Steam Department

A rather brief update this week, not because of lack of progress but because I spent most of the day in the rules and safety sessions so was not directly involved in the work in the shop.  While this was a day away from the shop for a number of us it is essential that we have a team able to control movement of equipment and these sessions are critical to ensure that this is done safely.

Work progressed steadily on 1630:

·         Collin, Eric and Jason made good progress on cleaning and preparing the tube sheets.  Both front and back tube sheets have now been extensively cleaned and checked.  The good news is that no signs of cracking have been found.  Work is progressing on smoothing and preparing the holes to take the new tubes.  This will take several weeks to complete but good progress was made today.

·         Dennis, Bob and Mike continued building up of the mud ring ready to for fitting of the corner patch.  Over the next couple of weekends this will move out of sight as the section inside the firebox is built up and the rivet holes on that face are rebuilt.

·         Plans are in place to do the thickness testing next Saturday.  This weekend we were marking out the points at which measurements will be taken.  Each section of the boiler plate work must be measured to assess its minimum thickness which then forms the basis of the calculation for the form 4.  Clearly each part of the boiler is only as strong as its weakest point so the calculation is based upon the thinnest point found in each section.  Measurement points are identified in a random pattern across each plate with a focus on the areas likely to be weakest such as the belly.  Here the guys are cleaning off and marking measurement points ready for next weekend.

Cleaning and marking the points for testing

Nigel