The Wootten firebox is a type of firebox used on

steam locomotive A steam locomotive is a locomotive that provides the force to move itself and other vehicles by means of the expansion of steam. It is fuelled by burning combustible material (usually coal, Fuel oil, oil or, rarely, Wood fuel, wood) to heat ...

s. The firebox was very wide to allow combustion of

anthracite Anthracite, also known as hard coal and black coal, is a hard, compact variety of coal that has a lustre (mineralogy)#Submetallic lustre, submetallic lustre. It has the highest carbon content, the fewest impurities, and the highest energy densit ...

waste, known as " culm". Its size necessitated unusual placement of the crew, examples being camelback locomotives. The Wootten firebox made for a free-steaming, powerful locomotive, and the cheap fuel burned almost smokelessly; the combination made for an excellent passenger locomotive, and many camelbacks operated in this service.

History

John E. Wootten was the Superintendent of Motive Power for the then

Philadelphia and Reading Railroad The Reading Company ( ) was a Philadelphia-headquartered railroad that provided passenger and freight transport in eastern Pennsylvania and neighboring states from 1924 until its acquisition by Conrail in 1976. Commonly called the Reading Railro ...

(later simply the

Reading Railroad The Reading Company ( ) was a Philadelphia-headquartered railroad that provided passenger and freight transport in eastern Pennsylvania and neighboring states from 1924 until its acquisition by Conrail in 1976. Commonly called the Reading Railr ...

) from 1866, and General Manager of the system from 1876. He saw the vast

spoil tip A spoil tip (also called a boney pile, culm bank, gob pile, waste tip or bing) is a pile built of accumulated ''spoil'' – waste material removed during mining. Spoil tips are not formed of slag, but in some areas, such as England and Wales, ...

s (piles of

waste) in the area as a possible plentiful, cheap source of fuel if he could develop a firebox that could burn it effectively. Through experiments, he determined that a large, wide firebox with a slow firing rate worked best, with a thin layer of the fuel and moderate draft. The typical locomotive firebox of the day was long and narrow, fitting in between the locomotive's frames. The successful design of a

trailing truck On a steam locomotive, a trailing wheel or trailing axle is generally an unpowered wheel or axle (Wheelset (rail transport), wheelset) located behind the driving wheels. The axle of the trailing wheels is usually located in a trailing Bogie, t ...

with the firebox mounted behind the driving wheels (e.g. the ''Pacific'' or

4-6-2 Under the Whyte notation for the classification of steam locomotives, represents the wheel arrangement of four leading wheels on two axles, six powered and coupled driving wheels on three axles and two trailing wheels on one axle. The locomoti ...

class) not yet been developed. Wootten instead mounted his huge firebox above the locomotive's

driving wheel On a steam locomotive, a driving wheel is a powered wheel which is driven by the locomotive's pistons (or turbine, in the case of a steam turbine locomotive). On a conventional, non-articulated locomotive, the driving wheels are all coupled t ...

s. The problem now was that it would be impossible for the locomotive's engineer (driver) to see forwards around the firebox shoulders with a cab floor at the then-standard tender deck height. Instead, a cab for the engineer was placed above and astride the boiler. The fireman, however, remained at the rear with minimal protection from the elements. In later years these fireboxes were adopted in several large classes of engines, particularly express passenger engines with a trailing truck, so that the large grate area could give sustained high power output using standard

coal Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, formed as rock strata called coal seams. Coal is mostly carbon with variable amounts of other Chemical element, elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen. Coal i ...

. For example, the UK

LNER Class A4 The LNER Class A4 is a class of streamlined 4-6-2 steam locomotive, steam locomotives designed by Nigel Gresley for the London and North Eastern Railway in 1935. Their streamlined design gave them high-speed capability as well as making them ins ...

locomotives, of which "Mallard" holds the world speed record for steam traction, used a wide firebox.

References

{{Commons category, Wootten fireboxes Steam locomotive fireboxes