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Re:Re: Re:Re: (erielack) Feedwater heaters [was New Photos o

THE STEAM LOCOMOTIVE IN AMERICA, by Alfred W. Bruce, W.W.Norton & Co., Inc., New York (1952); p 155 et seq.

MODEL RAILROADER, September, 1953, p 55; "Feedwater Heaters", David P. Morgan.

MODEL RAILROADER, March, 1968, p 67, MR Clinic: "Coffin Feedwater Heaters."

Feedwater heaters took two forms: open or closed.

In the open style, exhaust steam was mixed with the incoming feed water.  Since valve oil and other oils often got into the exhaust steam, the heated water had to go through an oil separator to keep the feed water as pure as possible -- and this required two pumps.

Worthington used this system in its BL -- the big, single-unit slab-sided assembly on the fireman's side.  The newer Type SA put the heat exchanger in a box ahead of the stack and the pumps (usually) above the cylinders on the fireman's side.

The closed type ran the exhaust steam through pipe coils in a tank with the incoming cold water.  Steam never contacted the water, so there was no oil separator  -- just one pump and the heat exchanger tank.  The best known of these was the Elesco, with its exchange tank (usually) ahead of the stack or hanging out over the smokbox front.  The Coffin was a lesser-used closed type.

No system used exhaust flue gasses for feedwater heating.

Randy Brown
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Thanks for the info, RB, on the Coffin feedwater heater.  Do you know exactly how the Coffin type extracted the heat from the exhaust steam?  I think that some brands used a coiled pipe that was just above the blast pipe.  The cold water was fed through this coil, and the steam and exhaust gasses  from the blast pipe went in the middle and perhaps around the outsides of the coil.  The cold water inside the coil absorbed the heat.  Was the Coffin similar in design?  Is there a good resource that describes the different feedwater heater designs?

T
 

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