Illinois Railway Museum Blog

Progress in the Steam shop continued steadily over the last two weekends.

Jeff has continued the shop reorganization to the point that many of the large parts are now arranged on the East side while still allowing plenty of space to work on the super heater flues when they return. He is now moving on to the machine shop which, when complete, will free up a lot more space around the wheel lathe.

Bob and others made use of the space around the wheel lathe to work on getting this operational.

The McCabe was refitted to its modified timbers, which allow it to be lifted on the pallet jack.  Thanks to Bob Kutela for his help and use of tools for this.  The modified timbers will allow us to move this machine, although moving what we estimate at about 6 tons will never be easy.

Moveable - with difficulty !

The trouble with this machine is that it needs a lot of space around it when it operates but is used only infrequently.  However, what it does, in smoothly bending heavy boiler plates, is critical  It was used last weekend in a first test for bending the new corner patch for 1630's firebox.  This successfully demonstrated that we have the dies of the machine correctly set up to make the critical curve.

First test bend for the patch

On 1630 substantial progress was made on the boiler cleaning. 

·         Having successfully tested the breathing system and sand blasting equipment, the next major job was to minimize the flow of dust into the shop.  The last time this was done the locomotive was pulled outside but we certainly do not want to wait for Spring to do this !!

·         Collin and I closed up the boiler with tarpaulins and set up ducted extraction from the chimney.  With fans on the footplate we can establish a flow from back to front and "most" of the dust is pumped out of the door.

Rigged for sand blasting

·         The first blasting was very successful.  We largely cleaned the critical firebox top and side seam areas in about 20 minutes.  Glad to say it all looks good and free of any sign of cracks so far.

The critical seam now clean and looks good

·         From this exercise we learned that the blast medium we were using works well, so we can order in a large quantity for next weekend.  We also learned that, while the ducting works pretty well, the missing firebox corner creates a significant leak that will need to be plugged next weekend.  Collin was very comfortable in the boiler with the new breathing system ..... the rest of the team, outside in the shop, were less comfortable than he was!!.

·         Cleaning of the boiler interior can now be moved forward quickly.

Getting the super heater flues back from sand blasting is proving problematic.  They have been ready since New Year.  Snag is that they must not get wet and need to be collected weekdays or early on a Saturday morning.  Each time we have set up a crew to take the truck on a Saturday, the weather has turned cold ...... and the truck does not operate reliably is really cold weather.

In other areas a good deal of machining was progressed for 428.

I am now away on business for two weeks so no update next week.  However, as the trip is to the UK, I may actually see some working steam next weekend.

Nigel Bennett