Shame it's not a British loco, but interesting all the same, easy to watch while listening to something else ...
But a lot of dodgy edits in the audio. Brian
Curious about a few things. Is an external water circulator needed by all steam engines or just that one? Presumably it?s to reduce kettling/cavitation at the start.
Also, applying grease with a knife around a bearing seems a poor way of lubricating it. What?s wrong with a standard grease nipple to inject grease where it?s needed?
Tim
Wasn?t a regular thing certainly not in UK operations, I suspect that is a modern implementation that helps alleviate stress problems on the boiler by uneven heating thus prolonging it?s life,something that in the old days wasn?t as important as boilersmiths and repair shops were part of everyday operations. Practically in an old style steam shed dispatching 20 or more Locos out to service within a few hours having pumps with pipes and cables lying about would have been a maintenance nightmare .
What many Locos had was thermic syphons which were devices built in the area of the firebox where the cooler water was heated and rose to the top quicker than the main bulk of water so got some circulation going,a secondary advantage was that they could still deposit water on top of the firebox should the water level have got too low and possible preventing serious damage Diagram here
Perhaps drilling a grease passage in a large casting may have introduced a weak point but steam Loco design was notoriously conservative anyway, there was a school of thought that if someone had to apply grease /oil to a component they had actually looked and checked it. Same applied to polishing bits of factory and marine engines till they gleamed, it showed the personnel of the watch/shift taking over that the previous one had actually gone around the machinery and examined it closely.
The US did move a lot to more modern practice in the 30?s and 40?s with labour saving facilities like pressure washers and grease guns being on hand but the UK never really progressed before steam finished, our blokes were still removing corks from filler points and topping up with an oil can till the end on many Locos.
GH
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