Question

The Flying Scotsman

Answer 1

Answer 2

I always wondered with all that live steam, how did they keep the internal parts of the engines from rusting?

Edit: never mind; I figured it out. There was only steam on the inside, no free oxygen vapor (and whatever oxygen there was dissolved in the water was quickly boiled off), so no oxidation.

Comments

Tink i smiled when I read your original question, because I was thinking of the steam donkeys, that pulled the logs from where they were felled over to the landing.

The power of the steam donkeys was virtually infinite; what you tried to do was get up as much steam pressure as possible, and that meant cutting the volume of water (waiting to be boiled off into steam pressure) to the barest minimum. The problem was, if the volume of water got too low and the steam pressure too high, the boilers could explode!

So if the donkey puncher survived his first years in the woods, he was an engineering genius of how to get the most possible power without the boiler exploding and killing everybody. Eventually they changed to diesel power (diesel-pot vs. steam-pot), but the diesel donkeys never had much power, not like steam.

Anyway, in the early timber industry those things were used dawn to dusk, no chance for rust, although you can still see them sitting around Pacific Northwestern woods abandoned and they are certainly rusted out now!

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What, no safety valves to release the steam if the pressure got too high?

Oh, wait I forgot. Safety valves are for sissies; real men don't use them.

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You know, I was smiling as I thought the same thing about your great idea for saving energy with the handcars; real men pedaling those cars like sissy bicycles when you could be putting your back into it like a real man???

But, I don't know why there were not safety valves on those steam donkey boilers; surely would have saved some lives.

Oh and btw, speaking of the Real Men; part of the job of a good hooktender was to curse when the log got hung up as the steam donkey was trying to drag it over to the landing. Known as hang-ups, those huge things, again, could break free suddenly to lash about and kill everybody in sight. But an experienced hooktender could unleash such a blue stream of vile curses that neither log nor man could withstand, and the log would timidly ease itself free and softly make its way to the landing!

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But I bet Captain Tootsie also helped!  And he would never swear. 

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Pinebark Pete!!! It's a good 'un Tink...yes the woods needs Captain Tootsie for sure! Here is a story for you...my friends Jake and his son-in-law Glen, they obtained a logging job way back in the hills, take 'em a couple months, so they went to the local grocery store and opened an account for their food.

Sixty days later they came in to pay their bill...and their complete tally of purchases consisted of one loaf of bread and 99 (or some such number) cases of beer! True story, this was probably the 1950's.

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Hmmm... sounds like a mostly liquid diet.

Answer 3

SFA, what I have for your post is a photo of a trestle bridge! Steam locomotives were used in logging operations all over the Pacific Northwest, and they had to somehow smooth out the rugged terrain to get their logs out of the woods. The trestle bridges were marvels of creative engineering, and beautiful too.

So this is a trestle on the Kettle Valley line, which is in British Columbia, Canada, just to the north of Washington State where I live.

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Comments

Um... I hope that guy walking on the tracks got off in time...

And why are there four rails? Two different gauges for different sizes of rolling stock?

And yes, the bridge is beautiful. I remember in Ken Burns' Civil War documentary, they mentioned that that type of quick timber construction (or reconstruction) of railroad bridges was first developed during that war.

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I was concerned about that fellow also, Tink! He doesn't have many options for yielding the right-of-way and that engine does seem to have a full head of steam. 

I don't know much about track size, although I do recall the term 'narrow-gauge.' If we did some research on it, I would be looking into whether there was ever a time when they built tracks trying to accommodate everybody, no matter how wide or narrow you are?

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Where could that guy go?

And why is he there?

And the bridge is a true feat of engineering.

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I loved your Flying Scotsman video, SFA...all that going on in Australia and England, with that/those old locomotives. It seems that over much of the world, steam locomotives are well beloved!

...and no, I cannot see any good options for that guy... I imagine him letting himself over the side at the last moment, and dangling from a stringer...

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Yes, the four rails are so two gauges can be handled on the same track. Here is a clear picture of the idea from Lithuania:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_gauge#Four_rails

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Oh well we have resolved that important situation then...I like it...dual gauge!

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During the Civil War! Yes, that would have been before most of the big logging really got going, I think...glad I found my way back to see your add-on, here...