Locomotive boilers when new

[fodenway]

Would a newly-built locomotive boiler have been painted before being fitted to the loco frames? I am aware that they were sometimes/always? left unpainted for a while to allow a certain amount of rusting to help seal the rivets (or was that a myth?), but if any paint was applied, would it have been a preservative coating like red lead, or a finish colour such as black? I intend to make such a boiler as a load for a road vehicle. Any guidance would be appreciated. 

[Siberian Snooper]

Rusting won't help seal rivets, the rivets are fitted hot and the contraction on cooling pulls the plates closer together and the seams caulked. Painting may be undertaken if the boiler is not going to be steamed for a while, paint doesn't last long when you steam the boiler. We used to paint marine boiler steam drums with 70/70 heat resisting paint, but when we flashed up the boiler(s) to dry the refractory the paint had burnt off by the time we got to steam tighten the various doors.

 

 

[Wickham Green too]

If your road vehicle boiler load is accompanied by advertising ( New Boiler from xxxx for yyyyy ) it might well be painted so it doesn't look like a rust old load of scrap iron - but that paint wouldn't last long in service as Snooper says ................... don't forget your boiler is probably being transported undressed and any finish colour would only be applied once the insulation and cladding were fitted - normally in-situ on the loco.

[Marshall5]

Whilst it may, or may not, have been railway works practice Marshall Sons & Co, used to leave newly constructed traction engine boilers outside for up to a year after having had a hydraulic test.  The reasoning being that the inevitable odd weep from a few stays and rivets would take up with rust.

Photos of the boiler storage area at Swindon show boilers both unpainted and painted in red oxide. 

Ray.

[Compound2632]

Bassett-Lowke, who have a reputation for faithful representation of liveries within the constraints of the printed tinplate medium, specified a red-lead painted finish for the Lancashire boiler load supplied with their NER well wagon made to their specification in Gauge 1 by Carette:

I think someone at Bachmann must have had this at the back of their mind:

though they left out the all-important securing chains.

 

 

Edited March 2, 2021 by Compound2632

[Siberian Snooper]

To be accurate the Lancashire boiler needs a firebox tube or two, at the bottom.

 

 

[Wickham Green too]

15 hours ago, Marshall5 said:

.... Marshall Sons & Co, used to leave newly constructed traction engine boilers outside for up to a year after having had a hydraulic test.  ....

Horror of horrors ...... that's ten percent of the 'ticket' ! ( in modern thinking )

[Compound2632]

39 minutes ago, Siberian Snooper said:

To be accurate the Lancashire boiler needs a firebox tube or two, at the bottom.

 

That's what the Bassett-Lowke boiler depicts, although only as circles printed onto the tinplate. These models always need to be viewed with a bit of willing suspension of disbelief.

[Artless Bodger]

On 02/03/2021 at 19:52, Compound2632 said:

I think someone at Bachmann must have had this at the back of their mind:

 

The Bachmann one looks a bit more like a Scotch marine boiler.

[DCB]

On 01/03/2021 at 21:56, fodenway said:

Would a newly-built locomotive boiler have been painted before being fitted to the loco frames? I am aware that they were sometimes/always? left unpainted for a while to allow a certain amount of rusting to help seal the rivets (or was that a myth?), but if any paint was applied, would it have been a preservative coating like red lead, or a finish colour such as black? I intend to make such a boiler as a load for a road vehicle. Any guidance would be appreciated. 

It would be a big road vehicle or a small boiler.  It's more a preservation era thing to move railway stuff around on road vehicles steam era it was easier to wheel the loco to somewhere near where the new boiler was than vice versa though some batches of boiler were made at one works for building into a loco at another works.  I don't think you can go far wrong with red oxide for the boiler/ firebox though whether a smokebox would be attached is debatable. (Cue someone to produce a black and white photo proving that they were in fact pale yellow)

[LMS2968]

On the LMS, all boiler production, except some pre-Grouping Scottish designs, was transferred to Crewe about 1930 and the boilers then transported to the works where the engines were being built. Boilers would be repaired in those works, but not built there. The new boilers would not have a smokebox fitted; smokeboxes were part of the engine, not the boiler. Even if an engine under overhaul received a replacement boiler, it generally retained the original smokebox.