WHEN IT suits their book, some people do not scruple to drop hints in public places that I am opposed to poppet valves; it is, of course, a calumny. The fact is that I supported poppet valves at a time when it was neither profitable nor popular.
As far back as the old Dundalk days, when the simple v. compound controversy raised questions almost of honour with the steam men of the last generation, I was an all-out doctrinaire compounder and equally an implacable opponent of the piston valve. I saw even then that the secret of a well-set poppet valve – short travel – was bound to win out against prejudice. I remember riding an old 2-8-2 job on a Cavan side-road, and my readers can believe me or not as they please, but we worked up 5392 I.H.P. with almost equal steaming in the H.P. and L.P. cylinders, a performance probably never equalled on the grandiose “Pacific” jobs so much talked about across the water. The poppet valves (“pops”, old Joe Garrigle called them – R.I.P, a prince among steam men) gave us a very sharp cut-off. And we were working on a side road, remember.
There is not the same stuff in the present generation as there was in the one gone by, trite as that remark may sound. In hotels, public houses, restaurants, theatres and other places where people gather, I hear on all sides sneers and jibes at compound jobs. They eat coal and oil, they are unbalanced thermo-dynamically, they “melt” on high cut-off, and all the rest of it. Really, it is very tiresome. Your old-time steam man understood nothing but steam, but at least he understood it thoroughly. To see some of the sprouts that are abroad nowadays and to hear their innocent gabble about matters that were thrashed out in the Dundalk shops fifty years ago is to wonder whether man is moving forward at all through the centuries.
The other day I wanted to make a trip to the south, and arrived at Kingsbridge to find the train stuffed to the luggage racks with – well, what do you think, cliché fan? “Perspiring humanity,” of course. I was told there was no room for me. Perhaps it was injudicious, but I rang up the authorities and asked could I, as an old steam man, be permitted to travel on the plate, offering to fire as far as Mallow, or take over the regulator when and if required. The refusal I received was, clichély speaking, blunt. After making this call I noticed a queer change coming over the station staff. I could hear phrases like the following being bandied about (and that’s a nice occupation, bandying phrases):
Your man is here.
The boss says your man is to be watched.
Don’t let your man near the engine.
Your man’ll do something to this train if we aren’t careful.
There’ll be a desperate row if your man is let up on the engine.
Your man ought to be heaved out of here, he’ll do something before he goes and get somebody sacked over it.
Don’t let your man near the sheds.
I did manage to get a look at the job they had harnessed for the run. There was any amount of evidence of “foaming”. Your men do not seem to realise that if water is carried into the cylinder with the steam, you get a sharp loss of superheat as well as damage to the piston valve liners. This of course is due to the use of feed water that is “dirty” in the chemical sense. What was wanted here was a good boiler washout and the use of some modern caster oil emulsion preparation to reduce the concentration of solids and suspended matter in the f.w. I know I might as well be talking to the wall, of course.
To celebrate the work of Myles na gCopaleen, The Irish Times will print one of his Cruiskeen Lawn columns each day during October
Myles's steam man could have been just another of the bores the columnist specialised in identifying. Instead, his magnificent obsession with railway engineering elevated him to become one of Cruiskeen Lawn's regular characters. In his own telling, he is a kind of superhero, always on the lookout for steam engines in distress and ready to protect them from maltreatment, even at the cost of personal popularity. Here, in a combined extract from two columns, he defends himself against a typical slander concocted by his enemies. – FRANK McNALLY