Food For Puff

[Greg Wetzel]

Hello there,

I have recently learned about cooking food using a steam locomotive. I am curious to know, are there any stories in which cooking by using a steam locomotive went wrong? So far, I've learned of a breakfast being sent up an engine's chimney due to the blower being turned on, and a story about cooking a whole chicken in the smokebox, which apparently disappeared somehow...

 

[Ashley Hill]

I’ve had a couple of footplate breakfasts over the years and they are delicious. Best cooked when stationary but if mobile keep the regulator shut and the blower off. Never heard of a roast chicken though. Pies and pasties yes!

 

[Gloster]

There are plenty of stories, many of which are how the meal ended up in the firebox for one reason or another.

 

[341o2]

On the Central Railway of Peru, Brian Fawcett recounted how one crew would grill cutlets on top of the firebox, an area was kept clean for this purpose.
One story I heard on BR, that someone brought a tin of beans into a loco cab, and put it on a hot pipe to warm the contents.
In the still of the night, waiting at a signal (thankfully) the tin exploded, because the person concerned had not made any holes in it.
Beans sprayed all over the cab, the driver was not amused to put it mildly.

I thought it was usually bacon and eggs on the fireman's shovel

 

[6Gman]

On the Central Railway of Peru, Brian Fawcett recounted how one crew would grill cutlets on top of the firebox, an area was kept clean for this purpose.
One story I heard on BR, that someone brought a tin of beans into a loco cab, and put it on a hot pipe to warm the contents.
In the still of the night, waiting at a signal (thankfully) the tin exploded, because the person concerned had not made any holes in it.
Beans sprayed all over the cab, the driver was not amused to put it mildly.

I thought it was usually bacon and eggs on the fireman's shovel

Given what else sometimes ended up on the fireman's shovel I've never really fancied anything cooked on there . . .

 

[Rescars]

I recall reading somewhere (but I can't remember where) that the GWR brewed tea for the crowds celebrating Queen Victoria's diamond jubillee in Swindon by using some meticulously cleaned spare loco tenders as giant teapots, in which IIRC heating coils had been fitted to boil the brew in the tender tanks. I assume the water was boiled by connecting the coils to loco steam. It must have been one of the few occasions locomotives were used for a mass catering operation. Whilst I don't believe that anything went wrong as such, overboiled tea drawn from the tanks late in the day must have tasted pretty awful!