Enveloped In Floating Particles Of Soot

[RichardB]

At Sheffield, nothing rises above middling, except the new town hall; but every thing rises out of smoke. Sheffield is situated at the bottom of an amphitheatre of hills; and, were those hills green, and could the whole be seen through a clear atmosphere, it would be very beautiful : but the hills are brown, the buildings are black, and they appear but partially, because they are enveloped in floating particles of soot.

Source

[DaveH]

At Sheffield, nothing rises above middling, except the new town hall; but every thing rises out of smoke. Sheffield is situated at the bottom of an amphitheatre of hills; and, were those hills green, and could the whole be seen through a clear atmosphere, it would be very beautiful : but the hills are brown, the buildings are black, and they appear but partially, because they are enveloped in floating particles of soot.

Source

I have a friend from my steam club days who was out with his traction engine when he was stopped by the police.

Hadn't done anything wrong but the cops like stopping traction engines, 1 ) because they get to take a closer look, 2 ) because they don't know how the law applies to these vehicles they are convinced they must be doing something wrong and 3 ) they called out to road hold ups caused by a large vehicle doing only 4mph amd emmiting a hugh volume of smoke.

The PC approached his engine having signalled him to stop and my friend stopped but kept the engine running in neutral so that the flywheel was still spinning and the blast of steam into the chimney was carrying the smoke from the fire high into the air where it dispersed.

The PC asked my friend to turn the engine off. My friend said that was not an advisible thing to do but the officer insisted that he did so.

The regulator was duly pulled back cutting the steam supply to the engine which quickly stopped. However the lack of exhaust steam going into the blast tube at the base of the chimney no longer carried the smoke away and it fell as fine sooty particles from the top of the chimney downwards.

The engine crew were fine, under the canopy of the traction engine, but the police officer was stood where the soot was falling and was covered in it.

Having then remarked something to the effect of "I didn't expect that to happen" (expletives removed)

My friend replied "Well I did try to warn you that it wasn't advisable"

lol