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| Building a Boiler for a 3 1/2" Gauge Locomotive |
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| NickG:
Excellent Stew, This is a brilliant guide for anybody making a boiler and interesting for anyone that isn't! In my experience it takes about 15-20 mins for a small boiler like this to steam up but maybe that's with normal anthracite beans. You're right some people do swear by that welsh steam coal. Funny you mentioned it, one of the Thomas the Tank Engine stories I read to my son refers to it. They need to use it for an engine that has a relatively small firebox and can't cope on normal coal! There's a useless fact for you sorry, bit :offtopic: Nick |
| sbwhart:
Thanks Guys My Grandfather was a engine driver in the steam days and I can remember him saying how the best coal was welsh steam coal, and how the firemen use to cuss if they had anything else, as it made for hard work keeping the pressure up in the loco. There's a huge loco at the York railway museum that was made by the North British Loco works in Glasgow for China, it was designed to run on poor quality coal, it had a massive coal bunker and foot plate so that they could have two or three firemen shuvelling the stuff on. Stew |
| Dean W:
--- Quote from: sbwhart on June 09, 2010, 02:53:42 AM ---...the boiler will be fired with Coal.. Stew --- End quote --- Neat, Stew. Steam and smoke! Love that stuff. |
| madjackghengis:
Hi guys, hi Stew, based on my long research and experience, the best anthracite coal can be close to 95 or 96% carbon, with almost no hydro-carbons to "gas off", and is, as it comes out of the mine, equivalent to the best coke, but denser. Bitumus coal can easily be less than forty percent carbon, with the remainder being hydrocarbons which must be "cooked off" if the full caloric value of the carbon is to be available. "Good" bitumus coal would be 75% or better carbon, and similar to good hardwood with regard to "coking off" as a parallel to doing the same with the hardwood to produce top quality charcoal. The poorer quality bitumus coal is equivalent to pine or other soft wood, it can be cooked off to produce charcoal, but it produces far more gasses, and far less density, and the coal is very similar in the coke it produces, porous and needing compressing to compete with good coke or top quality coal. I expect the "Welsh coal" is similar to some of the best we get out of the mountains of West Virginia, it comes from deep, from veins that once were very deep in the mantle. Hard as rock breaks up like crystal, burns with almost no smoke, very hot, very heavy, almost solid carbon. For what it's worth, I just wish I had a ton or so sitting behind my shop right about now. :nrocks: mad jack |
| sbwhart:
Cheers Dean/Jack Jack sound like you've got some good coal in your parts. Any way the rain kept off today so manages to get the crown stays done. The parts were given a good clean and the rivets assembled as the rivet passed through the water space I threaded a ring of easy flow solder onto it, the parts were then fluxed and another ring of solder added to the outside of the boiler tube that way the solder between the plate fed the joint with the fire box and the outside solder fed the boiler tube: so that we did the outside and the inside at the same heating. The boiler was placed on the hearth firebox down, and with a large torch in the firebox and one smaller torch on the end of the rivet, on a roving mission, the solder soon melted all looked good, so after 1/2 hr in the pickle this is what we got. Inside Outside In between All the joints had a nice fillet of solder :D Before I do some more I need to get a few more rods of solder. The next job will be the throat plate stays and the side stays:- 54 in total. Cheers Stew |
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