NKP 765 demonstrates that black smoke is for show

Screenshot at -4:26 from video

A video that shows the output of the smoke stack for a few minutes. It starts out really black because they are going past a lot of people standing track side to watch the engine. You can tell they are going through a town because the engineer is sounding the whistle almost continuously because there are a lot of road crossings in the town. But once there is no one to put on a show for, the fireman quits adding excessive coal and the stack clears up. A little later when it gets a little dirty again, sure enough it is because more people are watching them go by. You might as well stop at 3:20 because the cameraman tries for different views.

Screenshot at -2:07 from video

This was probably from today's (June 11, 2014) Varsity Excursion which went from North Glenview to Janesville via Rondout and Fox Lake.

A video of the action inside the cab.

Update: videos from rail fans are beginning to appear. The 2-8-4 Berkshire was dessigned as a freight, not passenger, locomotive. But it was designed for high-speed freight and it can pull 16 cars pretty fast. Metra authorized a track speed of 70mph.

With black smoke putting on a show for the railfans: Fox Lake,

Running clean: Oak Lawn (really clean), it was a deadhead (positioning) move because it had its tool and coal cars; Hammond, IN (It must have had to stop for a signal and was restarting because it was dirty until it got some speed. Also, you could hear a little wheel slip during the restart.); Oak Lawn and Bridgeview.

A sequence of pictures and videos shows both dirty and clean stack running. At 3:24 you can see where the fireman rather literally "turned on the smoke." I wonder what the traffic was like on small country roads with people chasing a train that was going pretty fast at times. Is there a hill at 6:18 because it literally "chugging." Or was it chugging because it was going slow because the track had speed restrictions. He was on the outskirts of Fox Lake and caught the smoke being turned on at 12:51. I saw a comment about the engineer tended to put a show on with the whistle. He was somtimes flowing it a lot more than required by law.

A video of the preparations done before a days run. The narrator was too quiet. It does give some insight as to how labor intensive a stream locomotive was and why diesel won. (The EMD salesman would talk to the finance people in a railroad, not the chief mechanic and they offered courses as to how to run and maintain diesels to help the mechanic department make the transition.)


16mm video with optical sound of real steam railroad action. I was surprised by how much of the footage had black smoke. Maybe steam locomotives were a lot dirtier than I realized.

Screenshot at -9.38