Before leaving him let us take a look at his firebox, and we will see
that it is full of coal, at least up to the level of the door. We will
also see quite a pile of ashes under the ash pan. You can better
understand the disadvantage of this way of firing after we visit the
next man. I think a good way to know how to do a thing, is to know
also, how not to do it.
Well, we will now go across to the man who is making but little smoke,
and making that at regular intervals. We will be likely to find that he
has only a little hand shovel. He picks this up, takes up a small
amount of coal, opens the fire door and spreads the coal nicely over the
grates; does this quickly and shuts the door; for a minute black smoke
is thrown out, but only for a minute. Why? Because he only threw in
enough to replenish the fire, and not to choke it in the least, and in a
minute the heat is great enough to consume all the smoke before it
reaches the stack, and as smoke is unconsumed fuel, he gains that much
if he can consume it. We will see this engineer standing around for the
next few minutes perfectly, at ease.
Pages:
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61