Smoke on, ready....now! McCloud 25 charges across the little Fishery Point Bridge in Wheeler, Oregon, converting the spoils from the local Jiffy Lube into black gold for an assembled group of photographers on a Lerro Productions charter.
Some of us from back east almost consider it heresy that a steam locomotive should burn anything except coal....the black diamonds. We expect a steam engine to belch filth and soot....the way God and Alco intended. Besides, oil burners run too clean...right? They don't produce the plume that we photographers crave. Well, it wasn't until I started spending any significant time on the west coast that I discovered that nearly all west coast steamers are oil burners. And while they typically are a whole lot cleaner looking than the coal-burning beasts that I am used to, it didn't take more than a couple of good run-bys to convince me that oil burners have it all over coal burners when it comes to producing nice exhaust plumes. There's no hard labor involved either. When the charter operator calls for smoke, the fireman bumps the firing valve a bit and presto....instant clouds of sooty black stuff. Sure, all of that extra rich mixture has a tendency to soot up the flues pretty quickly, but there's an easy solution for that too. Toss a little sand in the firebox with a good draft going, and presto...even sootier, nastier black smoke comes spewing out as the sand cleans the soot out of the flues! I tell ya, after doing 4 railroads in 6 days on this latest trip, I am an oil-burner fan!
