Tom Nagy, the stoker on this shift. Tom was Polish and had also
been in the Merchant Navy - he was quite short and could
not fire to the front of the two face height fireboxes so he just
heaped the coal up in the middle of the grate and then spread it with
a
rake!
The two outer fireboxes were at face height and the two inner ones
were low down, so it got your back either way! I was fit then
and often fired for 12 hours when we were short staffed in summer.
Each box is the same grate area as a Black 5 loco
and there are four to fill!
Emptying the ashes from under the LH lower grate - the ash pan doors
also acted as a damper, as on a loco, and you could
crack the top doors open a bit to get some air on top of the fire
and reduce the smoke a bit - but there was no blower -
just natural draught.
Left - Lincoln Castle had a four flue Scotch marine boiler fitted
- the older sisters Wingfield Castle and Tattershall Castle had three
flue
Scotch
marine boilers. Wingfield had a rocking grate! No such luxury on
the Lincoln - we used to pull the fires one at a time and clean them,
then
bucket
the ashes up through and hatch in the corridor floor and fill the
empty tubs, which had brought the coal down, with the ashes for
disposal.
It was
an incredibly labour intensive operation. All this took place at
New Holland, never on the Hull side of the crossing.
Right - Looking up from the stoke hold floor - here we are emptying
the coal tubs into one of the 2 bunkers. The vents are clearly visible
here -
they provided the draught for the fires but they were also cold
to work under in winter!
Tom loading up the ashes ready for us to haul them up and dispose
of them in the coal tubs at New Holland. It was not a clean
environment to work in!
A well earned break between trips.
Oiling and greasing the motion - also between trips!
Left - a nice view showing the high, middle and low pressure
cylinders
and the complex motion attached to them.
Right - "It was a mighty engine and rarely gave us any trouble -
it was well maintained and in good order".