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OK, so what is the game plan ?

Are you going to learn about your steam heating system and do the work yourself ?

Be a knowledgeable homeowner and hire a pro to do the repairs ?

Understand the issues and just live with them ?

Other ?

This may be one starting point;

We Got Steam Heat!: A Homeowner's Guide to Peaceful Coexistence

https://heatinghelp.com/store/detail/we-got-steam-heat-a-homeowners-guide-to-peaceful-coexistence/

Just get an idea of your surface area using the circumference of your pipe times the length of it and you'll be fine. This ain't rocket science 😉

Love the rope idea. I would save it for a place that's not near the toilet, where I'd avoid porous materials…

It's hard to be sure, but with such short lengths of vertical pipe I think Matt is right that the steam would rise and displace the air lower where it will get carried/pushed to the vent.

Even if some air remains, the heat will conduct up to the cold pipes and result in a lot of good condensation of the steam as it gives up its heat to warm the pipe. I like the vertical pipe a little better for simplicity and space usage.

Regardless of what you build it will be easy to cool it off a little if you get too much heat off of it by such means as wrapping some of the exposed pipe with rope like the restaurants in NYC do it

There certainly are steam only radiators that have the sections only connected at the bottom that work. Black iron is much better than copper because it has more mass and less thermal conductivity so it will heat and cool more slowly.

Will thermal shock hurt a boiler and how much thermal shock? Who knows?

We were told in school that you could drain and refill a steel boiler with cold water but don't do it with CI. That's good enough for me.

I also have had the experience that @retiredguy mentioned about draining a boiler that the steam is connected to another operating boiler.

You will only do that one time believe me. The idle boiler is cold and the steam rushing in condenses and causes hammer. 1700 times a volume reduction it is a noise you never forget. It is a lot more powerful than you would think.

But as far as thermal shock why take the chance?

It will not help the boiler, it will cause stress to the cast iron.

We had a CI boiler Smith 2500 that the lwco failed. My coworker showed up and the boiler was red hot and glowing. He went back the next day after it had cooled and the boiler held water. He installed a new LWCO and fired it up and made steam. No leaks so we let it run.

A few days later it puked water all over.

Same