Can anyone help me in explaining the following on a steam locomotive as to what these valve do? Thanks! Exhaust injector steam valve, Live steam injector valve, Live injector water valve, Exhaust injector water valve and Large vacuum ejector valve.
Incectors inject water to the boiler. They are either live or exaust. Live use steam from the boiler which is a waste, exaust use steam exausted from the cylinders which is better and should be used most of the time, but they don't work while stationary. Injectors usualy have two valves. One which gives water from tender (the water valve) and the other one which opens steam access to actually make it work. You need to open both to make any effect. On some locos there is a certain way to do it - for example water first, steam second or it won't work. Usually you can leave the water valve open and only use steam valve as needed, but on some locos this can cause the water to spill out so check the manual on that. As for vacuum ejectors they are made to produce vacuum in the braking system. Usualy there should also be two of them. Large and small. The small one is used to maintain the vacuum during ride and it's constantly open while the large one would be opened only to release the brakes.
