#3700 appears to be equipped with overfire jets, which are the canister-shaped things on the side of the firebox. These blew air over the top of the fire to help at low speeds when there was little-to-no draft. Overfire jets were ultimately determined to be of questionable efficiency by pretty much any railroad that tried them, leading to them being a rarely-seen appliance. They are remarked to have been louder than hell when in operation, and firemen said that they were nice in that you could use them as a guidemark for how much coal to have on your fire. Few engines survive with overfire jets, and the only operating engine that had overfire jets, C&O #1309, had them removed during its restoration.
D&RGW M-64 Western #1707 near Keeldar, Colorado with the Scenic Limited. D&RGW had been impressed from afar by the DL&W's Alco-built 4-8-4s, particularly the one-piece cast frame, and so the D&RGW had ordered fifteen 4-8-4s from Alco. At the time, Alco was backed up on orders and instead sublet the construction to Baldwin. D&RGW found out that Alco was not constructing the engines and was not very pleased, threatening to back out of the purchase. Alco smoothed things over by purchasing the locomotives from Baldwin, and then agreeing to lease the locomotives to D&RGW on a five-year lease, with the provision that if, at any time and for any reason, the D&RGW was not happy with the locomotives, they could return them. D&RGW was apparently not displeased with the M-64s, because they hung around until the (early) end of steam on the D&RGW.
M-64 Western #1708 at Pueblo with the Scenic Limited. WIth 70" drivers, the M-64 Northerns, like the Reading T-1, were a true dual-purpose machine. Any taller of a driver would have hurt low-speed performance too much on the D&RGW's sawtooth terrain.
D&RGW Pacific #804 at Denver, Colorado. It's equipped with a smokestack deflector and an extra sand dome
D&RGW L-131 2-8-8-2 #3168 and M-64 Western #1702 with the Scenic Limited near Mitchell, Colorado
D&RGW 4-6-6-4 #3706 racing eastward with a 14 car troop train at Grand Junction, Colorado
One of the "War Baby" L-97 Challengers that D&RGW took delivery of. They were part of a UP order for 3900-series Challengers, but were diverted by the War Production Board to the D&RGW. The L-97 were smaller and shorter-drivered than D&RGW's own L-105 series engines. After World War Two ended, the D&RGW returned the sextet to the UP and then a year later in July 1947, the UP (or, technically, the Defense Plant Corporation) sold the set to the Clinchfield, which redesignated them as E-3s and renumbered them #670-675. Clinchfield was never particularly happy with the engines, they were "runners" and Clinchfield wanted "luggers" and they parked them in 1953. The 6 of them ultimately sat around as late as 1969, waiting for the equipment trusts to run out before they were all scrapped.
D&RGW 2-8-8-2 #3618 and 4-8-4 #1705 at Denver with a Rocky Mountain Railroad Club fantrip.
After the success of the 14 M-64 "Westerns" that Baldwin constructed in '29, D&RGW returned to Baldwin for five more 4-8-4s in 1938. These engines had 73" drivers and made 4,000lbs more of tractive effort, and were equipped with an Elesco vertical coil-type feedwater heater. The design was reused in WWII for Missouri Pacific's N-74 Northerns
overfire air
Secondary air which is introduced in a furnace above the grate to complete combustion and to produce turbulence, thereby increasing the efficiency of the combustion process.
Works great on a stationery boiler in a power plant for burning off excess carbon. Didn't the PL&E (last) ALCO's have over fire air to reduce smoke?
In reply to LS_BC8 :
Yeah, the P&LE Berkshires, which were the final Alco locomotives built and Lima had to build the tenders because Alco had already converted the tender shop over to diesel production, also had overfire jets. No clue how well they worked on those, because their operational history is pretty much a big question mark. They were short-lived engines on a fairly obscure line.
D&RGW K-28 narrow gauge Mikado at Durango, Colorado in 1962 with a Rocky Mountain Railroad Club excursion.
D&RGW K-28 #471 with a sparse little mixed train.
K-36 #483 with the San Juan Express near Coxo, Colorado.
K-27 "Mudhen" #461 with a short livestock train
The final run of mixed train #426, behind K-28 #471 on September 1st, 1941.
K-36 #485, with K-36 #487 shoving at the back climbs a grade near Coxo, Colorado. Of the ten K-36s built, the #485 is the only one that doesn't exist anymore. It ran off into a turntable and fell on it's side and busted the frame up pretty bad, resulting in D&RGW deciding to scrap it.
D&RGW #482 with a stockcar train westbound for Farmington, NM, photographed just south of Carbon Junction, Colorado on October 25, 1946. The odd thing about this branch was that it was built to standard gauge. At that point in the Rio Grande's history, some expected that the San Juan Extension would eventually be converted to standard gauge. This was partially true, surveys had been conducted to do just that, but it was also apparently a scare tactic to keep the SP and AT&SF from building long branches up into the rich mining and ranching region. The presence, or at least the threat of the presence of a standard gauge railway made such expansions less lucrative. In 1923, when the threat of such branch incursion was nearly gone and it was clear that the San Juan Extension would never join the core standard gauge network, the Farmington Branch was converted back to narrow gauge. In a surprising turn of events, it would be this lightly-served branch that would save the line west of Antonito for a few more decades. In the 1950s, an oil and gas boom around the Farmington region brought heavy traffic, largely drilling equipment and pipe loads, over the route for about a decade. By the mid-1960s, this too had ended, and the last freight moved over the line in August of 1968. By 1971, the entire line from Chama to Durango to Farmington had been removed by the scrappers.
Two K-27 "mudhens" paired up on a freight on the D&RGW-controlled Rio Grande Southern. The engines are spaced out as they are to avoid overloading the light bridges on the spindly RGS line. The RGS was constructed by Otto Mears, "the pathfinder of the San Juans" with plans to serve the south side of the San Juans and connect the Rio Grande's San Juan Extension at Durango, and the Ouray Branch at Ridgway, Colorado. While the first couple years were extremely profitable due to the booming precious metal mining in the region, the rest of the route's history was one of financial turmoil and minimal survival. The line was completed only a year before the Silver Panic of 1893, and when the mines closed, traffic plummeted and the railroad went into receivership. As part of the restructuring, the Rio Grande acquired a controlling interest in the route and maintained its control until the end in 1951.
So apparently there was another Amtrak derailment/accident today.
Edit: I just saw a news story where they've announced 3 people died in the accident.
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