Greg Reimer
Well Known Member
Back in the day of Big Boy steam usage, all 25 of them used coal. Wyoming was full of coal, but the railroad grade was pretty low grade, so the UP steam had very large fireboxes to compensate for the lower BTU's of the coal.They mined their own coal from their company mines, so the coal cost probably less than $2.00 a ton. As far as water consumption went, the basic black 14 wheeled tender probably held 20,000 gallons of water and about 7000 gallons of fuel oil. That would be 17-20 tons of coal, depending how tightly it was packed. The two extra yellow cars behind the engine's tender are water cars, each holding around 22,000 gallons. Now, water is about eight pounds per gallon, fuel oils around 6 1/2 pounds per gallon, you see tonnage adding up before the train weight even gets thought about. I had a friend who was a Heavy Equipment Mechanic Supervisor for the City of Los Angeles when I worked there who assisted in the restoration and rebuilding and operation of Santa Fe 3751,a 4-8-4 Northern class locomotive, he said that the Northern could use 100 gallons of water per mile, and over 15 gallons of fuel oil per mile. When at cruising speed of 70-80 miles per hour and with a decent sized train behind it, you could throttle back to a comfortable stance and it would use about six or seven gallons per mile of oil fuel, and less water. Back in the day, railroads began converting to oil fuels because of the problems with fires caused by glowing cinders out the stack, clouds of black smoke, the particulate deposits both inside the engine and outside all along the way, and it was just an easier way to go. They used a heavy fuel oil known as Bunker Crude, about like some roofing tars, and it often had to be heated in the tender to get it to flow up to the burners. Most engine weights were calculated with the boiler and tender empty, so the actual running weights tended to be a bit vague. The excursion that my wife and I rode consisted of a 23 car train, we rode in the rear half, the front was for the UP steam crews and railroad personnel. This thing was big, monstrously powerful, very fuel hungry, an incredibly high torque power plant, and an iconic symbol of how they used to get things done. Kind of like a giant 409. Glad there's still some of both left.