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Mystery Photographs

The Courtney Haydon Collection


6864, 4950 10XX Swindon
75008 Swindon Works
30053
30952 Eastleigh
32640
31876 Brighton


Berwick-upon-Tweed

Photograph: Courtney Haydon Collection (G-118-09A)
01/06/2012 from Mal Hammond
location: Berwick-upon-Tweed
No 16 with a fire in the exhaust or oil separator ( as happened again in the same place in preservation) and track machine on right.
01/06/2012 from Fraser
Ah, the joy of the combustible locomotive. I remember similar joys with a class 86 at Lockerbie around 1986.
01/06/2012 from Max Birchenough
I gather that one way of dealing with the problem was to open the throttle wide in the hope that the blast of exhaust would simply blow the fire out. Seems like a "kill-or-cure" technique to me! The cause was usually deposits of engine oil in the exhaust from the two-stroke carry-over.
01/06/2012 from Michael Doyle
Max, I wouldn’t call it kill or cure at all!, Yes your right about the two stroke carry over, but when the exhaust temperature is too high and the excess oil would catch alight, the Driver wouldn’t know unless he was notified by a signalman or in some cases greeted by the local Fire Brigade, the remedy would be stick the thing into “Engine Only” and throw the power handle to “Full Power” and the rapid exhaust would blow the flame out (smother the flame to starve it of oxygen). We do the exact same procedure to this day for our fighter jets in the RAF that have Jet Pipe fires! Incidentally 55016 succumb to the same problem during December 1981 at Peterborough that lead to her withdrawl from service for good.
02/06/2012 from Fraser
Michael, Quite right about the "blow-out technique". Remember doing this on a Jaguar engine when I was an apprentice. Not surprised similar techniques would work in other fields.
03/06/2012 from Ian Dobson
location: West Yorkshire
Certainly better than allowing Fireman Sam and his chums to pour gallons of water/foam back through the exhaust system and into the engine - which could have interesting results next time said engine was started...
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