2-8-0

[slack]

Hello I had switched the smoke stack from the wood burner cabbage stack to the tapered coal stack. In the exploded drawing it shows a small pipe coming out of the back of the stack curves down the left side of the smokebox then follows the footboard to the cab. This pipe is an option but did come in the kit box. What is this part for and what did it do on the prototype?
Thanks

[Jim Banner]

If it goes into the back of the stack near the bottom of the stack, I would say it is the steam line for the blower.  When warming up a steam locomotive, the fireman or hostler normally turns on the blower as soon as there is enough steam pressure to operate it.  The blower is simply a jet of steam blowing upward through the smoke stack in order to increase the draft through the boiler tubes.

The steam line for the blower is usually under the lagging (insulation) and the tin cover around the boiler so that the steam doesn't cool and lose pressure between the control valve in the cab and the blower nozzle.  But it that piping fails, then the replacement pipe may be run outside the lagging and cover.  It is a lot easier to wrap that pipe with insulation than it is to remove and replace the boiler cover and lagging, particularly if the lagging is asbestos shorts and portland cement.

Jim

[Charlie Mutschler]

The little thing looking like a small pipe angled toward the rear at the back of the smokestack?  With a smaller diameter pipe leading back to the cab? 

That would be the light used by the fireman to check his oil to air mix on oil burners at night.  The prototype of the 2-8-0 was an oil burner used in Mexico, and was equipped with such a light.  If you model a coal burner, you might want to spend some time with a hobby knife and remove the light from the stack and the conduit to the cab. 

Charlie Mutschler
-30-

[ebtnut]

That pipe is not the blower.  The blower exhausts inside the smokebox, blowing steam up the stack to create a draft for the fire.  It is possible it might represent the conduit for a smoke lamp, as Charlie suggests.  It appears that it is no longer used on the prototype, based on looking at pics of the loco on the Alder Gulch web site.