The blower is seldom needed when the engine is working, as the exhaust steam should be sufficient to keep the fire going briskly. If it is not, you should conclude that something is the matter. There are times, however, when the blower is required even when the engine is going. For example, if you are working with very light load and small use of steam, the exhaust may be insufficient to keep up the fire; and this will be especially true if the fuel is very poor. In such a case, turn on the blower very slightly. But remember that you are wasting steam if you can get along without the blower.
Examine the nozzle of the blower now and then to see that it does not become limed up, or turned so as to direct the steam to one side of the stack, where its force would be wasted.
Beware, also, of creating too much draft; for too much draft will use up fuel and make little steam.
SMOKE.
Coal smoke is nothing more or less than unburned carbon. The more smoke you get, the less will be the heat from a given amount of fuel. Great clouds of black smoke from an engine all the time are a very bad sign in an engineer. They show that he does not know how to fire. He has not followed the directions already given, to have a thin, hot fire, with few ashes under his grate. Instead, he throws on great shovelsful of coal at a time, and has the coal up to the firebox door. His fuel is always making smoke, which soon clogs up the smoke flues and lessens the amount of steam he is getting. If he had kept his fire very “thin,” but very hot, throwing on a small hand shovel of coal at a time, seldom poking his fire except to lift out clinkers or clean away dead ashes under the grate, and keeping his ashpit free from ashes, there would be only a little puff of black smoke when the fresh coal went on, and then the smoke would quickly disappear, while the fire flues would burn clean and not get clogged up with soot.
It is important, however, to keep the small fire flues especially well cleaned out with a good flue cleaner; for all accumulation of soot prevents the heat from passing through the steel, and so reduces the heating capacity of the boiler. Cleaning the tubes with a steam blower is never advisable, as it forms a paste on the tube that greatly impairs its commodity.
SPARKS.
With coal there is little danger of fires caused by sparks from the engine. What sparks there are are heavy and dead, and will even fall on a pile of straw without setting it on fire. On a very windy day, however, when you are running your engine very hard, especially if it is of the direct locomotive boiler type, you want to be careful even with coal.
With wood it is very different; and likewise with straw. Wood and straw sparks are always dangerous, and an engine should never be run for threshing with wood or straw without using a spark-arrester.
It sometimes happens that when coal is used it will give out, and you will be asked to finish your job with wood. In such a case, it is the duty of an engineer to state fully and frankly the danger of firing with wood without a spark arrester, and he should go on only when ordered to do so by the proprietor, after he has been fully warned. In that case all responsibility is shifted from the engineer to the owner.