Steam Department Update 08-25-2012

The second weekend of Thomas and temperatures into the 90's predictably led to a slower work day at the steam shop.  However we are now seeing more clearly that work is shifting to the new phase of preparing for reassembly.

On 1630:

·         On Monday I met George, the welding specialist from Curtis Boiler, on site and he carried out the welding on the rear tube sheet.

·         As mentioned in previous, weeks this was the last critical step to be ready for internal inspection of the boiler by the FRA.  With this done, Collin spent Saturday morning cleaning and clearing tools from inside the boiler as well as carefully inspecting all the surfaces for any sign of cracks or damage and polishing any rough edges from the tube holes.  We can now advise the inspector that all is ready for inspection and hope that he will be able to fit us into his schedule in the near future.

·         Glenn and Richard did some rework on the safe ends for the super heater flues.  Inspection on Monday indicated that a couple of these had been cut from tube that was more pitted than desirable so new ones were made ready for welding to the flues in the next couple of weeks.

Glenn cuts the taper on a safe end

·         A good start was made on cleaning and preparing the nuts and bolts that secure the super heater elements to the header.  This is typical of a lot of work that we will be doing in the next few months.  These bolts fit into the header at the top of the smoke box so have a tough life, in the path of the exhaust gases from the fire.  To remove them required heating to red heat with the acetylene torch.  Now they must be thoroughly cleaned, the threads checked and re-cut as necessary, to ensure that they fit and tighten smoothly when we come to fit the elements.

Element securing bolts as removed

and after a good deal of TLC

·         Vince cleaned and lubricated and number of the flexible stays ends so we are now well on the way thru that process.

·         Kevin is back for a few days and continued with needle chipping the exterior of the boiler and support brackets so that we will be able to do a thorough re-paint.  He is at Union for several days so this activity will continue during the week.

·         Mike continued with test fitting of the patch.  This is a very tricky exercise, a sort of three dimensional jigsaw.  It looks as if we are now close with this test.  Once this is done, we will run thru a second test to prove that the principles developed can be applied reliably to and then we can hopefully produce the patch proper.

·         I worked with Tom on preparations for fitting the tubes to the boiler.  This is quite a complex, multistage, operation that you will hear a lot more about in the next couple of months!.  The first step of the process is to expand the ferrules (copper rings) fitted between the tube and the rear tube sheet into the holes before the swaged tube is fitted.  After working with the various sizes of ferrule that we have been sorting and measuring for the last couple of weeks it is clear that we have nowhere near enough of the most commonly required size.  We will determine in the next week if we can get ready made ferrules this size in a reasonable time.  Otherwise we do have the right size of copper tube and will need to start cutting about 200 of these little rings !!.  Good news, it is now clear that, once you know how to match the ferrule size to the hole, the fitting process can be rapid.  After all the measuring and testing I was able to fit the first 5 ferrules in no more than 10 minutes.  This is likely to be the pattern throughout this operation.  We know that years ago re-tubing a boiler was an remarkable fast process.  We will have to become familiar with each of the steps and then try to become efficient but accurate at carrying it out.

On 428:

·         Machining is speeding up on the axle box thrust bearings.  The first one is complete and the second nearly so.

Thrust bearing largely machined from a second axle box

Interesting.  The attachment to this box looks quite different from the first.  This seems to be a common factor with 428.  Each part has been differently repaired at different times.

Nigel