Turn 101 - Fireman on the 4MT: Fish and Chip Train

Now this makes a change - not the fish and chip train, but the Standard 4MT which I have not fired for months - and I've never had a firing turn on it.

There's nothing in the yard when I sign on at 16:25 though - the loco is still in Sheringham, probably taking on water.

The Class 20 is here though, on the diesel pit:

The 4MT appears on time at about 16:45 with Driver Paul, Fireman Gary and Third Man Tom on board.

They've had a grand day out by all accounts, and have left me with a hot fire, a lot of pressure, a full boiler and a full tender. They've been using 50% fossil coal and 50% ovoid Wildfire all day, but since the ovoids went on top of the fossil coal when they filled the tender, there's nothing left but ovoids for me this evening. We dropped the pan, but we didn't clean the fire.

Wildfire is a smokeless alternative to the bituminous coal we usually use, and is a blend of anthracite, coal and petroleum coke. Anthracite is is a hard, compact variety of coal that has a submetallic lustre. It has the highest carbon content, the fewest impurities, and the highest energy density of all types of coal, and Petroleum Coke is a final carbon-rich solid material that derives from oil refining - so what we have is essentially a blend of more energy rich, lower ash, low sulphur, low chlorine and higher carbon coals. You don't see much ash or smoke, and it takes longer to give up it's energy as heat.

So we went down to Sheringham with a tender all full of ovoids, largely on the heat from the firebox as I had lots of pressure, heat and a full boiler. Driver Fozz stopped near Bridge 303, so that we could use a bit of steam and make a bit of space by pulling up the 1 in 100, to the top of Dead Man's Hill.

Given that I knew it would take a bit of extra time to come around, I built the fire 15 minutes before departure and we moved off a few minutes late, in good shape - or so I thought. Over the crossing I fired fairly heavily but it was obvious that it was taking a while to come around as it wasn't making steam as it usually does and the recovery going back down the 1 in 100 was a bit marginal, so I had the dampers wide and was firing heavily as we went up to Weybourne.

We were struggling to maintain 180 on non stop up; the fire was roaring and it felt like there was a hole. In Holt, I had a good look but found a nice even fire with no hole showing that was making good steam after several additional firings on way up - so this fuel seems to take much longer to heat up. Fozz reckoned the roaring was more to do with the fact that I had the dampers very wide.

The trip down was ok, with lots of water as of course we would be disposing after taking water in Sheringham, but the light engine trip was not making the steam I expected. Back at Weybourne and on the pit, it was obvious that the back end was a bit clogged up with a fair bit of clinker:

I resolved to clean the fire, or make sure it was clean before I took the engine over from another crew again.