Illinois Railway Museum Blog

It was another day of progress in the steam shop.  As mentioned last week, the objective is quite a few weeks of "more of the same".

The focus was on re-tubing 1630 and this week saw steady progress:

·         a further bale of 37 new tubes was brought into the shop.  This means that more than half the total (about 170) are now in the shop;

·         Jerry had cleaned off the swaged ends on the batch that were swaged last week.  These were annealed at the other end and moved up to the locomotive;

·         28 tubes from the new bale were swaged.  This takes us to about 45% of the total swaged.  At least this now seems to be a "production" process.  We were doing one every 2 -2 1/2 minutes yesterday.  The limitation is space.  It is not safe to stack a whole bale (37 tubes) on the "hot" side.  28 was found to be about the safe maximum;

Here you can see the actual swaging operation as the red hot end of a tube is hammered between the jaws

Swaging in progress

·         Ed continued work on the ferrules by cleaning the rough edges on those that are cut.  He also confirmed with the electric car shop that they have an operational annealing oven that is suitable.  So next weekend he will aim to anneal the ferrules so that we have a large supply ready for installation;

·         Master tubes were cut to each of 5 standard lengths and the inside boiler team (Eric and Collin) test fitted these to the boiler.  The results were good.  Each tube provides the required projection at front and rear when fitted to holes identified for that color;

·         Later in the day the master tubes were used to cut the first 10 tubes ready for fitting. 

For those of you visiting the shop there is now a clear progression.  New tubes are brought in at the South end, swaged and annealed.  Once this is done they move up to a stack on the engineer's side of the locomotive.  From here they are taken to the chop saw, cut to one of the standard lengths and then stacked on the fireman's side.  From here they will be lifted into the boiler and placed in the tube sheets.

On the patch we encountered a, hopefully minor, set-back.  When fitting the new plate it became clear that two additional rivets will be too close to the weld line and so will have to be removed and refitted.  With the 11 that are already out, this will bring to 13 the number that have to be replaced and refitted.  A nuisance as these 7/8th rivets are tricky beasts and require a good deal of work to get out.

In other areas

·         the new air tank was fitted with plugs and connections so that it is now water tight.  A pressure gauge was fitted and it was filled with water.  This will allow the water that we need to hydro-test it to warm up in the shop during the week and also serve as a reservoir when testing the super heater flues.  (Hydro tests need to be done with warm water).

·         good progress was made on cleaning out the valve block for the planer.  This has now been freed of gunge and the valve passages polished.

Planer valve block now a great deal better

I am leaving tonight for a 10 day business trip to the UK so will not be at the shop next Saturday.  So there will not be an update next weekend.

Nigel