Illinois Railway Museum Blog

The major milestone was successfully achieved on Saturday.  Our FRA inspector visited, discussed and reviewed what we have done so far, and gave us the go ahead to start putting the boiler back together.

Unfortunately inspections of the Zephyr and other areas took longer than expected so it was into the afternoon before he was able to get to us.  So this rather limited progress on the boiler.  However:

·         Jason and Dan worked on the interior of the boiler with the air line and vacuum cleaner to get the surfaces to the point that the Apexior coating can be applied.  Clearing the accumulated dust is going to be an ongoing task.  I spent the evening clearing dust from the smoke box and the locomotive in general.  For as long as the weather holds and we can get any sort of air flow thru the shop you will see us with the doors open trying to get as we can completely out of the shop before the winter.  Next Saturday we will determine if any further cleaning is needed in the boiler and hopefully start applying the coating.

·         During the week Kevin made substantial progress on needle chipping the underside of the boiler and cylinders.  This will enable a thorough repaint so that, when we get back into service, 1630 should also look good.

Substantial progress on preparing the motion brackets

And the cylinders

·         Mike, Bob and others made good progress with the second test piece for the firebox patch.  In one day they managed to form the initial right angle bend using the McCabe and also start the bend to fit the sloping tube sheet , a stage which took 3-4 weeks to achieve on the first test.  So far this is as planned.  The first piece was largely experimental, testing alternative techniques.  The second is intended to prove that the selected techniques can be reliably applied to produce a patch that accurately fits the fire box corner.  If this works, we can then do the same with the real boiler plate.  Over the next couple of weeks we will confirm that the test piece can be accurately fitted to the mud ring and firebox sheets.

The plate is first reinforced

The reinforcing prevents the lower part of the patch distorting as the slope is formed.  You can see the first test piece on the right being used to judge position.

Then the large press is used to form the slope

The round stock will be used in under the patch to shape the bend.

·         Ed continued with the pipe fitting.

·         Bob cleaned up all the fittings for the throttle.  It will be quite a while before we can refit that but we want to make sure that parts such as this should fit together smoothly without the need for cleaning and re-cutting threads we when are trying to re-assemble.

·         The materials are coming together for re-tubing:

o   The contract welder made substantial progress during the week on safe ending the super heater flues.  More than 50% of the ends are now on.  Those that are attached are not yet finished as the ends are first attached with 6010 welding rod but must then have a "top coat" of the harder 7018 rod applied.  However this is moving forward and is on target for us to anneal and test them before they are need for fitting;

o   The copper ferrules that fit around the tubes at the firebox end arrived.  That was the good news!.  The bad news was that the supplier provided ferrules of 2 inch INSIDE diameter versus an order for 2 inch OUTSIDE.  Good thing we ordered with time to spare.  Fitting a 2 1/8 copper ring into a 2 inch hole could be a challenge!.

o   Hopefully we have a shunt scheduled this week that will bring our box car back beside the road where we can access it with a fork lift.  We are now ready to start swaging the first few fire tubes so we need to be able to retrieve them from storage.

·         The boiler insulation arrived and was stored ready for fitting in the Spring.

Boiler insulation in hand for installation

In other areas:

·         Machining of the thrust face was completed on the 4th and last of the axle boxes for 428;

·         We finished clearing the area between the shop and barn 9 to allow B&G to grade the area and hopefully reduce flooding risks;

Bob and Jason move parts of 101 to allow grading

·         Bob Sundelin and Tom completed the clutch mechanism for the tail stock of the wheel lathe.  This part was smashed when the lathe was first acquired and has had to be built from drawings.  There should be some real "fun" with the wheel lathe before long.  I had not previously understood how this area worked. 

Bob fits the clutch mechanism

The clutch mechanism that Bob is fitting engages a large gear (currently not in place and awaiting welding of a crack) to the shaft. 

The drive gear awaits welding

Once repaired this gear fits onto the shaft in the space to the right of the clutch in the previous picture.

This shaft is threaded into the back head assembly.  The purpose of this mechanism is to slide the multi ton back head assembly along the guides to allow loading and unloading of wheels from the machine.  The force involved with a substantial electric motor, heavily geared down, driving a shaft threaded to the load must be enormous. 

Overall view of wheel lathe (2010)

In this 2010 picture of the lathe the section that must be moved by this mechanism is most of the right side of the machine (behind the hanging chains) including the large circular face plate and the substantial green gear assembly on which it is mounted.  The uncertainty and challenge will be that, while the back head assembly has numerous grease points to lubricate the faces on which it must slide along the guides, it has probably not moved in more than 40 years.  Judging how much force can be applied in trying to free the guides without breaking anything else will be "interesting".

Nigel