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Sunday, March 10. 2013Travels to UK steam railwaysA little off the normal topic. During my trip to the UK I managed to spring a few hours away from the office to visit a couple of preserved steam railways. So attached are a few notes and photographs from these visits. On the Saturday I visited the Severn Valley Railway near Birmingham. This line is about 15 miles long running thru beautiful scenery along the river Severn. The train and its locomotive certainly provided pause for thought. I have often looked with amusement at the Thomas locomotive dwarfed by the train of heavyweights that it is "pulling" out of the yard. However 1501, an 0-6-0 pannier tank of Great Western heritage was here preparing to take its 7 car train over the hilly 15 mile line, which it was well able to do. In retrospect, these locomotives used to take the stock for express trains from Paddington terminus to and from the yards so were regularly moving 450 ton trains so this was no great load.
Last week I visited the Mid Hants Railway at Ropley in Hampshire. I follow the blog of the Wednesday volunteer gang there and was pleased to meet them. They made me very welcome and showed me around the workshop and yard. Most impressive what can be achieved when you have the operation to support some full time staff with volunteer support. Mid week the only locomotive in steam was the visiting T9 4-4-0, which was working a photographic charter.
A range of locomotives were in the yard serviceable. In the foreground are 4-6-0 #850 Lord Nelson and schools class 4-4-0 #925 Cheltenham while in the background is 34007 Wadebridge, a Bulleid light Pacific.
Another good looking locomotive was this Stanier "Black 5" 4-6-0 #45379. Now two years in service, Dave tells me she was rebuilt on site from scrap yard condition.
Another locomotive is in course of rebuild from scrap yard condition while others are undergoing periodic general overhaul. If we think the 15 year boiler requirement is bad, in the UK it is only 10 years between required boiler strip downs !. The difference between US and UK locomotive construction and therefore overhaul technique is very obvious. UK locomotive fireboxes usually fit between the fabricated frames so no major boiler overhaul can be carried out without removing the boiler from the frames. So it is common to have a separate boiler shop as they do at Ropley.
Here a number of boilers are in various stages of overhaul. In the background you can see a boiler rotated thru 180 degrees allowing ready access to the base of the firebox and mud ring. If you can do that, riveting the mud ring is less of a challenge than we face with #1630 !
Attached to the main shop they have a nicely laid out machine room
and they even have a planer. One big difference is that theirs works !!. Hopefully ours will soon.
Many thanks to Dave, Colin and the Wednesday gang for your hospitality, Nigel Sunday, March 10. 2013Steam Department Update 03-09-2013Thanks to Roger for the update in my absence last week. Having arrived back from the UK Friday, the jet lag made Saturday at the steam shop harder than usual for me !. However the team made good progress in a number of areas despite my preoccupation with what time of the day or night it was. On 1630:
· Another milestone in fitting the small tubes. Brian finished rolling the front ends into the smokebox tubes sheet. In the view below you can see all the tubes now fitted and the 16 vacant holes into which we will start fitting the super heater flues;
· After grinding most of the firebox ends to the final length for beading, we made a good start on flaring the ends in the firebox. We have to watch carefully to ensure that there is no movement as the tube end is flared and expand the front end a little more if there is any tendency to move but, having worked that out, progress is quite rapid;
Here you can see the difference between those higher up, that are now flared, and the ones at the bottom still to be done. The comparison between adjacent tubes E6 and D2 provides a good example. Once this is complete, we can move on to fit the 16 super heater flues and the 9 small tubes that fit between them. · Last week Dennis finished welding the patch into place. A clear demonstration of my limited knowledge of the finer details of welding. It looked pretty complete to me two weeks ago but a further finishing pass and tidying up around some of the rivet holes was still required last week. · The holes have now been reamed for riveting and focus is now on cleaning and servicing the air tools that will be used for forming the rivets. The riveting will be a considerable job as these are substantially the largest rivets we have driven in the shop in many years. · Dave and Phil worked on cleaning and servicing the various control valves from the cab; · Ed continued with the pipe work, which is now getting close to completion There was quite a lot of activity on 428 focused on the leading truck and axle boxes; · Having finished the welding on 1630, Dennis moved on to building up the truck axle boxes. Once built up these will need to be machined and the bearings fitted;
· Dave and Phil worked on producing a guide to mount the axle box wedges in the shaper. The wedges must be machined to provide an accurate and consistent angle between the faces.
One part of the guide is this tapered block. Here it is being drilled in preparation for mounting on the plate below.
The tapered block will be attached to this plate so that the wedge can be locked in position with the angled face on the block. The outer face, against which the axle box will bear, will then be positioned so that is can be planed flat to provide the required angle versus the face within the channel (which bears against the frame). · Mike was working on another mount to hold the shoes in position for mounting on the shaper.
In the shop in general, there was a big step forward in the project, funded by the Benefit, to provide piped air supply to the new shop (South end). Jerry had put in several days work during the week and yesterday he and Jeff completed the major parts of the system. After blowing out the debris, valves were fitted on several of the outlets and the system tested for leaks. The system proved air tight and, when I left, Dennis was, for the first time ever !!, working in the fabrication area without 100 feet of hose stretching back into the main shop. This is a substantial improvement as long runs of hose and substantial distance from the operator to the shut off valve have been a safety concern. The next step will be to finish the connection thru the South wall of the shop. This will serve the dual function of providing air for work in the wheel drop area as well as allowing the Sullair to be connected to provide additional capacity without long hose runs. The final step will be to connect in the large compressor. A good day's progress. Hopefully next week I can be there in mind as well as body !! Nigel Sunday, March 3. 2013Steam and their friends
Nigel has been in the UK this last week. Here are a few examples of the events happening in the Steam dept this last Saturday. Often the question is asked "How come it takes so long" Well, I guess its because of the old machinery, I'll show you some pictures. There is a learning curve to these old, steel behemoths from a bygone era! Acquiring the techniques to repair and restore the engines and machinery, is not an easy task. Most if not all the people that you see in these pics, whether from myself or Nigel's pictures are all "new" to the program. The only volunteer that has been w/ the Steam program since the 1970's is the curator, Tom Schneider.
 Tom, this is the lesson for the day  Phil painting... He is one of the youngest members  Jeff and Gerry hanging new air line pipe in new shop addition  cleaning backhead parts  more wirewheeling  Dennis, shop welder, finished welding Bull gear for the wheel lathe  Ralph working on the old planner. An important machine to get in operation. To be used for the 428 driving boxes  Rest |
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Comments
Fri, 03-29-2024 21:26
We're slackers and spend more time working on the equipment in the shop than keeping all you readers updated. We'll work on it, but I'm sure updates [...]
Thu, 03-14-2024 08:02
What happened to the Department Blog? It's been over 2 years and I still regularly check for updates, but nothing comes...
Mon, 12-27-2021 16:28
Happy New Year to all the Departments at the Illinois railway Museum! Thanks for all the good work you do in railroad preservation. Ted Miles, [...]
Wed, 10-13-2021 13:33
Was the CB&Q 1309 every transported to IRM?I’ve been reading old issues of Rail&Wire and the car was mentioned several times.
Mon, 06-07-2021 22:40
I was wondering if in the model layout display what scale would you guys be using and would you be displaying model train history as well? Just [...]
Wed, 06-02-2021 17:27
Nice to see 428's cab back on. Looking forward to when it is operable!
Tue, 06-01-2021 16:47
I hope the work will continue on the UP #428. Now that they are the museum's connection to the national railroad network; she would be very [...]
Sat, 04-17-2021 23:07
What is the status of 126, the Milwaukee Buffet car that is in S. Dakota? Any guess on when or if it will get to IRM?
Wed, 04-14-2021 21:09
Perhaps it is time to scrap the remains of the c, B & Q 7128 to make room for the Villa Real. Ted miles, IRM member
Wed, 04-14-2021 15:26
Hi IRM my name is Jason and I was wonder If you guys would be willing to save a CN Dash8-40cm they are currently being retired by CN and being [...]
Fri, 04-09-2021 19:56
Bear in mind that the Nebraska Zephyr is an articulated train set, so cars cannot be inserted at will. Although cars and/or a second engine could be [...]
Wed, 03-31-2021 11:37
I believe Silver Pony is currently on the back burner, and has been put into storage in one of the barns. The car needs a lot of work done to it's [...]