7/4/14

Happy 4th of July to all those in the US!  Today I have a fireworks photo of a different kind, fire working to make a locomotive operate.  On our trip to the Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railroad a couple of weekends ago, I was allowed to get up in the cab of our locomotive.  It's a smaller Narrow gauge K-27 type but I was very surprised when the engineer opened the firebox for me so I could see inside at how small it was.  I work on a simple switch type engine in Minnesota with not near the power of this locomotive but the firebox is at least twice the size if not more.  This K-27 locomotive does have a Superheater so that may account for it being able to have a smaller size fire to create the amount of steam it needs to for working in the mountains.