02/02/25

 It's Steamy Sunday here on the blog!  It's also a double digit day!  😀  Today's image is a perfect one for today as it is very steamy.  This is the Wagner locomotive being "blown down" to have some work performed on it.  To "blow down" a locomotive means to let the pressure off fairly quickly, usually by opening a special valve on larger locomotives or boiler plugs on smaller ones.  Under normal circumstances, you don't want temperatures to change quickly on a locomotive as it stresses the metal.  However, blowing it down a bit at times can help clear and sediment or gunk that couple be in the boiler.  Generally you want the pressure on the boiler to drop to 0 before you drain it.  On this day we were wanting to do a quick repair so we could resume running for the visitors to the show.