OCR Text |
Show IMPROVEMENT NEEDED. It is not complimentary to engineering engineer-ing talent that while locomotive boilers have increased enormously in size during dur-ing the past ten or twelve years, close on to 100 per cent in point of heating surface and grate areas, very little has been done to lighten the labors of the locomocive fireman. In stationary boiler practice mechanical mechani-cal stokers long since demonstrated their fitness for the work in hand, and it is unusual nowadays to find a plant of appreciable size In which they have not been made to supplant manual labor. Aboard ship mechanical stoker progress has been slower very much slower. In fact while in connection with locomotive practice the mechanical stoker seems to have suffered primarily from the overruling aim to save weight and space, and it Is these two considerations consider-ations which will have a large part in shaping its future in this Service. Firing by hand a locomotive with upward up-ward of 3000 square feet of heating surface Is, however, a tax upon human effort much beyond which It will be inexpedient, in-expedient, if not Impossible to go; hence either mechanical stoking must shortly be made amenable to the ways of the locomotive designer, or there must be restriction In locomotive fire box dimensions di-mensions or at least in their further growth. Cassler's Magazine. |