Talk:Reed water tube boiler/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Mike Christie (talk · contribs) 23:08, 31 December 2017 (UTC)

I'll review this. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 23:08, 31 December 2017 (UTC)

• The lead seems a little short for the length of the article.
• There's quite a lot of information embedded in footnotes 2 and 5; any reason not to integrate some of that into the main text?
• In the lead image, I think the large external tubes are the "downcomers"; could this be stated in the caption? To someone unfamiliar with this sort of equipment every little helps.
• I found File:Water tube boiler schematic.png very helpful, particularly in understanding "the tubes joined the top chamber below the designed water line". Could it be included? I can see there's little room for more diagrams, but it would be helpful if a way can be found. Perhaps a gallery? Or the use of {{Multiple image}}? If not, perhaps we could make it clearer in the text that all the tubes, and the lower part of the top chamber, contained water, and steam was limited only to the upper part of the top chamber.
• If it can be done concisely, it would be good to clarify in footnote 7 why Maxim and Thornycroft would be regarded as authorities.
• Can we get a link or a glossing footnote for "firing flats"?
• Production of the Reed water tube boiler ceased in 1905: do we know what superseded it?

These are all minor points and I expect to pass GA once these are addressed. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 14:13, 1 January 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for taking this on Mike Christie, and for the helpful and positive comments. Forgive me if I take a little while to get up to speed with this, apart from the residual effects of the season (for which greetings!) I haven't looked at this article properly for some months now, so there might be some digging around to do. For example, I only have 1905 for the end of production from a woefully brief page at the National Science Museum, and I suspect that this design of boiler was effectively made redundant by the Admiralty's own design of boiler, but would need to check. Cheers for now. Nortonius (talk) 19:52, 1 January 2018 (UTC)

No hurry, of course (and season's greetings to you too). And if there's no more information about why it ceased production, that's fine; I was just curious. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 19:57, 1 January 2018 (UTC)

Thanks Mike. I've now attempted to address all of your points, although of course you must judge how satisfactorily! That is:

• I've expanded the lead, mostly with background information on the company, and the difference between a water tube boiler and a locomotive boiler, which seemed most helpful, and developed the main text to account for the additions.
• Almost all the information that was in those two footnotes (formerly 2 & 5) is now in the main text – I think I must have been aiming for brevity, under the influence of sparse and awkward sources!
• I've added "down-comers" to that image caption as suggested.
• About File:Water tube boiler schematic.png, I'm not sure how helpful it would be with reference to this type of boiler: although the principle is virtually the same, the differences between the boiler illustrated and the Reed boiler are many and detailed, so I think it would add an undue burden of textual explanation. Instead I've tried to clarify further in the text why the steam-generating tubes joined the top chamber below the designed water line. Have a look at the changes and let me know if you think they're adequate.
• I've added the briefest of qualifications for Maxim and Thorneycroft.
• I've changed the wording around "firing flats" to clarify what they were.
• It turns out that I have no idea what superseded the Reed boiler! I thought it might be the Admiralty's own design, but that didn't mature until the 1920s. I can only blame the sources, or my own failure to find this detail in them. For example, I shelled out for a copy of Cuthbert and Smith's Palmers of Jarrow only to find that its authors give much weight to the "social history" aspect – understandably, since the closure of Palmers in 1933–34 provided the main impetus for the Jarrow March – to the inevitable exclusion of greater detail on the company, in a volume of only 48 pages. Almost everything else in the article is the result of exhaustive searching among contemporary sources at archive.org. I'm pretty sure I'd have found this detail if it were there. It does bother me though, so I can try to focus on answering that question.

Cheers, Nortonius (talk) 18:44, 2 January 2018 (UTC)

No worries re the last point; if you find out what superseded it, of course it would be worth adding, but if the sources don't say that's fine.

With regard to the "designed water line" and the diagram I linked to, I was confused because I had thought the tubes contained steam, which meant they couldn't possibly join the dome below the designed water line -- the steam is always going to be above the water. The diagram was helpful because I realized that the tubes contain water, not steam, all the way up to some level inside the steam drum. Hence the tubes can connect below the water line. But isn't this in conflict with The lowest section of the lowest tubes of Reed boilers was originally bent into tight, "wavy" curves, also to maximise surface area, but this was discontinued by 1901 as it inhibited the flow of steam? That seems to imply that it really was steam flowing through the tubes. What am I missing?

All the other points are fine. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 22:50, 2 January 2018 (UTC)

If I understand correctly, I think you're missing: "whereas the fire tube boiler consisted of a cylinder filled with water, which was heated by tubes passing through it carrying exhaust gases from a furnace, in the water tube boiler the situation was reversed, with water passing through steam-generating tubes mounted directly above the furnace" in the lead; and "while the tubes in a water tube boiler were subject only to tension from the steam and pressurised water within, a locomotive boiler's tubes were subject to compression from without", which I've just clarified in the body. And, by no means is steam always above water – watch an open pot of water boiling on a hob ...? The bubbles you see rising from the bottom of the pot to the top of the water are steam, and the same process occurs in this type of boiler, where the tubes might be said to take the place of the open pot. Once at operating temperature, the entire boiler was full of water, either in liquid form or as steam. HTH. Nortonius (talk) 23:02, 2 January 2018 (UTC)

p.s. I've also tweaked the sentence about wavy pipes to read "The lowest section of the lowest tubes of Reed boilers was originally bent into tight, "wavy" curves, also to maximise surface area, but this was discontinued by 1901 as it inhibited the flow of water and hence also steam." Nortonius (talk) 23:14, 2 January 2018 (UTC)

Reading through again it's all there; I just didn't put it together correctly. The key point I was missing was that steam is generated in the tubes, so they contain both water and steam. I'll pass this; thanks for an interesting read. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 03:40, 3 January 2018 (UTC)

Great stuff Mike! For the interesting read, my pleasure; for the GA pass, thank you so much! :o) Nortonius (talk) 03:48, 3 January 2018 (UTC)