Footwarmers

This is the last blog post about Tumut Station - at least for a while. And finally, it's the reason why it made such an impact on me.

Tumut Station

While we were there we took a photo of this structure, helpfully labelled as a footwarmer boiler. I'd never seen one before (they were rare, even in the heyday of the railways) and whilst researching them I learned something*. I have read early fiction that mentioned railway trips and footwarmers (Conan Doyle, Collins, or Wodehouse, can't remember) but I always assumed they were either hot water bottles or a box of embers. The truth is more complex than that.

The remains of a footwarmer boiler 

Australian railway footwarmers were reusable heat packs provided to train passengers during colder months. They were sealed metal tubes containing a supersaturated solution of sodium acetate. They were heated in baths of boiling water, and provided a couple of hours warmth. Also inside each warmer were small metal balls which meant that when the footwarmer was cold it could be shaken, and the balls provided a nucleation point around which the liquid crystallized. This process released heat, warming the pack for several more hours. Once cooled, the footwarmer was reactivated by boiling it in water, which dissolved the crystals back into liquid form, ready for reuse on the next journey.

*This is partially the reason we blog - take a photo, research it, blog it, discover facts