"Black Smoke is Waste" read the stencils in many a steam locomotive cab. Firemen were trained to produce minimal smoke, and I've heard of managers making field inspections using a card printed with several shades of gray. Standing beside the track, they would hold up this card and compare the smoke to the printed gray to check whether the fireman was within limits.

I'm involved in my organization's social media outreach, which has greatly expanded during the COVID-19 shutdown, and would like to discuss these cards in an Earth Day post next week.

Does anybody have a photo of one of these cards, or links to more information?

Thanks in advance!

Tyler Trahan

It was not only railroad management that had such cards, some municipalities had them as well and would flag down offending trains and issue fines.

The City of Niagara Falls NY had a particularly zealous smoke inspector, a full time city employee whose only job was to find trains and building that were "too smoky".

I have never seen one of the cards, I believe some of them had several celluloid (plastic) inserts with different optical densities. These would be held up next to a smoke plume and compared. That is one way to do it since the available sunlight would go through both the smoke and the card. Did not work at night.

And there is this;

https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/mining/userfi ... ic8333.pdf (ironically from the CDC)

Called a Ringelmann Smoke Chart.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ringelmann_scale

-Hudson

Tyler,

I have copies of many of the older lines Fireman Training manuals and they are very clear about the Ringelmann Color Code (Smoke Code). In the Fireman's test the fireman was asked about the code and the shades of black on the code. I do not have any of the cards that city officials or RR officials used. I do have the training manuals with the references and if they help, I would be happy to dig one up and send it to you.

Kindly,

JohnE.

This got me curious, and with the name of the smoke chart available, gave me clues and terms to look for.

http://www.londonboaters.org/sites/defa ... 0Chart.pdf

https://longstreet.typepad.com/thescien ... 1899-.html

Found this through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which in turn directed me to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH).

https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/mining/UserFi ... ic8333.pdf

Looks like you can still buy them.

https://www.nationalcoloursupplies.com/ ... moke-chart

And it's still around in the computer age.

http://virtualringelmann.com/app/en

Maybe others can find more--and I hope you have fun doing so!!

I had read that all three railroads operating carferrys between Michigan and Wisconsin tangled with the smoke inspector, at least in Milwaukee. Like the weighmaster, I bet that was a thankless job.

The Reading Company instruction book, Firing the Steam Locomotive, includes a printed smoke chart. It was published in 1945 and features a negative image of new T-1 4-8-4 2100 on the cover. By then, even the Reading was using bituminous on its road power.

It was clearly railroad published as corrections were included, to be glued over the old page, same as if it were an employee timetable or rule book.

Phil Mulligan

I've had first-hand experience with one of those cards. Way back in the early years of operations on our then "new" Niles Canyon Railway, we returned our ex-Steptoe Valley Mining & Smelting 0-4-0T+T #3 to service and fired it on wood, just as we had done previous at the Castro Point Railway in Richmond, CA. One Sunday, a person from the Bay Area Air Quality Management office showed up at our depot in Sunol, CA and stood by the #3 holding one of those cards up in the air. Not long after that, the organization received a letter from the BAAQM people stating that we would be fined for emissions. But, they gave us the option of changing to a different fuel, so we converted the #3 to burn oil*.

As an aside, the 1913 Porter product was eventually deaccessed from the collection and returned to its home town of Ely, Nevada.

*edit: the #3 was originally built to burn oil, so the conversion was historically correct.

Thank you, all, for your informative answers! Much appreciated.

Back in 1971, long before Homeland Security made it impossible, I talked my way into the engineering spaces of the Staten Island ferryboat, Mary Murray and made a round trip down there. The Murray was the last of the 'conventional' steam powered ferries, with a double compound engine. I use the term 'conventional' because the much later Merrill class had Skinner uniflow engines. Everything on the Murray's engine was out in the open.

After spending a bit of time in the engine room, and after identifying most of the controls by their steam locomotive name, my guide took me into the boiler room. I forget how many oil fired furnaces there were, but then I got to look into an eyepiece. No Ringlemann numbers, but there was a periscope arrangement that ran up the side of the stack, which allowed the fireman to see just how much smoke he was making. Like an oil fired steam locomotive, a light blue haze was considered optimal.

There was recently a good discussion on these cards over on the TrainOrders Steam Forum.

There are Universities that conduct "Smoke School"; I've been to them. They will come to your site and generate various "Smokes" for you to identify on the test.

Didn't some roads that ran oil burning steam locomotives, equip them with lights to see the smoke output at night?