A bit of a delay in posting the blog this week as we are
busy with my son Michael over from the UK this week. However he is keen to work in the shop while he
is here. It has been another week of
intense activity focused on 1630 and getting to the point where we can carry
out the first test of the tubes with water in the boiler.
We keep pushing
forward on 1630.
·
The replacement
valves had arrived and Richard, Michael and others fitted them to the milk car.
By lunchtime it had been filled with
water and it was then moved back to the shop by the operating crew at end of
day. So we have the water supply in
place;
·
Phil had worked
during the week on caulking the rivets.
This is a tough job with the air hammer carefully sealing the edges of the
rivets into the sheet of the boiler. He
had worked on this during the week and finished the outside on Saturday.
By
evening he was working on the rivet ends inside the firebox. Access to the area around the patch remains
the limiting factor in getting the boiler water tight. Two stays have to be fitted to complete the
repair. The holes are drilled and the
stays ready. We must now cut the threads
into the inner firebox sheet, screw then
into place and then caulk the projecting end.
However, this is not possible at the same time as the rivet caulking;
·
Eric worked all day
on the smokebox ends of the super heater flues.
Having trimmed these to exact length, the ends need to be slightly
flared to improve the seal ahead of the water test and in preparation for
beading. By end of day, after a lot of hard
work, these were all done;
·
During the week, Tom
had measured the throttle seat in the boiler and ordered the steel to make a
blanking plate to seal this during hydro testing. The blanking plate should make a better seal
than the throttle valve itself during hydro testing and should make inspection
a great deal easier. After the hydro
test the braces must be inspected. It
will be easier to get thru the dome and onto the top of the tubes without the
large body of the throttle to crawl around.
Hopefully the plate will be available for the Wednesday working session;
·
The gauge plates in
the cab were given a final coat of black paint so that gauges can be
permanently fitted as soon as they have been tested, which we hope to do next
Saturday;
·
One very awkward job
was lapping the seat of the main turret shut off valve. This critical valve is located at the very
top of the turret at the highest point of the firebox in the cab. It can only be accessed thru a hatch in the
cab roof and by threading wrenches in between other fittings on top of the
firebox in the cab. This shows the
location with the valve body removed.
Its
purpose is to enable the turret, from which all auxiliary devices are supplied
with steam, to be isolated from the boiler in an emergency. While it is seldom closed when the locomotive
is complete, it will be important as the intent is that the first tests will be
done without letting water into the turret.
It is also important that the valve should shut correctly when required.
Michael
and Brian had great fun with this. However,
with a good deal of hard work the objective was achieved. The valve body was removed from its seat in the
turret and rigidly attached to a shaft that would guide it accurately onto the
seat and allow it to be turned repeatedly against the seat. The guys worked for several hours working the
valve head against the seat with increasingly fine grades of abrasive lapping
compound until an even seal was achieved all around. Here Michael displays the end result !.
Then
everything was reassembled. At the end
of the day everything looks as it did before.
Only those involved know that a lot of work was put in and we now have
confidence that this key valve is in good shape.
Aside from work to
seal the boiler for first testing, one very visible achievement was the removal
of the fireman's side air tanks. These
are now with the engineer's side tank on the floor of the shop and have been
marked up for hammer testing. If no
issues are apparent from hammer testing, they will be hydro tested then cleaned
and painted ready for service.
On other areas:
·
Bob made good progress on setting up the power supply
for the planer;
·
The mounting brackets for the air pump were test
fitted to 428. This was a revealing
exercise. When she was stripped many
years ago the additional brackets were found mounted between the casting that
secures the pump to the boiler and the pump itself. With some measurement it is now clear that
this was an essential modification at some stage in the life of 428. Absent
these extensions, which set the pump out and lower than if it were directly
mounted to the bracket, the top of the pump would foul the feed from the
injector to the boiler.
So continuing progress.
The plan is now for quite a few people to work on Wednesday.
Nigel