I have posted this elswhere and haven't received a reply. Perhaps someone here can help. On the Niagara's, each side above the running board,above the valve gear hanger is an up-side-down "U" shape pipeing cluster. What was it? It doesn't show up until about 1948. But is on all engines (Niagara's)after that time and on both sides of the loco.
Ron, you KNOW I don't know the answer to that one, just like the hole in the Mohawk elephant ears. Good to hear from you again. Fitz
Ron I don't know either but am working on it . fitz,When the engines were dead in the house and they wanted to start the fire you need a draft.In the engine house they had a steam pipe that dropped down from the roof at each stall.This pipe was about 2 in. in dia. It was moveable to fit different locos. Dropping from the roof a certain distance and then a 90 degree turn this pipe would go through this hole in the elephant ear to the side of the boiler and connect to a fitting at that location.This connected to the exhaust nozzle producing a draft for the fire. After steam pressure was high enough to operate the blower the pipe from the enginehouse was disconnected. LEW
LEW, Thank you!! You have just made Ron's day, as he has been in search of that answer for a long time! Now I guess I have to look at a lot of other pictures to see if there was just a connector to plug that steam line into on engines that didn't have smoke lifters. [ 06 June 2002, 05:01: Message edited by: fitz ]
Jim is right I have been scratching my head for a long time trying to figure that one out! Thanks LEW
When you start looking for the connection some are easy to find and others are very hard to find. I believe the upsidedown Us are sand traps.With that smooth boiler that looks good but maintenance is a pain. It's like using the last piece of toilet paper and another roll is at the other end of the house.These engines had sand to the front and main drivers.The sand trap was below the sand box and was gravity fed to the trap.As you worked the sand valve which was a valve in an air line the air traveled to the sand trap forcing sand and air down the sand pipe to the rail.These were probably added in house because of the maintenance.The L-3,L-4 had covers over these traps but were soon removed.I was only on one 4-8-4 at Elkhart so this is some what of a guess but what I can see from pictures this is all it could be.Sand was like a wick when it was wet. Any water that got in the sand box would travel t the lowest point. On the bottom of the trap was a plug you removed and you could run a long piece of # 9 wire from the trap to the sand box to remove the wet sand. The GP-7-9 were very bad for this. Have cleaned many a trap and sometimes you never could get the wet sand out.Then you found a container went to another unit and filled the container with sand and the fireman,brakeman would take paper drinking cups and walk ahead of the engine speading sand by hand. LEW
That was my first guess, connected to the sand lines in some fashion but never saw any photos of the area under the running board that could confirm my guess. Thanks again, LEW
Look at this page! It's fantastic! Here you can see a Niagara built to 1/5th scale and 10 1/4" gauge. http://www.fsmr.org.uk/niagara.html Giancarlo. [ 04. August 2002, 22:22: Message edited by: sherlockholmes82 ]
Giancarlo, welcome to the Trainboard NY Central forum. Yes, that is a fascinating site and a great scale Niagara. They also have a scale Berkshire at their site. A father-son team, Neil and Angus Holdsworth, are building another scale Niagara in the UK.
Due to clearances, Niagara sand boxes were of aluminum and were below the running boards on each side of the engine, even though the "low" sand dome and fills were on top of the boiler. I believe that the inverted U shaped piping was sander piping.
