Steam Department

It was a productive day at the steam shop again very largely focused on 1630.

On 1630:

·         Matt and Stu stripped and cleaned the check valves.  These critical valves are where the water is fed into the boiler (from the injectors).  These will be essential to even the earliest hydro tests.  Since these valves are directly attached to the boiler they must be fully pressure tight to allow any testing.  (The first tests will be done when the tubes have been rolled into place to identify any that require further rolling to make a perfect seal.  At this point no accessories will be connected to keep the test very simple).  It was inevitable that sand blast material got into the valves.  In addition, one suffered from occasional leakage when last in use.  Both were cleaned and lapped.  The seat was replaced on the engineer's valve so these should now be in good shape for testing and service.

·         The firebox patch is now ground to shape and fits well onto the mud ring.  Mike and Jerry were starting to drill the first hole.  Initially a bolt will be fitted.  Once the patch is rigidly bolted into place the bolts will be replaced, one at a time, by rivets.  This requires considerable care as the holes in the mud ring are at different angles so each must be drilled thru the patch using guides to ensure that each is an exact match to the ring.  Once the bolts are in place the patch can be rigidly secured and finally adjusted to form a perfect match to the sheets.

·         The last (hopefully) of the tubes were swaged and annealed.  We have a few extra tubes that will be held in case of need should any be damaged in fitting but, on current calculation, we now have enough prepared to fully tube the boiler.  In the next few weeks, when we have sufficient people available, we will swage the tubes for Shay #5.  Having all the equipment set up and people now familiar with it will make it a lot more efficient to do these now.

·         As mentioned last week, the decision was taken to fit copper ferrules to the front tube sheet.  Although the front sheet is often not ferruled, fitting ferrules will give greater assurance of a leak free seal.  Unfortunately this means removing the tubes that were previously loaded.  During the day the tubes were removed from the engineers side and the first 30 were reloaded with ferrules fitted.  The process was, as always, somewhat tentative at first.  However, once the method was established it moved a lot faster so we should be able to have all the tubes, that were previously loaded, refitted with ferrules in place and move on to new ones next weekend.

Progress in fitting fire tubes

After final cleaning the valve block for the planer was painted so that should be available for reassembly in the near future.

Nigel