North Yorkshire Moors Railway General Discussion

Great to see something positive coming out from this thread- hopefully the Oil fired S160 will prove to be a useful asset.

Couple of questions regarding the conversion (if anyone knows)
- Is there any way of altering the airflow to reduce the smoke emissions?
- What does Rape seed oil smell like when burned- I used to run an old 200tdi Discovery on 70:30 cooking oil mix which used to produce some interesting aromas- especially when we ran it on used oil from Findus!

Chris

 

The railway's partnership with a Pickering chippie could take on a new dimension....

 

S160 Omaha on first trial run up the 1 in 49 after oil conversion from Grosmont to Levisham - YouTube
Just watched this, and it's very good. But I have a question, why is the locomotive painted a shade of burgundy? Is there a historical reason for this, please.

 

It's the owners preferred colour, and I think he might have had quite a lot left over after his Garratt No. 132 was painted!

 

The shade I understand is "Burrell Plum".

 

and to these eyes very handsome it looks.

 

I think you mean 130?

 

Look on the positive money has been spent so it can work

 

How long does 2253 have left - 2029? Don't think it saw much use at Dartmouth so hopefully it's boiler is still in pretty good shape.

Jon

 

I thought it got a new ticket whilst at Grosmont? It seemed like extensive work done? I may well be wrong though.

 

The fuel/air mix , unless some very sophisticated controls have been installed, is manually controlled. Achieving smokeless combustion on flash up is practically impossible but the control of smoke when under load will improve as crews gain experience. These are very early days , oil firing technique is radically different to coal. As for the smell, yes it will smell of whatever is being burned, same as coal. I think the NYMR has made the right call on this one, no doubt others will follow.

 

I think that you need to think carefully which locos are suitable (in their current form) for conversion to oil firing. S160s, yes- WD 2-10-0s yes- Bulleid Pacifics yes - but the rest, I'm not so sure. As I understand it, the rapid temperature flucuations that occur with oil burning do far less damage to a steel firebox than they do to a copper box, so not every loco is very suitable for conversion. Or have i got this totally wrong?

Peter

 

Whether oil or solid fuel fired, the air flow is primarily controlled by the blastpipe and the driver. It is a wonderfully simple arrangement whereby the more steam that is used, the more that is exhausted through the blastpipe, whether through longer cut-off or greater speed, and the more air that is drawn in through the firebox. The skill of the fireman is to match the supply of fuel to the flow of air and thus demand, whether that is with oil or solid fuel firing. He has two gauges at is disposal to establish when the fuel/air ratio (stoichiometric ratio) is correct. These are the colour of smoke at the chmney and the pressure gauge. To get it right he needs the exhaust to be as near colourless as possible and, if it is right and the loco well designed, the pressure will be constant. Ideally, for perfect combustion, it should be colourless but, if you have too much air, it will be colourless and that is not something that you want as it reduces efficiency so nearly colourless is the best you can do. There are controls available to the fireman to control the air and these are the dampers, and for solid fuel, the firehole door, but they are not precise. On the other hand, the supply of oil can be controlled much more precisely, as can solid fuel with a skilled fireman. So,using the two gauges available to him, fuel delivery is generally matched to the flow of air and not vice-versa.

 

Not wrong there, Peter. Oil firing can be used on copper boxes but they tend to suffer more as a result as flame temperatures can reach well over 2000degC and even with protective refractory insulation, they will feel it. You don't get blue flames with coal firing, wich you do with oil and gas.