Maintenance
The six days per week running schedule of these locomotives meant that all of the maintenance work normally done over the course of that week would have to be done on one day. This meant a specialized system was developed, where men in "hot suits" (asbestos heat-resistant coveralls) entered the firebox while the locomotive was still in steam and cleared all of the tubes, repaired the brick arch, etc. As the temperature inside the firebox itself would have been well over 100 degrees Celsius (212 F), and the working area these maintenance workers would have been standing on was the still-hot firebars of the grate, all references describe these workers as 'heroic' (reference: pages 172 ~ 173 The Great Book of Trains, Brian Hollingsworth and Arthur Cook (Bedford Editions, Salamander Books, 1987) )
This type of intensive maintenance was studied by steam locomotive designers such as Andre Chapelon, Livio Dante Porta, and David Wardale. These designers based their modern steam locomotives on the experience gained in these Niagara-class locomotives: reliability; and a close attention to details leading to a reduction in maintenance costs.
Read more about this topic: NYC Niagara
Famous quotes containing the word maintenance:
“In public buildings set aside for the care and maintenance of the goods of the middle ages, a staff of civil service art attendants praise all the dead, irrelevant scribblings and scrawlings that, at best, have only historical interest for idiots and layabouts.”
—George Grosz (1893–1959)
“My course is a firm assertion and maintenance of the rights of the colored people of the South according to the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments, coupled with a readiness to recognize all Southern people, without regard to past political conduct, who will now go with me heartily and in good faith in support of these principles.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“It is an injustice that an old, broken, half-dead father should enjoy alone, in a corner of his hearth, possessions that would suffice for the advancement and maintenance of many children.”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)