ritory occupied by extra 3 without an order to meet them. Extra 198 did not concern extra 3 in the first order and should not, strictly speaking, appear in the order in this form.

We consider that extra 3, having arrived at Schriever, has fulfilled Order No. 1, and when Order No. 2 is received it creates a new train, so far as the matter of orders is concerned. The fact that extra 198 is east bound (the superior direction for trains of the same class) has no bearing on the question.

If we were running extra 3 and received Order No. 2 we should ask the dispatcher where extra 198 was, and if told that it was tied up or turned, or received other satisfactory reply, we should go ahead.

90. An Inconsistency.-"Please render an opinion in regard to the following train orders: No. 27 is a west bound train : "Order No. 2.-Extra 44 east will meet No. 27 at Niles.'

"Order No. 3.-1st No. 27 will meet extra 44 east at Bowen instead of Niles.'

"Bowen is a station west of Niles. Can extra 44 east proceed to Niles after meeting 1st 27? Can 2d 27 proceed west from Niles or must it wait for extra 44 east?"-H. L. T.

Answer. There is an inconsistency between the first order and the second in that the first order is to meet No. 27 (which indicates that there is but one section) and the second is to meet 1st 27. We think that whenever it is necessary to make a change of this kind the first order should be annulled so that there would be no chance of misunderstanding.

Inasmuch as the first order mentioned "No. 27," it is assumed that there was but one section when that order was sent and we have no means of knowing whether the second section (which was evidently a later arrangement) signed either the first order or the second. It would therefore be very unsafe for extra 44 to leave Bowen until all sections of No. 27 arrived, without further orders.

As for 2d 27, if they had signed both orders they might be justified in waiting at Niles for extra 44, inasmuch as "No.

27" in the first order would include all sections, and the second order changed the meeting point with the first section only.

It would seem, therefore, that an order of this kind would invite a misunderstanding with the possibility of serious results, and this leads us to emphasize what we have often said with regard to making orders plain and consistent with each other. In this case we think that either the first order should have been annulled or the second one should have included a meeting point for the second section as well as the first. It would have been preferable to annul the first order, as that would leave no possible room for subsequent complications.

91. Whistle Signals.-"Will you kindly advise why there is not a signal to give by steam whistle by the engineer when descending long grades for the brakeman to turn up retaining valves to hold train under control so engineer can recharge auxiliary reservoirs? I have never seen any rule to cover this and any information you can give on the subject will be

highly appreciated."-E. J. H.

Answer. We do not know of any road where such a rule is in force and if we correctly understand the situation described by our correspondent it only occurs on mountain roads where grades are long and it becomes necessary to recharge the auxiliary reservoirs while still holding the train under control. It is probable, therefore, that the makers of the Standard Code did not consider that a provision of this kind would be generally applicable, and it is the intention of the code, we believe, to confine itself to rules of this character. It is our impression that where this practice is common that engineer and trainmen have a sort of understanding as to when and where the retainers are to be turned up and how many.

We suggest that this would be a good subject for engine and trainmen to take up and formulate, if possible, a code of signals for this purpose. Perhaps some readers of the Magazine can give some information as to existing practices, if there are any.

larger size than has been used heretofore. In other words, a 2-inch pipe is as small as ought to be used for steam heating purposes, and it is our practice to use that on all new equipment, all new applications. My attention was called today to a Pullman car on our lines that was giving real trouble about heating. I forget just the number of pipe bends that were found on that car, but the number was very great, nearly a dozen of right-angle bends that the steam had to pass through in order to pass from one end of the car to the other, and it was almost impossible to heat the car with that combination. It is very important, in equipping cars, to have the pipe lines as direct as possible and the diameter of the pipe large enough to permit rapid circulation.

MR. WEST: I take the opposite stand in regard to that. Last year a company offered to heat our trains with the exhaust steam from the air pumps, which I did not believe could be accomplished, and they do it successfully. The gentleman who introduced the device called my attention to one fact which is a common practice, I believe, in heating passenger trains; that no matter if we had a 4-inch train pipe the full opening of the valves on the first car would be made, and he immediately began to teach our men that it was not necessary to turn the valve in the first car from the engine more than a quarter of a turn, and on the cars farther back in the train open the valves correspondingly more. In that way we had almost as much pressure at the rear coach as at the first. The past winter we have successfully heated in the coldest weather a combination mail and passenger car behind as many as twenty cars with a 12inch pipe.

MR. BRAZIER: In reply to the question asked by Mr. McIntosh, I inform you that we use 11⁄2-inch pipe and 14-inch openings in the hose couplings.

PROF. HIBBARD: I hope that the statement of Mr. West will be realized in its importance. We know that the locomotive air pump is wasteful of steam and that we do not want that pump in our shops for pumping our shop air if we can buy an economical air compressor, but that it lasts on the locomotive and will last because it is so simple and so compact and so light. If Mr. West has found the way to take the steam from that wasteful air compressor and use it for heating trains, I think that the importance of that saving ought to be recognized in its fullest extent by the members

of our Club. We have made use of that air pump exhaust for heating the water in our tender tanks to some extent in the past on some of our roads, but it appears that there is much more heat in the exhaust than can be utilized in heating water in our tender tanks. I think that it will be a very marked saving if we find that what he finds to be successful is successful on all our passenger trains, to use that otherwise wasted steam from the exhaust of the air pumps.

MR. WEST: I would like to say that since that device has been put on our locomotives, "live" steam has never been used to heat the coaches. I would not want the statement made that we were warming a coach behind the twenty-five cars with that device. I was speaking of a car heated behind twenty cars with a 11⁄2inch pipe.

MR. BRAZIER : We have a train equipped in the same way as Mr. West describes and the system has been very successful all this season.

MR. WHYTE: What is the back pressure on the pump, Mr. West?

MR. WEST: I do not know. The pump never has failed to do its work. We never attempt to carry over fifty to sixty pounds of steam pressure when we use the reducing valve, when we carry 180 pounds of pressure on the boiler. We have no difficulty in getting the air pump to do its work.

MR. WHYTE: It is not considered eco

nomical, however, to work with excessive back pressure either on a pump or a steam engine. If the steam is carried from the pump to the locomotive tank there will be the effect of the condenser

which would probably tend to decrease the back pressure, but it hardly seems desirable to put at all times an excessive back pressure on the pump. I do not understand that all trains can be heated with exhaust from the air pumps, particularly if the air brake train pipes are kept tight so that there are not too many leaks of air to keep the pump running to maintain the air pressure. If the train pipe is tight and the train is making through runs and not many applications of the brake, there probably will not be enough exhaust from the pump to heat a train.

MR. WEST: The four men who run these two locomotives say that the locomotives never steamed as freely as since this device was put on. Results are what we are after, not theories. In these days results count.

MR. MCINTOSH: I think that Mr. Whyte's condensing theory will work out all right in either case, as these train pipes are all steam trapped. I would infer that the exhaust passing back through the pipe would still be going into a condenser to a certain extent.

MR. C. E. TURNER: We have been using for the last two years the same arrangement which Mr. West has described. We have experienced no trouble from back pressure on our pumps, no increase of the expense of maintaining. As far as the heating of the train is concerned, whether it be on a hilly road or a level road, I know of my personal knowledge of a road, the heaviest grade of which is 15 feet to the mile, their trains run 40 miles without making a stop, and they are heating some of their trains in this way. The gentlemen that had the steam heat put on said: "We do not get exhaust enough from our air pump." The gentleman who represented this steam heating system said, "We have an arrangement which we can put on to give you the pulsations, or the beats, of the pump." "Oh, no," he says; "our pumps are all right." The heating arrangement was put on and was continued in use for two trips, and the engine came in and the heating man asked, "Now, how is the pump working?" "Why," said the railroad man, "I had not the remotest idea that, on a level road like we have, we would get so much exhaust steam." The train was a nine-car train and on a level road, running forty miles without making a stop. They had no trouble whatever in heating that train and they are using the heating arrangement now. I understand that they have ordered about fifteen or twenty equipments to be placed on their locomotives. I am not speaking in behalf of this heating arrangement. We are using it on five or six of our trains now and we are having no trouble with it what

ever.

MR. WEST: I think that if anyone will ride behind one of our locomotives which is equipped as described and listen to the pop valve that is connected to the receiving reservoir and which allows steam to escape from the reservoir in case of an over-pressure, and find that pop open half the time, he would have some idea of the waste of the air pump. I have had no figures with regard to the maintenance of the air pump on these locomotives compared with those on other locomotives, but the engineers tell me that the air pumps are a great deal more reliable and

that they do not pound nearly as badly as they did when the air pump was exhausting out into the atmosphere.

MR. A. O. BERRY: I think that the success of a device of this kind depends entirely on the class of service in which it is used. We have two locomotives equipped with a device for heating the train by means of the air pump exhaust. One of these locomotives is working in local service where there are 18 stops in a distance of 23 miles. The device is

working very successfully in that service and has done so for the last two years. Even in the very coldest of weather, the cations of the brakes give exhaust steam number of stops and the number of applienough to successfully heat the trains. We also have locomotives equipped with this device running in fast express service, and I find that in the very coldest of weather there is not exhaust steam enough to heat the trains sufficiently and steam from the boiler must be turned into the steam heat system in order to maintain a sufficiently high temperature in the

MR. WEST: Fifty pounds, I think.

MR. O'BRIEN: Then you have 50 pounds back pressure on the pump? MR. WEST: Yes.

MR. O'BRIEN: Then you need more steam to work the pump?

MR. WEST: We have got 180 to 200 pounds all the time.

MR. O'BRIEN: Then you are virtually taking steam from the boiler to heat the train?

MR. WEST: I can not agree with Mr. O'Brien. We are certainly exhausting the steam down to atmospheric pressure, and any man who has undertaken to supply the air around a shop with the West

inghouse air pump knows what it means to operate an air pump.

MR. WHYTE: There is another thing about heating the train from the air pump: If the back pressure of the pump is 50 pounds, and the steam pressure on the boilers is 180 pounds, the effective pressure on the pump is 130 pounds. This 130 pounds steam pressure will not give 120 pounds, or 130 pounds, of air in the main reservoir, and these air pressures are required for the high speed brake.

MR. WEST: This discussion is foreign to the subject, but it was brought out in trying to demonstrate that a 14-inch pipe is large enough for the demands made upon it. I think that if we use a 2-inch train pipe we have got a larger area for condensation, we have got a larger surface exposed. No matter how well it is covered, there is more or less condensation in a train pipe, and if a 144inch pipe is large enough, what is the use of putting in 2-inch pipes?-New York Railroad Club.

Burning Oil Without Smoke.

MR. C. R. PETRIE: Replying to your letter of the 3d instant, advising that question No. 80 had been assigned to me fon an answer, and which reads as follows:

"Are not all oil-burning locomotives supposed to consume their own smoke? and if so, what is the matter with those that do not? Which is the most suitable fuel for locomotives, having regard to the comfort and safety of passengers?"

Oil-burning locomotives are supposed to consume their own smoke, and if conditions are as they should be, they will. The conditions which give a smokeless oilburning locomotive are so nicely balanced, however, that a very small margin is left to keep them in that condition.

The following are a few of the things we have found that have been the matter with them when they did not consume their own smoke: Slight leaks in top of flues or flue sheet; leak in top front corner of side sheets; leak in back mud ring, where draft takes the water into the oil; air leak into front end smoke arch; pump exhaust disconnected in front end; exhaust stand leaking; not receiving air enough through pan; sand or small particles of brick on the firing floor; trying to haul a ten-mile-per-hour tonnage at a twenty-mile gait; trying to evaporate more water in a given time than is possible with the size boiler, etc.

I believe oil is the most suitable fuel for locomotives, both in regard to comfort and safety of passengers.

MR. D. P. Kellogg : All combustion, wood, coal, or oil,-is supposed to be perfect; if perfect, then there would be no smoke. Unfortunately the locomotive engines, which burn more fuel than any other steam-using machinery, are the hardest to make perfect, for two principal reasons: First, They are required to generate more steam per square foot of heating surface than almost any other boiler. Second, The conditions are more variable than in any other steam-producing plant, and all variations must be neutralized to produce perfect combustion. Usually by the time this act is performed another arises.

In the first place, original design and construction are most important. We find that heat generated from fuel oil is harder to distribute than from coal. We project the oil under pressure into the fire-box toward the forward end, similar to throwing all coal ahead. Cold air is also admitted at this point, and we have but little if any heat in the lower back corner of the fire-box. To overcome this, it is essential, when possible, to lower the burner as much as possible, so that the return of the heat may act on this portion, as it must rise in returning.

We find by experience that we can only project the oil a certain distance against the counteracting influences of exhaust and rising heat, augmented by air admis This limit seems sion under the flame.

to be about 6 feet 6 inches. It is essential

that the oil strike the front wall, as it is white hot, and ignites and breaks up the larger particles of oil, which unfortunately the atomizer does not atomize. On the other hand, we have a limit, and if the projected oil strikes floor, side wall, or fallen brick, it cools and deposits, instead of breaking up and burning.

It seems to be essential to first place the burner as low as possible, then tip it slightly up at the point, so that it flows or rolls in a natural course. If the point is tipped down, the tendency under light working is to strike the forward wall, then down according to the law of deflection, it must strike the front wall, then floor, and cut the path of the ingoing oil, which produces smoke and poor combustion; so we aim to first get as low as possible, then the angles are always upward, assisted by natural laws and the exhaust.

It seems to be nearly as essential to