Illinois Railway Museum Blog

Independence Day weekend and temperatures of over 90 degrees reduced us to a very small crew.  However we achieved good progress on critical tasks.

Working with Alex, we managed to cut all the safe ends for the super heater flues.  The ends are laid out on the Shay bolster.  All are matched to a specific flue.  All 16 flues must have a small diameter safe end (the darker tube in the picture).  9 require safe ending at the larger end (the gray tube).  The small diameter safe ends for these 9 are inside the large tubes.

The full set of safe ends

Each end must be tapered to fit into the end of the flue to which it is welded.  This is a safety measure so that, should the weld fracture, the flue could not completely separate and fall within the boiler due to this overlap.

Safe ends tapered for fitting

The tapers are cut in the lathe.  Here one is being set up for tapering

Set up for tapering

With training from Tom, I cut the taper on a significant number of them during the evening.

Tom can now arrange a time for the contract welder to come in and attach the ends to the flues.

We also located the pressure test rig that we will need to test each of the flues after welding.

Tom has completed the new piston rod for the McCabe flanger so next week we should be able to reassemble this in preparation for forming the firebox patch.

New piston rod for McCabe flanger

It now looks very nice but provides a great example of the difficulty of working with old heavy equipment.  Any breakage requires remaking parts in much the same way as repairing the locomotive itself.  This apparently simple breakage has cost about $300 for steel and many hours of time in machining to reach this stage.

We mentioned a couple of weeks back that the headlight had been refitted to 938.  She now looks a lot better with the headlight in place.

938 now has its headlight back

Now that would be a really nice locomotive to see in operation.  Anyone got the odd couple of million spare ........... !!

Hope to see many of you at the Benefit this afternoon.

Nigel