Illinois Railway Museum Blog

It was a day of great progress and one very significant milestone in the steam shop yesterday.

The activity was largely on 1630:

Tubing progress 02/23/2013

·         Fitting of the small tubes progressed very well using the methods established last week, with teams working both ends at the same time.

o   Collin and Eric ground the projecting ends in the firebox and all of these are now ready to flare once they are sealed into the front sheet.  As noted below, work on tubes in the firebox ceased for very good reasons in the afternoon;

o   Phil cut replacements for the two tubes that had hit problems and these were fitted and expanded.  So all the small tubes, other than the few that are in between the super heater flues and must be fitted as part of installing the flues, are now in place;

o   Most of the ends that are to be beaded in the smokebox were also ground to length. 

Brian and Eric grind the tube ends

At times Brian and Eric were working simultaneously on this with an impressive rate of progress.  Just a few on the fireman's side remain to be ground to length.

o   Brian is rapidly becoming our expert on the tube roller. 

Tube rolling in progress

Once the grinding of the engineer's side was complete he started again with the tube roller and worked steadily to the point that we are now substantially more than 50% complete in rolling tubes in the smokebox.  Everything on the engineer's side and much of the lower area is now done.

·         With installation of the small tubes nearing completion, Phil made good the paint (actually a specialized boiler treatment) on the 16 super heater flues to ensure that these are ready for installation.

·         Phil also spent a couple of hours on the sand blast cabinet in the car shop cleaning up some of the rivets needed for the patch. ........... which brings us to the major landmark of the week;

·         Dennis returned after a couple of weeks absence, due to illness in the family, and work restarted in earnest on the firebox patch.  The tube fitting team moved out to allow full access to fit the patch.

o   The patch was bolted into place, the last two rivet holes were drilled and bolts fitted thru them.

Jerry and Collin secure the patch

o   After more cleaning, degreasing and tightening, the patch was finally secured in place and Dennis was preparing to weld when I left for the Soiree.

The patch finally in place

o   I later received pictures from Phil.  By the end of day the patch was fully welded into the inner firebox sheet !!.

and now part of the firebox

o   This is a huge step forward in correcting the problem that caused the locomotive to be pulled from service.  It mean that we now have one more really tricky job to do before the repair is complete.  All the bolts currently holding the patch must be replaced by rivets, which are 7/8 diameter and about 6 inches long.  This will be a "fun" exercise but, once this is done, we will be close to the point where this part of the boiler is ready for hydro testing.

In other areas:

·         Dennis completed welding the gear for the back head mechanism on the wheel lathe.  Once the holes are drilled out and bolts fitted we should be able to assemble this part of the lathe and test it.

Dennis in action

That looks complete

The finhished gear

·         Bob continued work on the planer;

·         Dave machined new parts for the spring hangers on 428; and

·         Jeff was able to install the first sections of the new compressed air supply to the South shop.

Installing the new air supply

So, overall a very significant day for the steam shop.

No update next week as I am going to the UK on business.  However, a lot is now in progress so I hope that there will be a lot more to report in two weeks time.  I am hoping that there may be the opportunity to see some steam activity in the UK while I am there.

Nigel