Illinois Railway Museum Blog

Steady progress over the last two weekends in the steam shop.

As ever with the winter approaching there are the jobs needed to prepare for the cold.  Last weekend a lot of time was spent draining the boxcar water supply and removing the softener head to the safety of the shop.  Not much to show for the effort but it would be a real bust if we have the locomotive ready to run and the water supply was not operational.

Piping for the new air system arrived along with some more that we need for 1630.  Unfortunately it looks like the supplier had a bad day!.  Only one of the 3 types ordered was delivered correctly!.  So now we have to arrange return and get the correct material.  One of the joys of a volunteer shop working at  weekend.  You are not there to spot errors when material is delivered.

On 1630 we pushed ahead with the key tasks:

·         Ed and Richard found a good process to anneal the copper ferrules.  Sometimes simple is best.  We had discussed using the electric furnace in the car shop but, on further discussion, that is not really designed to be opened and closed while hot as we would have needed to do to batch heat the ferrules.  So, in the end, the method was to slide them along a rod and heat them with the acetylene torch to a red heat.  At the end of the rod they dropped into a bucket of water.  Eventually the process was so quick that I did not even get a photograph and all 130 that we needed were done in a couple of hours.

·         Jeff, Jerry and Alex worked thru the hydro-testing.  The work ran well into the evening but, by end of day, they had successfully tested all 16 super heater flues and the new air tank.  This was a good if muddy days work.  For flues the rig is secured by a long rod running the length of the flue.  At one end is secured a blanking plate.

The flue is sealed by a blanking plate at one end

While at the other is attached the plate thru which the water is pumped and pressurized

Bolting the water inlet to the other end

At least we got it done before the weather broke.  The air tank tested fine at 240 psi so we can run the air compressor output at 150 psi.  This will be a big improvement over the existing reservoir that runs at the system pressure of 90 psi.  If we are regulating the system down from a higher reservoir pressure we should get a steady 90 psi at the output.

·         Meanwhile Mike continued with the patch.  The two additional rivets have been successfully removed and focus is now upon final bending of the patch to achieve a tight fit all along the mud ring while aligning with the front and side sheets of the firebox to allow an accurate weld to be made.

·         On the main activity of tubing, the production line described a couple of weeks ago is now starting to show results.

·         Cutting to length is now established. Cutting with the chop saw is a spectacular operation.  However it is now done quickly.  The required master tube is laid alongside the tube to be cut, the distance set and the tube is cut in less than a minute. 

Tube cutting in progress

·         From this operation we have a satisfying stack of nearly 50 tubes cut to length, rough edges removed, painted and ready to load into the boiler.  The stack on the fireman's side now shows that we need to get tubes off the stands and into the boiler before we run out of space.

Ready to load

·         On the engineer's side we have a further supply fully swaged and annealed ready to cut.

More ready for cutting

·         Meanwhile in the swaging area we brought in another bale of 37 tubes and have about 50 ready for another heavy session in the furnace.

But lots more to swage

Below is a progress log.  We are moving forward but there is a lot to do.  Follow our progress !

Progress in fitting fire tubes

Hopefully I can be a bit more productive next Saturday.   After a 10 day business trip to the UK, I was not good for much by 6:30 so it was a short day for me!!

Nigel