Steam Department

This Saturday saw continued progress in the Steam shop toward re-tubing 1630.

The penultimate bale of 37 tubes was swaged and annealed while the final bale was brought into the swaging area ready for processing.  The work done last Saturday on cleaning the rough edges from the dies of the swager seems to have worked well.  No further problems were encountered with rough surfaces on the swaged tube ends.

Good progress was made with cutting and loading so that, by end of day, we had 96 tubes loaded into the boiler.  This time Collin and Jason had the "hidden" role of fitting ferrules into the fire box tube sheet.  Here Collin is hard at work fitting ferrules and adjusting the position of the tube to the correct projection beyond the tube sheet.

Collin locating and ferruling in the firebox

Overall progress today was very good. 

Progress in fitting fire tubes

The boiler is now starting to look distinctly full of tubes. 

The boiler looks increasingly full

However, we have now decided that it would be safer to fit ferrules to some or all of the front tube sheet holes in order to reduce the risk of leakage.  This will require some measurement and testing and may require us to reload some of the tubes.  So that will be the main activity next week.

Meanwhile Mike, Bob and Tom worked on the final shaping of the firebox patch.

Ed and Matt continued with fitting the new pipe work along the boiler.

In other areas, Ralph worked on the axle boxes for 428 and prepared the surface of another box for babbit facing using the Bullard lathe.

Nigel

This weekend was "more of the same" at the steam shop, which was good as that is exactly what we need at this stage to get 1630 back together.  Also, looking back, it is just about a year ago that I started logging detail of activity in the steam shop.  It makes an interesting trail of what we have achieved so far.

The focus is now on preparing tubes for fitting and progress this week was good:

Progress in fitting fire tubes

·         we broke the record by swaging and annealing 43 tubes in the day.  This is well over half as many as we have processed in all previous days combined.  The other positive development is that several people learned the technique during the day so that we now have a number of people who can carry out this process.

Here we can see Eric and Mark heating a tube in preparation to swage.

Eric and Mark swaging

And a nice shot of the swager actually forming the end of the tube.

Tube forming in progress

The one set back was that the ends of the last tubes swaged were not as smooth as they need to be.  This proves to be the result of "mushrooming" of the edges of the dies.  We polished this off in the evening so should be ready to continue next week.  However it probably means that we should not do so many tubes at one time.  We suspect that the issue may be that, over time, heat transfers to the dies and that is probably what allowed the deformation.  Looking at the picture above it is easy to see how this could happen !!.

·         We started on loading tubes into the boiler and made good progress.  39 tubes were placed.  We started at the sides as these are the most awkward to fit.  Thanks to Roger for the photographs as I was buried in the smoke box doing the unseen bits!!.  Most of the tubes in the bottom section will simple be pushed thru their hole in the front tube sheet and guided into the matching hole in the rear tube sheet with the ferrule already in place in the rear tube sheet.  The ones at the side are more tricky.  Because of the steam pipes, the tube cannot be passed thru its hole in the front tube sheet except at an angle that prevents it being fully inserted.  So, in this area, the tubes are inserted thru one of the large super heater flue holes then moved to their actual location with help from someone in the boiler.  Once in place, they are pushed forward to allow the guy in the firebox to fit a ferrule and then finally slid back into position.  The picture show the external part of the operation and not Eric (in the boiler) and me (in the firebox) struggling in the confined spaces !!.

Starting to load tubes

The tube is carefully checked for length

and the next one is passed up

·         The stack of tubes on the fireman's side, that looked so large last week, is now virtually gone but we have a good supply ready to cut to length.  We brought another bale of 37 into the swaging area.  Very satisfying,  there is now only one more bale left in the boxcar so the end is in sight.  An interesting statistic on the tubes we are fitting.  No wonder the piles look so large,  the total length of the small tubes in 1630's boiler is a bit more than 0.6 MILES.

·         Another substantial task is Jerry's work on cleaning up the swaged ends of the tubes.  Each must be polished with a sanding wheel on the die grinder to remove the scale formed in swaging.  Jerry has put in many hours of work during the week to ensure that the tubes that we swage one weekend are polished and ready to use the next.

Jerry cleans the swaged ends

So progress continues and it is really good to see obvious re-assembly work taking shape after so much stripping.  The target will be to load all the required tubes before we start to expand them into the tube sheets.  Actually fitting the tubes into the boiler starts the time clock on the certification period so we do not want to do this before all is ready to push forward.

In other areas, Bruce was working on the detail measurements for rebuilding the axle boxes on 428.

Nigel

Steady progress over the last two weekends in the steam shop.

As ever with the winter approaching there are the jobs needed to prepare for the cold.  Last weekend a lot of time was spent draining the boxcar water supply and removing the softener head to the safety of the shop.  Not much to show for the effort but it would be a real bust if we have the locomotive ready to run and the water supply was not operational.

Piping for the new air system arrived along with some more that we need for 1630.  Unfortunately it looks like the supplier had a bad day!.  Only one of the 3 types ordered was delivered correctly!.  So now we have to arrange return and get the correct material.  One of the joys of a volunteer shop working at  weekend.  You are not there to spot errors when material is delivered.

On 1630 we pushed ahead with the key tasks:

·         Ed and Richard found a good process to anneal the copper ferrules.  Sometimes simple is best.  We had discussed using the electric furnace in the car shop but, on further discussion, that is not really designed to be opened and closed while hot as we would have needed to do to batch heat the ferrules.  So, in the end, the method was to slide them along a rod and heat them with the acetylene torch to a red heat.  At the end of the rod they dropped into a bucket of water.  Eventually the process was so quick that I did not even get a photograph and all 130 that we needed were done in a couple of hours.

·         Jeff, Jerry and Alex worked thru the hydro-testing.  The work ran well into the evening but, by end of day, they had successfully tested all 16 super heater flues and the new air tank.  This was a good if muddy days work.  For flues the rig is secured by a long rod running the length of the flue.  At one end is secured a blanking plate.

The flue is sealed by a blanking plate at one end

While at the other is attached the plate thru which the water is pumped and pressurized

Bolting the water inlet to the other end

At least we got it done before the weather broke.  The air tank tested fine at 240 psi so we can run the air compressor output at 150 psi.  This will be a big improvement over the existing reservoir that runs at the system pressure of 90 psi.  If we are regulating the system down from a higher reservoir pressure we should get a steady 90 psi at the output.

·         Meanwhile Mike continued with the patch.  The two additional rivets have been successfully removed and focus is now upon final bending of the patch to achieve a tight fit all along the mud ring while aligning with the front and side sheets of the firebox to allow an accurate weld to be made.

·         On the main activity of tubing, the production line described a couple of weeks ago is now starting to show results.

·         Cutting to length is now established. Cutting with the chop saw is a spectacular operation.  However it is now done quickly.  The required master tube is laid alongside the tube to be cut, the distance set and the tube is cut in less than a minute. 

Tube cutting in progress

·         From this operation we have a satisfying stack of nearly 50 tubes cut to length, rough edges removed, painted and ready to load into the boiler.  The stack on the fireman's side now shows that we need to get tubes off the stands and into the boiler before we run out of space.

Ready to load

·         On the engineer's side we have a further supply fully swaged and annealed ready to cut.

More ready for cutting

·         Meanwhile in the swaging area we brought in another bale of 37 tubes and have about 50 ready for another heavy session in the furnace.

But lots more to swage

Below is a progress log.  We are moving forward but there is a lot to do.  Follow our progress !

Progress in fitting fire tubes

Hopefully I can be a bit more productive next Saturday.   After a 10 day business trip to the UK, I was not good for much by 6:30 so it was a short day for me!!

Nigel