Denny and All-
Rupert, Hol and I have been digging up information on the two D1 2-8-0s that were built as camelback Wootens.
They were intended to burn “slack” coal, which is the debris left after the coal is sized. On a test of a P&R passenger engine #372 the Q used “bituminous refuse known as Streator’s dirt or screenings”. Screenings had little commercial value and out east the railroads were paid to haul it away until they made good use of the anthracite slack and even then it was cheap. The Q used it as ballast.
There is no mention in the CB&Q record so far about them trying the pair on lignite….we haven’t researched when the Q started using it but I am guessing it was well after the Wootens were converted to regular boiler engines.
I am aware of two Wabash consols that they got from Baldwin when the Reading defaulted on payments. The Q engines were modified D1s and did not follow the Reading plans. NP, UP, L&N, C&EI and other roads also experimented with Wootens; none with much luck.
The statements made by Q officials in various forums is not very clear on the history of the locomomtives and there are contradictory statements about the reason for their failing. They were very hard on staybolts and flues and evidence points to bad water as the main culprit.
We think the #397 was rebuilt at Aurora in 1884, becoming the first D2. The fate of the #398 is less clear; it may have been rebuilt and then converted to an 0-6-0 as most of the early consolidations were but the records sketchy.
We have a Baldwin diagram of the Q Wooten engines but so far no photo has turned up although a photo of #397 as rebuilt with a Belpraire firebox does exist at CSRM and the same photo was published in the Locomotive Fireman’s Magazine union journal in 1897.
Charlie Vlk
From: CBQ@groups.io <CBQ@groups.io> On Behalf Of Denny Anspach
Sent: Wednesday, January 2, 2019 8:32 AM
To: CBQ@groups.io
Subject: Re: [CBQ] Coal fires in cars ?
Could the CB&Q’s locomotives designed and built to burn lignite also burn regular bituminous soft coal equally well?
Wooten firebox Mother Hubbard locomotives: I have often shared the very same question about the scattered such locomotives purchased by western railroads: why, when they were designed specifically to burn anthracite hard coal? Although the commercial heart of anthracite production was and is eastern PA, there were apparently small pockets of anthracite elsewhere, and perhaps the railroads were tapping into these?
There is an excellent major article in the most recent RAILROAD HISTORY on these interesting locomotives (but does not answer this question).
That all said, I am realizing how little I know about this subject.
Denny S. Anspach, MD
307 Stanton Road
Quarryville, PA
17566