Hol,
No problem with the delayed response. Thank you for providing a definitive answer. Amazing that it was a simple conversion to switch a locomotive from coal to oil or vis versa. Of course,with the Denver Backshop in the immediate area, maybe for them, it was easy. Or would such work been a roundhouse conversion? The firebox grates would seem like the difficult item as it is my impression that they were designed to fit specific locomotive classes. Of course, grates were a wear out component that occasionally required replacement anyway.
Bill Barber Gravois Mills, MO Wed Feb 25, 2015 6:09 pm (PST) . Posted by:Bill:
Sorry it took me so long to get around to your questions. First, the earliest Q conversion to oil were in 1912, under the federal mandate that locomotives operating in U.S. Forest Reserves (later National Forests) burn oil or be equipped with spark arrestors that could be proved to stop ALL sparks from escaping up the stack. Then in the 1906-17 period, a number of Casper Division locomotives were converted to utilize oil from the Salt Creek field north of Casper. The C&S also converted a substantial number of locomotives to burn Wyoming oil during 1916-17, but converted them back to coal after the war when coal shortages ended. The C&S, however, had first converted at least two narrow gauge 2-6-0s (engines 6 and 7) to oil-burners in spring 1902 under a plan that would have seen all the narrow gauge passenger power switched over to oil during the tourist season then changed back to coal during fall and winter. A contract was signed for delivery of oil from the Spindletop field at Beaumont, Tex., and a dozen tank cars were purchased to transport the oil. But overproduction of the Spindletop field and its subsequent failure put an end to the plan by the start of 1903. The Q converted a number of locomotives to oil in the 1920s and made the Casper Division 100% oil-burning, followed in the 1930s by the Sterling Division. More conversions were done in the mid-1930s, the mid-1940s and the early 1950s. But no new locomotive were ever purchased by the Q as oil-burners. The FW&D, however, did purchase 2-8-2s as oil-burners. And somewhat surprising is how many C&S locomotives were converted from coal to oil, back to coal and then back to oil over a period of about 20 years. The conversion process was easy, and it was done as the price of coal and oil fluctuated and made one a better value than the other for a time. There was never a shortage of good steam coal out west, including the lignite or sub-bituminous that the Q learned to burn so efficiently. On the C&S the Southern Colorado fields were nowhere near depleted when the switch to diesels was undertaken.
Hol
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Posted by: William Barber <clipperw@gmail.com>
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