Santa fe all the way (funny)

[Jim Banner]

Hey, PD, why do I always get the hard ones?  I guess if you cut a tank car in half lengthwise, you would end up with a barbecue 10 feet wide and 60 feet long.  That would be 600 square feet or 86,400 square inches (how about that - the same as the number of seconds in a 24 hour day!)  If hamburgers each take up 4" x 4" of grill space, that would be 5400 burgers at a time.  If they were quarter pounders, that would be 1350 pounds of good Alberta beef.  For chicken drumsticks, that would be 10,800 one legged chickens or 2700 Saskatchewan four legged ones.  I'm sure you all know about Saskatchewan four legged chickens.  They were genetically engineered to provide double the number of drumsticks to keep all the drumstick lovers happy.  They are supposed to be very tasty, but nobody knows for sure.  With four legs, nobody is fast enough to catch one.

Jim 

[pdlethbridge]

very funny

[BestSnowman]

The real question would be how long would it take to get a half tank car's worth of charcoal heated up enough to cook all that meat?

Also what time should I show up?

[jettrainfan]

The real question would be how long would it take to get a half tank car's worth of charcoal heated up enough to cook all that meat?

how long does it take to start a steamer? 

[Jim Banner]

The bigger the steamer, the longer it takes to start.  Starting at midnight should get you ready for a morning run on all but the largest.

The 0-4-0 narrow gauge locomotive that I've had the pleasure of running from time to time takes about 2 hours from dead cold.  About half of that is to get the pressure gauge just off the pin.  Once you have enough pressure to get the blower going, you can really get cooking with the increased draft.

One of the problems with larger boilers is allowing them enough time to heat up evenly.  Too much fire in the firebox too soon can set up wild variations in temperature which eventually lead to premature boiler failure.  That would surely give Ernie something to think about.

Jim 

[jettrainfan]

That would surely give Ernie something to think about.

So true! 

[pdlethbridge]

 I agree with Jim. I served as a Boilerman on the Essex and Wasp and we had to be careful with over heating to start as it would affect the brickwork. Slow and steady was best. If you were on a steam blanket, you could get the boiler up to operating pressure in under an hour. That would be a pressure swing from 150psi to 600 psi. That really wasn't a big temperature swing as 600 psi saturated steam had a temperature under 500 degrees. The big no no with boilers was to run low water. High water would effect the turbines in the engine room, sort of like shooting water bullets through a fan. Low water could cause catastrophic boiler failure as any new water added to the steam drum would instantly flash into steam causing an explosion. Best thing would be to secure the fires, lift safeties and turn up the forced draft blowers.

[Jim Banner]

Best thing would be to secure the fires, lift safeties and turn up the forced draft blowers.

And call your brother because he has never seen a boiler explosion either.

Jim