Illinois Railway Museum Blog

Luckily there are days when things go better than planned and yesterday was one of those.  There was a good turn out and several teams were able to work in parallel to get a lot done.

On 1630:

·         Eric and Collin worked on the ferrules in the front tube sheet and successfully ground all those fitted last week back flush with the sheet.

Eric grinding ferrules

·         The last remaining flue, which we knew to be significantly over length, was loaded, carefully marked for the required length, and then removed to the large band saw, where it was cut to length.  After cutting it was reloaded into the boiler.  So, with this one in place, all the super heater flues are back in the boiler.

Last SH flue is fitted

·         After this Eric and Collin fitted the remaining ferrules and ground these back flush with the tube sheet, making everything ready for the final stage of fitting the flues, expanding the ends into place.  Given the "fun" we had with small tubes moving during the expansion process, we approached this exercise with some trepidation!. 

·         The set up is in place to expand the tubes into the front sheet.  This will be done using a long, universal jointed, shaft driven from a large gearbox now mounted outside the smokebox.  In this case the shaft may be a bit heavy to position and care will be required to ensure that it does not pull the expander out of line.  However the drive can be mounted once and is already in place.  However, it is the firebox end that we must do first.

Drive in place on smokebox

·         In the firebox there is no room to fix a drive as we have at the front.  The (large and heavy) motor must be positioned to attach directly to the expander for each flue.  The game is to set up a support structure of pipe and timber cribbing that will support the motor behind each flue, with the added challenge that the siphon severely restricts the positioning of the motor.  So there was a great deal of grunting and cussing as Phil and I positioned the motor for each flue.  Having done this for the first flue, we set about the actual expansion with great care.

Setting the flue exactly to length is easy, involving no more than tapping the flue to drive it into the sheet until the depth gauge shows a minimum projection of 1/4 inch.  Jeff and Jerry, at the front, then locked it into place and watched carefully as we started the motor and expander.  Everyone watched for any sign of the feared movement of the flue.  But there was none.  Having found no great tendency for the flue to shift during rolling, three more were processed quite quickly, with the main effort being in moving the motor between tubes.

The way in which this roller operates may explain the lack of movement.  As can be seen in a finished tube, this roller carries out three processes in one operation.  The tube end is expanded into the hole in the sheet, but the rollers are not simple cylinders, having a recess in the area of the tube sheet.  This causes the tube to be expanded more on either side of the sheet.  The result is a flare at the open end that will be hammered to form the bead, once we have tested the expansion of the tubes into the sheets for leakage.  It also carries out the "prossering" step where the tube is expanded more inside the boiler to secure the tube both sides of the sheet.  You can see the groove created by this process.  It seems this roller, by starting to deform the tube outwards either side of the sheet first , is effectively locking it into place early in the expansion process.

Tubes rolled into rear sheet

So 4 of 16 done at the rear.  Just hoping the rest go as well as the first four!.  The results can be seen by comparing the four lower tubes (expanded) with the ones above where the ferrule can still be seen around the tube,

First four rolled into rear sheet

·         Meanwhile Brian did a great job on the cladding sheets.  The better! weather ( hard to believe a year ago how hot it was) allowed the work to move outside, albeit with a good deal of warm clothing.  This is one of the many dirty and repetitive parts of the work but he made good progress and much of the cladding is now ready for priming.

Brian cleaning cladding sheets

An increasing number are done

·         Ed made good progress identifying and cleaning the pipe work for the backhead fittings in the cab.  The objective here is to have as much as possible lined up for fitting as soon as we can complete the initial hydro test and prove the boiler is water tight again.

·         As part of the swaging described below, the remaining small tubes were swaged so that we have them ready to fit into the holes between the super heater flues once those have been rolled at both ends.

·         The one set back was that the bucker is still not back from repair.  The latest information is that it should arrive next week.  Let's just hope that is correct !.

Elsewhere:

·         A very successful swaging exercise in which the remaining 7 tubes for 1630 and 43 for the Shay were swaged in one continuous operation.  I have come to believe that the swager is moody!.  Some days the jaws do not move smoothly, valves stick and it takes a lot of time and effort to get good results.  Others, like yesterday, it starts smoothly, the first (test) tube was no problem and 50 more tubes were swaged as fast as they could be heated, with consistent quality all the way thru.

Phil, Jerry and Jeff work the swager

Into the jaws for a few seconds

and the end is formed !

·         There was a good deal of visible progress on the planer this week.  First the rebuilt pump was carefully lowered back into its position on the bed of the machine.

Positioning the pump

Then it was secured into position relative to the motor and the valve block.

Pump in place

By end of day much of the interconnecting pipe work had been fitted.  Progress will not be so visible for a while now as the next job is to drill into the floor and fit the anchors.  Given the way that this machine operates (the large table with substantial blocks of metal mounted on it, for a combined weight of 500 pounds plus, being propelled back and forth by the hydraulics), it is considered a good idea to have it securely bolted down !.

Pipe work fitted

So, excellent progress this week.  If only we can get the riveting under way I will be a lot happier !.

Nigel