> What is wrong with everyone. Canals are supposed to be slow and
> relaxing. I
> think some of you are playing in the wrong pond.
>
> Sue nb Nackered Navvy
>
I think you have to bear in mind that both Daniel and myself are
thinking in terms of steamboats, where the range of power output of the
boiler is much more limited than that of a diesel engine. For example, I
can set up the burner to run without visible smoke over a fairly narrow
range of outputs, and on a canal such as the S Oxford, if it's possible
to work fairly rapidly through locks, the loss of pressure and water on
a pound can be recouped when working through a lock, while keeping the
boiler working smokelessly. However if there are delays through locks,
with my boiler, the following occurs:-
If the burner steam pressure is turned down to keep the pressure under
control, the burner will only work with a richer mixture, so there is
more black smoke (wasted fuel and soot);
If the mixture is made too weak, the burner goes out and unburnt fuel
goes up the funnel, to come down again over the immediate surroundings;
In order to relight the burner, the mixture has to be made extremely
rich - more soot;
In order to get the burner steam pressure up to full power again, the
mixture has to be made rich with several times the normal level of fuel
to avoid it going out as the steam pressure is increased, until the
burner stabilises (5-10 minutes at high fuel during which there are
fairly industrial quantities of smoke).
You will perhaps appreciate why I was not totally sympathetic to the
woman who complained about atmospheric pollution after she had held us
up by working very slowly through a lock!
There will be a different range of problems with a coal fire if it is
first damped down and then forced.
A lot of people like to see the heritage aspects of the canals such as
steamboats, but it has to be appreciated that these date from a period
when working users of the canals knew that 'getting them ahead' was what
canals were about, and were aware of the limitations of the technology.
Sean
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