History Question - Steam Locomotives in Oil Loading Facilities 2

Steam engines never were very popular for short-range, in-yard movements, nor for extremely steep slopes and tricky bends: the Californian logging trains were an early example of a gas-powered (internal combustion engine) for locomotives on narrow gage logging rails even before 1900.

Never thought about flammables in moving with open-fired steam locomotives, but consider that barrel-on-top-of-barrrel loads were the first oil shipments, and sperm oil, kerosene, and the heavy crudes were dominant early on. These were not too flamable compared to today's volumes of refined products.

From Wikipedia - not a great scientific source, but sometimes useful;" A switcher or shunter (Great Britain: shunter; Australia: shunter or yard pilot; USA: switcher or switch engine, except Pennsylvania Railroad: shifter) is a small railroad locomotive intended not for moving trains over long distances but rather for assembling trains ready for a road locomotive to take over, disassembling a train that has been brought in, and generally moving railroad cars around – a process usually known as switching (UK: shunting). They do this in classification yards (Great Britain: marshalling yards). Switchers may also make short transfer runs and even be the only motive power on branch lines and switching and terminal railroads. The term can also be used to describe the workers operating these engines or engaged in directing shunting operations.

The typical switcher is optimised for its job, being relatively low-powered but with a high starting tractive effort for getting heavy cars rolling quickly. Switchers are geared to produce high torque but are restricted to low top speeds and have small diameter driving wheels. Switchers are rail analogs to tugboats."

That article also mentioned "Steam switch engines were also driven by accumulated steam from a central power plant." No mention of additional details. Electric powered and battery powered switchers were not common, but a few were built, most often for those railways that had no diesel or steam engines at all. (European electrified rails.).

Well, what about today? Even modern diesel-electric locomotives aren't spark free gadgets - I think the traction motors are real arch-ie/spark-ie things - and lots of flammable liquids are shipped by rail from refineries and chemical plants each and every day. I drive daily to and from my work place along roads paralleled by tracks with trains entering (with crude oil) and leaving (with refined products) from fairly large refineries.

I think the answer has to lie in the fact that the load-out areas are not right down in the heart of the refinery, where, by the way there are combustion processes - fired heaters, etc. - located. The shipping load out point is typically done near the tank farms that are typically located at the fringes of the refinery in my experience.

But it was an intersting question. I know that I was allowed to drive a diesel vehicle into a refinery but wasn't allowed to drive a spark ignition vehicle in.

rmw

Diesel and gas engines have exhausts that come under the remit when considering hazardous areas. The temperatures are such that goods such as petroleum would need to be considered.

Hoses are notorious for leakage of flammable product. The area around the hose rack would be Class 1 Zone 0 or 1.

I was wondering if anyone had any termnal books on their shelf from ions ago that may have some clues?

“The beautiful thing about learning is that no one can take it away from you.”
---B.B. King

The fireless steam locomotive was used in areas of high fire risk such as oil refineries and ammunition dumps.

Fireless steam locomotives are similar to conventional steam locomotives, but they have a reservoir, known as a steam accumulator, instead of a boiler. This reservoir is charged with superheated water under pressure from a stationary boiler. The engine works like a conventional steam engine using the high pressure steam above the water in the accumulator. As the steam is used and pressure drops, the superheated water boils, replacing the used steam. The locomotive can work like this until the pressure has dropped to a minimum useful level or the water runs out, after which it must be recharged.

I wasn't thinking of exausts or even exhaust manifolds (and I have seen red hot turbo housings in locomotives in a hard pull) but the spark potential of the diesel locomotive traction motors. I guarantee you those motors are not XP (some may use the term flameproof).

I, like you am curious as to what the answer might be. Unfortunately in my case, steam locomotives went out about the time I got my first bicycle. Something had to move tank cars into and out of petroleum products loading facilities when they were in vogue. And, certainly steam locomotives driven by coal - ashes from which set many a wooden coach car on fire - pulled trains with volatile fluids behind them in the day.

rmw

What about this?


When I googled "steam locomotive refineries" (without the quotation marks) I got a lot of hits on fireless loco's (in addition to lots of hits about locomotives used in sugar refineries fired by bagasse.

rmw

Any pictures ina refinery environment would be useful?

“The beautiful thing about learning is that no one can take it away from you.”
---B.B. King

I recall that Shell Stanlow refinery (UK) had fireless steam engines in the 1960's.

In the old Canadian oil refinery in Toronto in the late 80's the diesel switchers would come in almost every night. We had an interesting problem with the radio sets the rail crews used. The oil heater nearest the tracks would often shut down on high stack temperature when the switcher was in the yard.
As the engine was spotting the cars, the brakeman would hold the transmit button down as he talked the engineer back to the proper spot. We found that when a radio transmitter was used continuously near the oil heater the stack temperature instrument would slowly climb upscale until the heater tripped off. We did some experimenting and found a temperature instrument that was not affected by radio transmissions and swapped it in. End of problem.

Bill
--------------------
"Why not the best?"
Jimmy Carter

A few fireless locos in UK power generation environment. I was a kid when most of these were taken:

I remembered seeing this one on display in the New Orleans area, although the caption says it was a compressed air locomotive.

Listed as an 0-4-0 Porter on this page:
... which links to another page with 6 photos.
They are linked from another page that gives specs:
22x18 0-4-0CA 4'-8½" New Orleans Sewerage & Water Board
LASTA, Jefferson, LA display H.K. Porter #5731, 11/1915

The photos suggest that it's not fired of course, but I don't know how a compressed air unit would differ from a stored steam unit, and clearly many parts are missing or in storage anyway.



Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA