Oil burners

[hoppercar]

No experience with an oil burner.....always been a coal burner guy in my models .....would like to find some good reference material to read on 1 1/2 scale oil firing ......

[Glenn Brooks]

Me too. Hopefully someone will offer some background. The only design criteria I know is that a burner typically has two orifaces, or ports, one to provide oil flow and the other to introduce steam to atomize the oil flow. Seems like the diameter of the ports and shape of the nozzles, etc are important, but mysteries. Something of a lost art.

Oil was quite common in the hobby, when I first became interested - 40 or 50 years ago. But I never learned how the burners worked. Even then many oil burners were quite old and the old timers who originally built them were gone and had passed on the locos to the next generation - many of whom were like me had no first hand knowledge…

Just did a bit of Google searching. Here is an informative thread: https://www.trainorders.com/discussion/ ... 10,5373564. Read down towards the end for some first hand description of atomizers and how they work…

And lo and behold… two IBLS articles:

http://ibls.org/mediawiki/index.php/Bagley_Oil_Burner

http://ibls.org/mediawiki/index.php?tit ... Oil_Burner

Also, this articles suggests a 60* atomizer spray angle is ideal for long narrow fire boxes - shoots a long, narrow flame; while an 80* or greater spray angle is more suitable for square fire boxes.

https://inspectapedia.com/heat/Oil-Burn ... -Guide.php



One of these hints that Chaski also has some sort of thread. Haven’t found it yet.

[dkelly@rmce.com]

Larry Goldsby had an article in either Modeltec or Live Steam magazine detailing a pot type burner that did not require atomizing steam. The burner consisted of a steel bar with a slot cut in it for a certain depth. He was using this type of system to fire a 1.5", 8 coupled wheel locomotive, Oil was fed in thru a bottom hole in the slotted steel bar, feeding the slot (fire pot) and I believed that some side holes in the bar provided additional air. The advantage was that the burner was quiet although dumping the fire in an emergency could have been problematic. Someone may have a copy of the article. If you complete this type of burner, please let us know how it works out.

[hoppercar]

Hmmm ..all very interesting....what happens with a quick throttle opening, or a surge of water in the atomizer line ?.....is there a quick way to relight the fire, on the run ??......do live steam modelers use fire brick in the fire box ?

[Glenn Brooks]

One of the train order threads said some burner styles include fire brick at the aft end of the boiler. The brick gets superheated - red hot- and acts like an ignition source. So if the flame blows out, the hot brick will re-ignite the oil vapor stream - with a big “KA-BOOM”.

Also, apparently oil burners respond quickly to rapid throttle actions. And can cause hot spots if not controlled properly. Excess steam will snuf out the fire, so metering and low steam input is ideal. Again, just what I read on line…

[Pwallace]

I have an ottaway on 12” gauge converted to oil. The nearby emerald hill railway has an ottaway of the same guage converted to propane and I would do propane if I had the choice.

If my ottaway oil conversion is separated by tender, control, and fire: the tender has an additional oil tank of a few gallons gravity feed to a filter and shutoff by my ankles when running and that crosses to the loco with a quick connect.

The controls are a lever on the footboard that turns a stopcock for fine control and a regulator up by the roof to set the pressure at ~5psi. There is a guage on that leg and an airline connector for cold starts.

I am less aware of the fire component as it’s working great.

The design requires 3 airlines when cold to power the blower and the regulated supply to the atomizer. At pressure builds the various lines crossover and allow the airlines to be removed as appropriate.

One defect in my system is that the steam is direct to the burner. Wet steam like pulling away with a little too much water will blow the fire out and you have to be fast and you do get a woosh. I would like to build a separator with a valve at the bottom to periodically drain out the water.

[Pwallace]

The steam ottaway in contrast has a propane tank in a water bath with various shutoff valves. Up at the loco the only control is a needle valve and handheld sparker for relights as needed. There is a horizontal propane tank option that works especially well.

[Pwallace]

Hmmm ..all very interesting....what happens with a quick throttle opening, or a surge of water in the atomizer line ?.....is there a quick way to relight the fire, on the run ??......do live steam modelers use fire brick in the fire box ?

It’s part of the drama and the show. The flame typically extends out of the firebox anyways so on a relight you get quite the woosh, flame out the firebox, and sometimes flame out of the smokebox chimney. The action also dislodges soot so you get a black cloud too.

[Bill Shields]

Some folks keep a spark plug firing with the modern equivalent of a model T coil

Others use pieces of nichrome wire or piles if scrap metal in the chamber.

Others use BBQ igniters with a quick finger on the switch

Propane is easier...but then that is a biased opinion.

[Greg_Lewis]

Hmmm ..all very interesting....what happens with a quick throttle opening, or a surge of water in the atomizer line ?.....is there a quick way to relight the fire, on the run ??......do live steam modelers use fire brick in the fire box ?

It’s part of the drama and the show. The flame typically extends out of the firebox anyways so on a relight you get quite the woosh, flame out the firebox, and sometimes flame out of the smokebox chimney. The action also dislodges soot so you get a black cloud too.

I did that once on a full-size engine. It was, uh, interesting.

As to oil burners, there is one in Joe Nelson's book, So You Want To Build A Live Steam Locomotive. At some point various builders found that the hole in the steam nozzle as indicated in the book is too big and that the gap between the steam nozzle and the oil nozzle should be 1/2 the stated size. So the corrected values would be .062 for the oil nozzle and .082 for the steam nozzle. I made one like that and it works.

But in the end I wish I had gone with propane.

[Bill Shields]

My current project is methanol powered..burns clean, easy to light, lottsa heat, easy to build.

Not for the faint of heart.

[Charles T. McCullough]

I accidentally took this photo at just the right moment. Visually, I saw only a pale blue haze, but the camera captured the "heat" involved. This was a Garden Gage "Ruby" butane-fired loco being lit by the President of the Garden RR society.

DSC08218CstmC.jpg (18.52 KiB) Viewed 162 times

Only Joe's ego was singed and his pride took a bit of a blow, but otherwise he was not injured. It wasn't until I viewed the image later that I realized just how violent the flame out the smokebox door was. He eventually learned to open the butane valve to blow liquid out of the system, close the valve and let the liquid evaporate and excess gas escape, then apply flame to the front of the smokebox and open the butane valve again.