CURIOUS CASES OF TROUBLE WITH AN INJECTOR.
I ran a Sellers improved injector on a locomotive about a year, and it was an excellent feeding apparatus; but I several times had curious cases of trouble in getting it to work. Once it began drawing air; and I could not find out where the air was coming from, for the pipes seemed all tight. But the air was going through, for I could hear its mutterings; and the water kept breaking, which was an annoyance on the road. A heater-pipe was attached to the injector feed-pipe; and I afterward found out that the air was getting in at the top joint of this pipe, which did not show a leak, being above the water.
Another time I had almost a failure with this injector out in the snow. I was out with a snow-plow, opening the road through enormously deep snow-drifts. We had worked on one bank for several days; and we made water by shoveling snow into the tank, which was melted by blowing steam through the heaters and injector. Cinders were passed into the tank very freely with the snow, and presently I began to have trouble with my injector. I took it apart several times, and cleaned out cinders, when it went to work all right again. But a time came when it refused to work when there were no cinders inside, and it seemed that no amount of coaxing would make it start. It would prime all right; but, so soon as I gave it steam, the water would break. Driven to my wits’ end, I made the fireman try to work the injector, while I went down and watched its action. Everything seemed tight: I had examined the strainer, and there appeared no reason why it should not operate as well as it ever did. While watching it, I saw a drop of water oozing out at the stem of the overflow-valve; but I reasoned, “That can not affect the working of the injector, because it is ahead of where the water starts.” But, seeing that the thing would persist in not working, I put a bit of packing in the overflow-stem, thinking it will do no harm any way; and then the injector went to work all right, and I had no more trouble with it. So a defect that may seem trifling, sometimes proves serious to an injector.