Illinois Railway Museum Blog

At least I was able to get back to Union this weekend although mainly as a nuisance to others as I cannot lift anything much!!.  Some key milestones were achieved.

On 1630 we reached the important milestone that has been our objective for several weeks

·         All the measurements of boiler sheet thickness for the form 4 have now been completed.  We owe an enormous thank you to Tom Huber of ECE Global who spent a second day crawling in and over the boiler with the UT testing equipment to complete a comprehensive set of measurements of every part of the pressure vessel.  Collin, Phil and several others from the team supported him in locating points, cleaning and recording.  We now just have to plot all the final measurements on diagrams of the sheets to complete a major part of the form 4.

Tom and Collin testing in the firebox

With professional equipment a lot of points can be measured quickly

Crawling in the boiler to test the dry pipe

The shell itself is easier

Many thanks to Tom for all his efforts

·         Dennis cut back and welded a small crack we found in the dome lid securing ring.  We had been wondering how a crack this shape could form and now we know.  It resulted from a small inclusion (defect) in the casting when it was made 95 years ago !.  So it is now better than it has ever been.

Dome ring now made good

·         The flexible stays where the caps have been removed were thoroughly cleaned and are now ready for hammer testing;

·         A lot of progress has been made toward safe ending the super heater flues. 

A rigid measuring bar was made from used boiler tube to allow exact lengths to be confirmed;

Making the measuring bar

Glenn Traced the problem with the Sullair to a broken fuel pump so we can hope to sand blast the material needed for the safe ends once the replacement fuel pump arrives next week;

Phil and Cameron have made substantial progress on chamfering the ends of the flues to accept the safe ends;

One flues that was found on inspection to have an existing weld was shortened to allow a new end to be fitted.

Cutting the tubes to length

·         We will probably do some work over the next couple of weekends in an attempt to clarify one anomaly.  1630 has been restricted in recent years to a 160 psi boiler pressure as opposed to the 180 at which it ran during its service with the Frisco and Eagle Pitcher.  The reason for this is not wear but an apparent anomaly in the design.  Drawings of the boiler consistently show the back head braced by a mixture of 1 3/8 and smaller diameter 1 1/4 diameter braces.  The reason for this is unclear as, even by the standards when built, inclusion of the smaller braces brought stresses at 180 psi close to the limit in this one area when all other areas of the boiler show substantial reserve.  

As shown a couple of weeks ago, these braces, particularly the ones shown in the drawing as 1 1/4, are extremely difficult to access.  However, yesterday for the first time we did manage to get a measuring tool to one shown in the drawing as 1 1/4.  The strange thing is that it does not appear to be smaller.  So the big question we will try to answer is whether the braces are actually bigger than the drawing shows.

Paul reached a milestone on the truck for the Shay.  This has now been needle chipped to the point at which we should be able to give it a final application of degreaser then a final steam clean and be ready to inspect and repaint.  Given the large number of visitors to be expected next weekend for the UP event, steam cleaning will be scheduled two weeks out.  This is not something you would want to be doing with many visitors passing by!.

Needle chipping reaching the end

Nigel