Illinois Railway Museum Blog

Another day with temperatures reaching 100 degrees certainly slowed work in the shop.  However, we plugged along with frequent "cooling breaks" and made good progress on the key tasks.

Alex and I completed tapering the safe ends for the super heater flues.  So we are now ready for the welder to attach these to the flues.

Paul cleaned up the pressure testing rig, that we need to test the flues once they have been welded.  As shown below it consists of blanking plates that are tightened from each end of a rod so that will tightly seal the ends of the flue.  One has the connections to allow water to be pumped in and air allowed out.  Once free of air, the flue is pressurized to ensure that the welds attaching the safe ends withstand boiler pressure.

Pressure testing rig for the flues

Glenn, Phil and Jeff spent the day refitting the piston rod to the McCabe flanger.  The rod is now in place.

Main cylinder of the McCabe

This view gives some idea of the power of this machine.  The main cylinder shown here is approximately 3 feet in diameter.  Operating at 90 psi this creates a force of more than 40 tons on a few square inches of plate in the jaws.  In this way it can smoothly bend 3/4 inch steel plate with no apparent effort.  The downside is that minor errors in adjustment or operation can cause this force to fall onto the machine itself causing issues such as the broken piston rod.

There is some tricky drilling to be done to place a set screw but once that is done, we can hope to refit the piston and get the machine back into operation to start work on the firebox patch.

Kevin has been working most of the week on preparing and then priming the tender tank top.  This is a massive improvement.  Unfortunately I failed to take a "before" picture but this area was in really bad condition, probably due to water lying on the tank top at some stage.

Tender tank top now primed

Stu and Bob worked on reassembling the planer.  A new bearing has arrived and the shaft has been machined so it is beginning to come together.

Nigel