. :hehe:
As for "all too symmetrical tan painted wheels" what do you want? We have evidence from 1870s cars that that's what paint the CP used, and as you saw in the photos I just posted, they were pretty darn clean, prior to the 1910s when various logging companies over-oiled them and caked the whole wheel in grime...of course, even that would be "too symmetrical" I suppose. And if the environment bugs you, say something like "I think you could use a darker environment, the lighting looks too bright to me" not "oh it makes the whole train look like a cartoon and also I think spaghetti westerns are real life apparently". It's all about communicating what the actual problem is, not making broad generalizations that have nothing to do with what you're actually getting at.
(I won't continue to rise to your talk of "a little smoke". Believe me, as someone who has sat in the fireman's seat of an 1875 wood-burner, if anything what my models have is a little too much smoke.)
 
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Well … It must be the Trainz lighting … Sporbust used to get ribbed all the time because his locos looked like they had a pitch black overly dark thunderstorm going on under the train … these are exactly the opposite … looking like there are bright florescent bulbs lighting up the track, under the loco and railcar undercarriage … The undercarriage shadows are barely there … and too, a bit of smoke makes all the difference … An ALCO diesel without smoke, looks just toylike, a brightly painted brand spanking new loco just out of the showroom looks unnatural … the rollingstock with all too symmetrical tan painted wheels also makes the overall scene look like an HO trainset … I guess it just bugs me when I see a great looking train, placed on a scene that looks like it is running through Telle-Tubbie land with the Baby in the Sun gleefully looking over the hill at bunny wabbits' hopping around

...Before firing its laser and obliterating everything!:hehe: Well, really, the toylike, brand-new look is just the way it looks in simulators! And it's not just Trainz that has pristine looking engines, Train Simulator engines look that way, too! Just a fact of sim life!
 
What I'm getting from this whole conversation was that the whole "Filthy Steam Engines" trope wasn't really a thing until the Depression and Transition eras. Is that correct?
 
That's how I see it but even then some railroads had a reputation for the taking pride in their rolling stock.

Someone asked about mixing pencil42's older rolling stock with the new stuff.

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They look fine to me, I haven't looked at the freight cars nor the Union Pacific rolling stock yet. There is a difference in the height of the link n' pin couplers but I can ignore it.
 
Gratuitous steam shot:
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In the 1860's, driving a dirty locomotive was kind of like going to work today with pizza sauce on your face :)
Tie plates: around the turn of the (last) century, as wood and labor prices rose and iron prices fell. Probably sooner in areas that used soft wood ties, and later on routes using hard wood.
Dirty locomotives: About the 1880s, the popular aesthetic trended toward dark colors. Locomotives started to be painted black or very dark green; passenger cars started getting painted dark colors as well. These dark colors tended to hide coal soot better, and coupled with rising labor costs, things weren't kept as pristine as before. I can't say if they got to the filthy condition popularly shown, however...
Keep in mind, though, these are broad generalizations and specific cases may or may not align with them.
 
Wait a second...

In the background...

Why are those two guys playing checkers when there's freight to move?!? :hehe:

BTW the interior of the Directors Car is very nice.

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Gratuitous steam shot:
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In the 1860's, driving a dirty locomotive was kind of like going to work today with pizza sauce on your face :)
Tie plates: around the turn of the (last) century, as wood and labor prices rose and iron prices fell. Probably sooner in areas that used soft wood ties, and later on routes using hard wood.
Dirty locomotives: About the 1880s, the popular aesthetic trended toward dark colors. Locomotives started to be painted black or very dark green; passenger cars started getting painted dark colors as well. These dark colors tended to hide coal soot better, and coupled with rising labor costs, things weren't kept as pristine as before. I can't say if they got to the filthy condition popularly shown, however...
Keep in mind, though, these are broad generalizations and specific cases may or may not align with them.
Hey Pencil, what's that 5th freight car (3rd boxcar, 5th car in the train)? It looks kinda cool!
 
I make more smoke and steam when I make a pot of tea (never mind the checkers players, they probably aren't rail fans). Bob Cass would be complaining, as he had several loco's with tremendous "Twinkles" smoke effects ... he was a great fan of voraciously smoking loco's :cool:
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locomotives such as this mountain was a source of pride for any railroad, if any engines was not cleaned after a day's work, it speaks absolute volumes about the appearance of the railroad company should a railroad inspector inspect to check to see if things are tidy and in order.
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Cascade, you might want to watch what you say. After all, karma is nasty and we all know your odometers getting a little high on the mileage, if you know what I'm saying... :eek:

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How many times are you going to bring up the deceased in your hypocritical posts? Also, thats not a screenshot you dunce.

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