Steam Department

Steady progress on a number of fronts in the steam shop this weekend.

There are no photographs this week as I spent most of the afternoon inside the firebox with an air hammer !.

On 1630 it was a case of pushing on with the same key tasks:

Progress in fitting fire tubes

·         We had a setback in the morning when the new tube roller, that had finally arrived, proved to be too small in diameter for the firebox tube ends.  The intent with the new roller had been to simultaneously seal the tube end into the tube sheet and make the flare, which is the first step towards beading the end of the tube.  Plan B was therefore adopted !.  The expander can be used to fully seal the tube ends into place.  It is just a slower process requiring a good deal more heavy work from the operator, which my wife would probably say is a darn good thing in my case !.  Essentially,  instead of air hammering each tube once to set it into place, fully sealing the end requires that you do this three times.  Each time the expander must be released by hammering the central pin, turned a little, hammered back into the tube end to seat it and then air hammered again.

Using this method, by end of day, we had set all but a few tubes higher up on the fireman's side.  All the tubes we set this weekend were subject to the full process so they are sealed and ready to rolled in the smokebox to seal them into the front tube sheet.  (The firebox end must be fully sealed to ensure that the tube cannot move before the front end is rolled ).  In addition a number that had been set last week were fully sealed.

The objective of this approach is that we now have a substantial number of tubes that can be sealed into the smokebox tubesheet, so that we can keep on working  in the smokebox when the patch team needs access to the firebox.

·         This week we had free access to the firebox as Dennis and Mike were finalizing the remaining holes in the patch away from the firebox.  The patch should be ready for final fitting next weekend.

·         Ed continued with the pipe fitting.  We have now reached the stage where I have to locate the pictures of how the cab fitting looked before stripping so that the cab end of the new pipes can be set up correctly.

·         Richard and Lorne removed the timber supporting the cab awning.  That became a fairly brutal process.  Since it was held to the cab by coach bolts and the timber had rotted, allowing the bolts to turn, cutting the nuts off in the cab was about the only method of getting the timber off the cab;

·         Vince was setting up for machining the spacing ring that we need to fit one of the super heater flues.  No one is real clear why but the hole for the top right super heater flue is about 1/4 inch bigger than all the others so requires a spacing ring when the flue is rolled into the sheet.

In other areas:

·         The decision was taken to set up the new compressor as a direct replacement of the existing one.  That means we will not set it up fully until the weather improves.  However we will need to ensure that it is fully tested before we start the replacement as we will have nothing but the Sullair as an air source while we do the switch;

·         Lorne continued the cleaning of the Shay truck.  Hopefully we should be able to finally inspect and repaint that shortly;

·         The new high pressure line for the planer was assembled;

·         A number of tasks were progressed on 428:

o   Tom is working on machining the new axle box wedges on the shaper;

o   Jerry continued grinding out the axle box channels in preparation for welding in the reinforcing plates;

o   Work restarted on reassembling the air pump.

Nigel

We had a good turnout at the steam shop this weekend and I am glad to say that there is major progress to report

On 1630:

Progress in fitting fire tubes

·         The new tube roller has not yet arrived but we did establish a reliable "production line" expanding ends into place with the punch expander.  Once the new roller arrives, hopefully in the coming week, it should have the ability to both finally seat the tube ends and flare the projecting end piece in preparation for beading.  The number expanded this weekend was more than in all previous sessions combined.  We could probably have done all the expansion this weekend but gave possession of the firebox whenever needed for the more critical work described below.

Engineers side now all expanded

All the ends are now expanded on the engineer's side.  This was done as we should be able to work on the fireman's side when  much of the work is being done on the patch ...... just not the heavy work done this weekend.

The punch expander avoids almost all the issues of ferrules moving.  However, just when we thought we were safe, having done 60 tubes without incident, one ferrule shifted.  After much cursing the tube was extracted and a replacement squeezed back in.  The problem child was then fitted with a new ferrule and successfully expanded.

·         The other major progress was on the corner patch.  After all the careful bending and drilling to get it tight to the mud ring we got to the stage of introducing the three dimensional shaping to fit to the side and front sheets.  This is a pretty brutal exercise requiring Dennis to work close up and personal with a large heating torch then rapidly switch to wield a range of heavy hammers in a confined space.

Early stages of heating

Early in the process you can see the basic heating technique and also that, at this stage, the patch stands substantially proud of the front and side sheets along the top.  The patch is of thicker steel than the existing firebox sheets so will always be proud by the distance that can be seen at the bottom, where both patch and sheet are tightly bolted to the mud ring.

Hard work in a tight space

Once it is suitably hot, Dennis applies a little "gentle persuasion".

It is a slow and hot job.  The heat reflects from the sheet and there is quite limited room to swing hammers in the confined space of the firebox.  Despite the brute force involved it must also be accurate.  The gap between the patch and the sheet, where the welding will be done, must be small and even.  There was a long pause during the day when it became clear that grinding was required where the patch was contacting the firebox sheet.  Once you have the patch red hot, it is quite a long wait before it cools enough to grind.

Later in the day, once clearance had been adjusted by grinding, the process resumed. 

Later stages of heating

Forming the corner into place

Aligned on all edges

By end of day the patch was pretty much aligned with the firebox sheets.  You can see that the edge against the side sheet now shows an even projection from top to bottom.  Checking the back of the sheet thru the mud ring access hole shows the patch pretty much flush with the sheets at the back.  The intent was not to get it quite flush as it was still VERY hot and it may move back marginally further as it cools.  The next stage is to drill the remaining rivet holes in the patch, refit it and finally adjust as necessary.

More tasks are now progressing to prepare for assembly of the locomotive once we have the boiler work completed.

·         Brian and others worked on producing a cardboard template of the smokebox front ring (where the smokebox front is bolted to the smokebox drum).  A gasket must be produced to seal this  joint and the template is the basis for this.  While this joint may seem pretty mundane it is actually critical to effective operation.  In service the smokebox operates at a significant vacuum and at high temperature.  Air leaking in can cause loss of power and damage from burning, if the air allows cinders to re-ignite in the smokebox.

·         Phil continued with the cab curtains.  He has enlisted his mother to make the new ones.  Many thanks.  Sewing skills are in pretty short supply in the steam shop !.  The job grows the more that you take apart. Having removed the awning from above the engineer's cab window it is now apparent that the wooden beam attached to the cab side has substantially rotted away and will need to be replaced.

In other areas:

·         Stu and Bob continued work on the planer.  Unfortunately it was not clear if they were further forward at the end of the day.  While the valve block is now back in place, it was found that the large diameter hydraulic connection was not in great shape.  Since this carries a 2000psi pressure, it will need to be reconstructed before the unit can be further assembled;

Stu and Bob work on the planer

·         Work continued on the compressor.  This demonstrated the problems of stopping a job for several years.  A few short test runs demonstrated an interesting tendency to produce a strange light brown froth from the oil pump.  Opening and inspecting the crankcase revealed about 2/3 oil floating on 1/3 water !.  As Collin said, I REALLY thought I had changed the oil when I rebuilt the valves 3 years ago !.  So, after a through clean of the crankcase and oil galleries, followed by new oil and filter, operation looks much more normal.  Once we can mount it properly and set up basic connection to the reservoir, we should be able to test it under load for a period.

So a very successful weekend.  Let's hope we can keep up the momentum next week.

Nigel

There was a good deal of progress in the steam shop this weekend.  It was a rather shortened day as I attended the Board meeting in the morning and the development of the winter storm had a number of people who live to the North leaving earlier than usual.

Progress in fitting fire tubes

On 1630:

·         First priority was that Dennis worked with Mike and Jerry on the corner patch.    Completing the patch is the critical path item as we cannot plan even initial hydro testing of the tubes until the boiler is water tight in this area!.  A few adjustments were necessary to get the edges to align exactly where Dennis needs them to provide the correct spacing for welding.  Once this is complete they will move on to heat the patch in situ in order to finally bend it into the complex shape needed to match the inner firebox.  The trick with forming the patch is that it must be formed accurately in 3 dimensions as it must fit not only to the obvious bend around the mud ring but to align with the tubesheet, which is not vertical but slopes forward.

·         The statistics on tube rolling do not look impressive.  We are now about 25% thru rolling the firebox end.  However this conceals some critical progress.  The time spent rolling tubes was limited as Dennis and the team working on the patch had first call on access to the firebox and the new tube roller will not arrive until the coming week.  However, we did manage to roll all the tubes that had been problematic last week. 

·         We do now believe that we have the issue of the "walking" ferrules solved.  It seems that, when fitting ferruled tubes at the firebox end, they should not be simply rolled into place.  The essential tool is a segmented punch similar to that used to expand the ferrules into place.  The difference is that this one has projections that seat on the tube sheet around the tube (to stop it driving the tube forward).  When driven by an air hammer, the segments expand with sufficient force to expand the tube.  The major difference from the roller is that the punch expands slightly more on the boiler side creating a taper which prevents the ferrule moving forward (the roller would tend to taper the other way encouraging the ferrule to "walk").  Apparently some railroads fitted the firebox ends solely using these punches, normally applied three times to each tube to ensure an even seal.  Given that we have the roller, we will now fit the tube with one application of this expander then roll briefly to ensure an even seal.  This should be more efficient as the toughest part is getting the punch back out after it has been air hammered into place.

·         Ed and Phil progressed steadily with the replacement pipe work along the boiler.

In other areas

·         Richard and Bob test wired the new compressor to its control panel.  This allowed us to run the motor and compressor briefly and confirm that the electrical supply works as planned.  (It should start at a reduced power and then step up to full power after a short delay, which this test proved it is doing correctly.)  The reservoir was moved back to the compressor area so, in the next couple of weeks, we should be able to mount the compressor to the floor, fabricate a new air intake filter (as one is missing) and then connect the compressor to the reservoir, which will enable full testing.

·         Jeff is finalizing the layout for the pipe work and we should get the scissor lift in shortly so that we can start fixing the pipe work into the roof of the shop.

·         Bob continued with rebuilding the control gear for the planer.

No pictures this week as most of what was happening was continuing existing activities (and I was too busy doing the job to photograph the tube expander in operation !!).  However significant progress was made on a number of important tasks.

Nigel