Locomotive Fuel on the Boston and Providence Rail Road
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Locomotive fuel on the Boston and Providence Rail Road Harry Chase 2012 1. Introduction The Boston and Providence Rail Road opened its 42-mile main line between the capital cities of Massachusetts and Rhode Island in 1835. The railroad operated as an independent corporation until 1888, when it was leased by the Old Colony Railroad. During its 53-year history the Boston and Providence burned first wood and then bituminous (“soft”) coal in its approximately 124 steam locomotives and experimented with coke, anthracite (“hard”) coal and oil. This monograph contains a brief account of each of the fuels used in the railroad’s locomotives during its corporate history and the rationale for converting from one fuel to another. 2. Wood In Europe, wood had been tried for its cheapness as locomotive fuel but was given up in favor of coal and coke largely because of the greater availability of fossil fuel, and also because of the annoying and even dangerous sparks that issued from the smokestacks of wood-burning engines. In the United States, wood was much more easily available and generally cheaper than other fuels, and for many years was commonly burned in locomotives; while sparks were less of a problem in the thinly settled countryside through which American railroads ran. Ingenious spark-catching devices were invented, including the popular “diamond stack” devised by Boston and Providence master mechanic George S. Griggs. [1] Spark arresters were not always effective. British travelers, who at home were accustomed to engines that burned fossil fuel, were entranced by the sparks thrown by American wood-burners. Charles Dickens, on a visit to the United States in 1842, rode the Boston and Lowell Railroad and wrote of the “mad dragon of an engine with its train of cars; scattering in all directions a shower of burning sparks from its wood fire,” and later in the day on the same railroad, “I found entertainment for the rest of the ride in watching the effects of the wood fire, which had been invisible in the morning, but were now brought out in full relief by the darkness, for we were travelling in a whirlwind of bright sparks, which showered around us like a storm of fiery snow.” [2] The geologist Charles Lyell, riding a North Carolina train after dark in January 1842, describes a wood-burning engine as “resembling a large rocket fired horizontally, with a brilliant stream of revolving sparks extending behind the engine for several hundred yards, each spark being a minute particle of wood, which, after issuing from the chimney of the furnace, remains ignited for several seconds in the air. Now and then these fiery particles, which are invisible by day, instead of lagging in the rear, find entrance by favour of the wind through the open windows of the car, and, while some burn holes in the traveller's cloak, others make their way into his eyes, causing them to smart most painfully.” [3] These sparks sometimes set serious fires, as when on 13 April 1836 a Boston and Providence engine set its own baggage car ablaze, destroying the newspaper mail for New York City and half the baggage, [4] and an instance on 29 October 1836 when a mile-long swath of woods in Mansfield, Mass., was ignited by a Boston and Providence locomotive. [5] The Boston and Providence Rail Road’s first steam locomotive was Whistler, built by Robert Stephenson in England in 1832 [6] for another New England railway and sold by that company to the Providence road in 1833. Its mechanical specifications conform to published descriptions of Stephenson's prototype Planet, completed for the Liverpool and Manchester Railway in 1830. The Planet type was designed to burn coke, [7] but I’ve seen no evidence that reveals whether Whistler in the beginning burned coal, coke or wood. At first I assumed the former, as Boston and Providence is reported to have purchased three anthracite-burning engines in the 1830s, [8] but a record of steaming tests conducted in 1835 indicates that Whistler then used pine wood for fuel. [9] At first, the dry pitch pine burned in Boston and Providence locomotives was purchased at $6.00 a cord plus $1.00 a cord for sawing and splitting. The engine Boston, built in 1835 by Edward Bury in England [10] and equipped with Bury’s dome-shaped “haystack” firebox, in making a run between Boston and Providence burned 1-1/8 cords of wood. [11] Pitch pine (Pinus rigida), though it burns hot and has been used for fuel, seems unsuitable as the resin would coat the tubes with creosote, reducing heating capacity. Perhaps, however, the fires were maintained at a high enough heat that the creosote was continually burned off. Though pitch pine grew locally but not abundantly along the line of the Boston and Providence, and is common on Cape Cod and in sandy soils farther inland, most of it was brought by schooner from the South. [12] During 1837, each of the 11 locomotives in service typically made one round trip per day between Boston and Providence, totaling 84 miles. On the average an engine burned a cord of wood on each 42-mile leg, sufficient to turn 700 gallons of water to steam. [13] By 1838 the locomotives were burning spruce. Spruce was not found locally in any quantity and had to be shipped from Canada, northern and western New England, and the South. Wood fuel remained a significant expense. The railroad's 10 engines, in running a total of 119,574 miles, consumed 3200 cords costing $18,618, an average of $5.82 per cord, including 75 cents for sawing it into suitable lengths. The locomotives averaged 37-1/3 miles on a cord at a cost of 15.9 cents per mile. [14] Another report states that Boston and Providence engines in 1838 got 36 miles on a cord of wood for 16 cents per mile. [15] Stops on route for wood and water were necessary, and Mansfield, 24 miles from Boston and 18 miles from Providence and (beginning in 1836) the junction of the Taunton Branch Rail Road, was the principal place where engines were given a drink and refueled from a large wood yard situated beside the track At the Roxbury shop of master mechanic George Griggs, 2 miles from Boston, locomotive tenders were filled from a water tank at the shed, then the engines were run up a spur track to the woodhouse, where a circular saw driven by a horse walking on a treadmill cut the cordwood to a length that fit in the tenders (on most railroads this was 16 to 24 inches). [16] The European railroad expert Gerstner, who visited in 1839, makes no mention of coaling facilities for the one anthracite-burning locomotive supposedly still on the roster, therefore it must be assumed that the engine had been redrafted to burn wood or had been retired from service. In 1844, 15-year-old Frederick Paine went to work for Boston and Providence at Mansfield sawing cordwood into stove lengths for heating the passenger station. He was paid 25 and 50 cents a cord. [17] In a few more years, the enterprising Paine went into the business of buying wood, hiring sawyers to cut it into lengths to fit the locomotive fireboxes and selling it to the railroad company. Some Mansfield farmers hauled their own wood, cut in standard cordwood lengths of 4 feet, to the station’s wood pile. A three-man crew worked on the pile sawing the sticks in half, one cut per stick, at 60 cents a cord. While the trains paused for water, the men tossed the billets of wood into the tenders. Not until later did the railroad company, to save money by cutting out Paine and other local middle men, manage their own fuel transactions and wood yards. [18] The problem, however, was that in New England wood was used in enormous quantities for home heating, building (including ship building at New Bedford and other seaports) and many other purposes. For miles around major cities the landscape was laid bare, and what cordwood that was cut elsewhere had escalated in price. The days when farmers along the railroad line could add to their incomes by supplying large quantities of wood for stacking beside way stations like Mansfield had all but disappeared as southeastern New England became increasingly denuded, [19] and a greater quantity of wood had to be imported from the South. A.M. Levitt, in 2002, acquired a large number of Boston and Providence invoices dating from 1846. Many of the September and October invoices are "peppered" with charges for cordwood, much of which came by ships apparently belonging to the railroad from company- owned woodlands in Virginia; although no cordwood invoices were printed during the third quarter of 1846. Both pitch pine and white pine (Pinus strobus) are mentioned. The wood was received on the schooners Achsah Parker, Jeroleman (113 cords at $6.00 per cord), Pokomoke (70 cords also at $6.00) and Sarah Francis and the sloop Eunice. The Sarah Francis is represented by two trips, having been unloaded on 14 September (28 cords) and 7 October; her loads were billed at $5.20 per cord, as was the wood from the Eunice. The Achsah Parker was unloaded 21 September (28 cords), 13 October (30 cords) and 22 October (29 cords), these loads also billed at $5.20 per cord. The two different prices suggest two separate sources in Virginia some distance apart by land or sea or both.