Dan Padova posted:Rich Melvin posted:Dan Padova posted:In the description it states that a fireman would shovel several tons of coal. Larger steam locomotives mostly had Archimedes screws, did they not ?
They were called “Stokers.”
They were not “automatic” stokers. There was absolutely nothing “automatic” about running a stoker.
I'm not sure what type of stoker you are thinking about. I thought a screw ran from the tender to the firebox. The coal would fall into the screw chute and be pulverized as it was move up the screw and into the firebox. I believe the screw was powered by a small steam boiler or possibly mechanically by some other device on the locomotive. It sounds automatic to me.
Not really. A stoker does the work of the shoveling by getting the coal into the firebox. You are in charge of controlling the rate, which is constantly changing depending on what the engineer is doing on the other side of the cab. And remember, what you do takes a minute or two for the effects to be realized. Depending on the railroad, the engineer and the train behind you, it's a fairly constant job.
