UP 844 how it operates from Running a Steam Locomotive Vol 2 Excerpt

[Applause] this particular series of 44 locomotives they were designed as a cooperative effort by the American locomotive company in the Union Pacific they've never really been accorded the recognition that they should have had their very high capacity locomotives high capacity both in terms of the amount of steam they can produce and the amount of work that they can produce it's a very well rounded design it's a very modern design it kind of represents the state of the art as the art existed in the late 30s in the early 40s because research work from steam locomotives virtually came to an end about there well the fireman's duties are not only sitting in the chair when I come down to work in the morning I have to relieve the night crew I also have to make sure that the tenders full of water tenders below oil it's not why I've also got to get drinking water and ice since we have no refrigerator I have to go turn on the air pump so we have there to move I pull the chains pull the blue flags if we're done working make up the air hoses make sure we got air going through what we're going out to the Train with I probably forgot stuff but I usually do every morning I forget something I've got valves to close on the outside and the mechanical Department has it a certain number of things they do also I'm supposed to check to make sure to see that that's done and the boss Holstein shows up he'll go around a check make sure that I checked up on them and everything is all ready to go it's not to come down kick the tire climb on it go it's quite a bit of preparation before we get on a go now it does not have roller bearing rod they tried him on two different locomotives and they were more trouble than they were worth so when these locomotives were ordered they did not go to roller bearing rods they stayed with the old bronze bushing which is inside the rod on each pin that's grease lubricated and it has to be lubricated practice back in the old days and now was you'd run not more than 150 miles without renewing the grease those bushes another point of a modern locomotive is mechanical lubrication I mentioned the rod bearings those are the only things that have to be lubricated manually all of the axles on the locomotive are roller bearing equipped and the only maintenance they require is to check the oil about once a month with all you have to do to them but there are hundreds of moving parts and moving points on the locomotive older type locomotives either used hand lubrication as the old long spouts engineers all can where they used a hydrostatic lubricator which was a lubricator that used steam and oil they mixed the steam with the oil and they used the steam pressure to take the oil to the various lube points that was obsolete in the 20s these locomotives are equipped with mechanical lubricators which are actuated off the valve gear that thing holds two and a half gallons of oil and you can see the many lines coming off of it the many pipes coming off of it but feedwater heater consists of three parts you start out with the cold water pump that's a steam driven turbine pump that takes water right out of the tender right through this hose and the water in the tender is at whatever temperature ambient temperature cold water pump pumps the water up into a box up in the top of the smoke box right ahead of the exhaust stack and there the coarse inside that stack the temperatures vary from 12 to 1800 degrees there's a box inside there with a cooling caught with a coil in it the cold water goes through the coil the coil is surrounded by the exhaust steam the exhaust steam heats the water it heats it to almost 300 degrees already past the boiling point from that point the preheated water goes to the hot water pump the hot water pump is right here this is a piston type pump and it takes it takes the preheated water out of the smoke box then pumps it into the boiler the reason it's a piston type pump is it has two that water in against the 300 pounds of water pressure that's trying to come back out through the pipe you turn the whole works on with a little valve and the cab that starts the steam turbine pump and it starts the water pump pumping back and forth pumping the water okay well put her in gear [Music] [Applause] [Applause] most railroads back in steam days didn't trust the Builder to do their own design each railroad at its own engineering staff its own huge design staff and each railroad felt that it had to have custom-built power at the Union Pacific designed an extraordinary locomotive the rest of the railroads would say well that's fine for the upe but we've got to have our own yupi work was very close to american locomotive company the largest most modern locomotives on the yupi were built as a cooperative effort with with alcohol their design staff and the railroads design staff worked very closely together and there were some disagreements and there were some fine arguments if you read the minutes of some of the meetings yupi developed the first high-speed for a course we did not develop the for a port type but we did develop it into a high-speed locomotive the railroad was looking for passenger locomotives that could run 90 miles an hour on flat track with 26 cars and the yupi produced to design the builder produced a design the two designs were very far apart there were a number of things that the yupi had tried that the Builder said was impossible so there was quite a bit of give and take and finally they said look it's our money build the locomotive the way we said if it doesn't work then it's our problem they built it it exceeded everybody's expectations and it proved to the industry that a big locomotive that could pull both freight and passenger economically could be built Lokomotiv has a one-piece cast steel frame that means the entire frame from the pilot all the way back to under the cab was one giant sand casting one-piece cast steel called older locomotives more primitive locomotives the frame was built up of hundreds of individual pieces the bolts would work loose they would break over time the frame would Bend the wheels to get out of alignment and all that that's not a problem with a cast steel underframe it makes a very solid foundation the drivers are a one-piece cast steel box podcasting this is a much preferred to the old obsolete spoke type drivers for one thing it's much stronger for another it's easier to balance between that's very important than a high-speed locomotive such as the 844 the rods are made of a very high strength alloy it's the bank manganese vanadium alum alloy you notice they're not very big they have a very very high section modulus with very high strength rod failures were virtually unknown these locomotive okay you can divide the cab of a locomotive down the middle everything on the right belongs to the engineer everything on the left belongs to the fireman then you can further subdivide that almost horizontally you have the valves up along the roof line these are valves that you will either turn on or turn off when you fire the locomotive up or prepare it for service and you don't ever fool with them again until the end of the run or you're ready to shut the locomotive down right now they're all on there's a water glass on this side a water glass on that side that's so both of us can keep an eye on the level of the water and the water and there's a valve to shut off the water glass at the top and the bottom that's four just in case the glass should break of course if it does the cab is full of hot water and live steam so you've got to be able to shut it off you don't want to stay in here with the hot water and live steam so you see an extension rod that runs right through the back wall that glass breaks you dive out the back door and shut the valve off from back there on the right side water glass that's connected to a water column it has three tri that's to make sure the glass isn't lying to you you have to know what the water level is and if it gets the sediment or something in it block it up it may be lying to you you may think you have water and you don't so you double-check it with these tri cops you open them up and if water comes out you know you've got water to that height open the next tire when the next higher one until you find out where the water ends and the steam begin and you do that like this you'll see the water come out you know you've got water you get down into the operating controls everything that I'm going to have to use or everything that Lynne is going to have to use on his side that we're gonna have to use regularly is here close at hand we don't have to be jumping around to get a hold of it we've got the throttle there brake gauges back pressure gauge that I have to look at the cab signals train brake the engine brake cylinder valves a little brass handle here controls the Sanders they're off right now you push it forward that turns them on the sand flows down in front of the wheels for traction this is the bail valve reverse gear all the way forward all the way to reverse that's in neutral right now you can see all the little notches those are the different adjustments in the valve gear as the locomotive goes down the railroad the speed increases we'll hook it back as the speed decreases or the amount of work required increases we'll hook it flows this is an air operated blowdown valve the cap signal acknowledged er when the cap signal indication changes the warning whistle sounds in the cab and you acknowledge it by doing that the only other gauges have to concern myself with is the boiler pressure gauge and the speedometer and the rest of it is looking out the window listen to the stack and feeling locomotive through the seat of your pants figuring out what the trains doing and what you're doing and how to handle it the only other devices over here that I haven't pointed out that's very important is this and that's the wizard okay basically my job is the fireman is to make a fire and that's where the action takes place my side of the cab to make the fire has three controls that I generally use all the time and pretty much continuously I've got my oil feed valve here oil flows from the tender down underneath the locomotive by gravity this valve goes through the floor and controls the amount running down out of that particular pipe I have got an atomizer here which is nothing but steam pressure that blows the oil out into the firebox you can hear it the more steam I used to blow it out I can actually blow the fire and put it out if I do it wrong all right but my atomizer basically helps the oil to burn just running in there it would not burn you can't get enough oil moving and it's basically in two large chunks so what you do use the steam it breaks it up into tiny mist and burns in combination with this and the amount of draw that the locomotive is judging by how much throttle is on there several different factors is how you tune it basically my job is to tune it as we're driving along down the road the blower that you see right here is what we're using to create an artificial draft while we're sitting here and the throttle is not open main thing I'm worried about over here is water this is my feed water pump I have a water glass on this side I worry more about this then the pressure this the boiler pressure he's got one over there falls too low I get yelled at if this falls too low go blow this line the crown sheet has been known to get hot it will rupture that's called a boiler explosion nobody survives those we do not want that to happen this particular feed water pump is very easy to operate Steve showed you the turbine for the pump and the little RAM engine up underneath here and you can hear it that's how easy it is put water in on this one with a feed water pump when you're going down the road if you're working a heavier train than what we had today you kind of figure I've got a little notch here you set it to where it's using the same amount of water that you're putting in then you can adjust this adjust your smoke so you got a nice light gray stack and everything will stay absolutely even theoretically forever but then of course you got to always got a hill you've got a town it's the slow down to 45 he puts in the throttle I've got to rearrange these three comes out on the throttle I got to rearrange these three again I have a cab signal device on my side that's a repeat of the other side so I don't have to get up and go over and see if he's obeying the rules because this is coal responsibility at home you've got to draft your fireplace it's a big heavy one it's about this big by this big and it's made of iron that controls the amount of air going into the firebox firing this particular engine with that particular man over there running is kind of like driving a stick shift car once you get used to it it becomes second nature because he is very good at what he does it makes my job so much easier if he were to get mad at me he could really make it rough on me but what he'll do when he toot-toot I know we're gonna go he releases the brakes he drags out the throttle over there well I've got to be ready assuming everything else has done your couple detrained air test is complete you've got a signal to leave and all that sort of thing first thing you do is stand up take the pin out and put it back over here so it doesn't flap around and break the glass out of the gauges [Music] we'll show the reverse gear forward crack the throttle by pulling it back a small amount and release the engine brake make sure the cylinder are open Lokomotiv doesn't move within a reasonable amount of time we'll give it more throttle a little more throttle a little more throttle until it either starts to move or the wheels slip or any other once it starts to move we'll shut it back off and work it slowly as we until we stretch all the slack out in the Train if you leave it open and you start jerking the cars why the further back the greater impact there is in the Train pretty soon you're knocking people on their fans starting the train is a pretty tricky process right once you've got it moving then you'll close until you close the cylinder and you'll have more power that way the only reason you have the cylinder open is blow out all the condensation locomotives been sitting for a long time there will be a couple dozen gallons of water in the cylinders and super heaters and everything else you've got to get all of that out of there if not you can blow a cylinder head or a lot of other things can happen all of them are bad as the engine starts going and she starts talking to me I'll start feeding her a little more oil I've got to give a little more atomizer because I'm breaking up more oil to burn watching my smokestack to make sure I don't have too much folks now all the water to bother is going to come back this way so it will show glass will be for the front wall people so I've got to keep that in mind also going down hills it all runs to the front end it shows is hardly in here when you really do have that's something else you have to keep track but as their speed increases I will continue giving you more oil more oil or more power closer I am to 300 pounds then we're up to about oh say approximately 4,000 5,000 horsepower well what you're trying to do is get the locomotive where it'll maintain the speed that you want [Music] [Applause] consequently the minimal amount of water and fuel being used and you do that by making my nude adjustments on the reverse gear and the throttle until you get everything like you want it small changes in the gradient either up or down or from a from one of those conditions to level or vice versa will change everything that's going on here and you have to change the cordilla so you'll see making different adjustments in the reverse gear I'll shove it forward if I want to accelerate a little bit I'll shove it forward a few notches when it's starting to pick up like I wanted to I'll start bringing it back municipal speed restrictions like there's a 45 mile an hour speed limit through Central City and we're sailing along at 65 and I just set the brakes enough to bring us down to 45 kick them off and I didn't touch the throttle or the reverser as soon as I kick the brakes off the engine will start to pick it one of the reasons this is a rubberized niche and maybe because we have 450 tons going down the road and it's checking every joint in every low spot and every little soft spot on the railroad scene is from the roadside it looks like a smooth ride but it's not you see it going down the railroad if we go and slow enough you can actually see the ties and the rail flexing honor you hit a bridge and you can tell immediately up here we got on that bridge their Columbus everything is rock solid nothing move got off the other end and win like this because the ground is softer and compressible the bridge doesn't compress that oil and stuff going through and dancing on my flute it'll form a layer on there that layer is like insulation you got a big tray you need maximum horsepower what I have to do is sand the blue we have scoop plain old children's sand when it's working hard there is a real draft going in there and I'll pour about three scoops for this this what that will do is flying down bouncing around inside those holes and flus it knocks all that sit loose that's where you get that black cloud that's going to come down somewhere but I have to do it about two or three times to get all that out of there so I get maximum water there are always things to fool with of course when the cap signals change as they did a number of times they have to be acknowledged you're talking on the radio you're thinking three or four miles down the road where you're going to have to slow down or where you're going to have to stop and we did exactly where it was they wanted to go and nobody knew how to get there except for a roundabout way then you're thinking where am I going to apply the brake how much am I going to apply how long am I going to leave it apply exactly where do I want to stop and how do I want our trains coming or the dispatcher trying to call me where is the slack of entry what's the speed limit here what's the speed limit down the road that's just part of we're also watching the water watching the steam pressure watching the smoke and before I'm doing anything drastic over here I have to make sure that he's either watching or listening because whatever I do over here he has to make adjustments to compensate when he comes into a town or when he shuts the throttle off he'll generally glance over at me I know he's going to do something I usually start coming back less oil into the engine because when he throws that throttle in all of a sudden we don't have any graft and you get this big blue out the black garbage up in the sky a lot of the rail fans love to see it for the housewives with their laundry or the Greenpeace people do not like to see that sort of thing it is air pollution so we keep it down to an absolute minimum [Music] Lokomotiv operation 300 pounds water pressure it's rated at 63,000 pounds plus tractive effort which is probably a conservative rating they were tested out at five over five thousand cylinder horsepower which again is a conservative rating we know that the locomotor do that there are test reports and test results have indicated they can perform far beyond what the design engineers calculated that it could it has very high superheating capability by that it produces 750 degrees steam which is very hot very dry steam which produces the most work it has a feed water heater which pre heats the water before it goes into the boiler it uses the exhaust steam to do that which saves a lot of fuel that has roller bearings it has 80 inch drivers that has a one-piece cast steel frame and it has many other small features that can't be seen because they're inside it's they were very well liked locomotives they were very efficient locomotives even though they were designed for passenger service they were very successful in freight service after passenger trains were diesel eyes and they found that the maintenance costs were much less than they had anticipated the availability was much higher than anticipated locomotives to pull heavier trains than it was thought that they could pull the tonnage ratings on the more increased several times over the lives the locomotive man they can still pull more than the rated money it's just a good all-around locomotive the way you get to learn all this stuff I'm a railroader by trade been doing it since 1968 been working for the railroad and then working on the steam engine now since Nate team started in 79 helped a group of employees restore the Union Pacific Challenger 39 85 in Cheyenne I've never seen a steam engine that big run before so I wanted to help get it running well we still had old-timers around here then it actually ran these things when they were new and they knew the ropes and those of us that showed any interest whatsoever they took the time to explain to us and fellas and actually gave us experience down here firing it and that's basically how I learned experience displaying all experience I've been an engineer for 20 years and it's just by experience and by doing that's all and the old days you got to go through a series of progressive exams taken over three years to be promoted from fireman the engineer it's not quite that stringent nowadays but there are still very specific tests that have to be have to be done but even the test once you've passed the test you still got to become seasoned than the only way you become season is by working all kinds of trains all kinds of hours all kinds of weather conditions no two trips are the same no two trains are the same but it just takes just takes years of doing you

Channel: Michael Brandon

Views: 1,116,009

Keywords: 844, train, railroad, union pacific, live steam, up 844 cab ride, How to operate UP 844, overview of union pacific 844, operating up 844, 4-8-4 northern steam locomotive, steam locomotive operations, engineers view, train crew, fireman, 844 steam train, up 844 at speed, locomotive operations, Union Pacific 844, crew explaining, functions of the cab, how this locomotive works, Steve Lee, 844 Steam train, Steam locomotive in action, UP 4014, UP BIGBOY, up big boy whistle

Id: q7vogL3LL8Q

Length: 26min 59sec (1619 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 14 2018