Illinois Railway Museum Blog

Turnout at the shop yesterday was much restricted.  Quite a few people were tied up all day a with the rules test and a number more, including me, were out a few hours for the annual safety meeting.  Some others, including Tom and Glenn, had to deal with flooded basements at home after the crazy storm during the week.

However a reduced crew made good progress in a number of areas and overcame a few set-backs.

On 1630:

·         We continued with rolling the super heater flues into the rear tube sheet and all 8 on the engineer's side are now done.  This shows the method used to hold the flue in place at the front while the other end is expanded into the rear tube sheet.  Once that is done the flue is held firmly in place.

Locked in the front tube sheet

An alternative motor was located that can be positioned in ways that work around the siphon and allowed us to reach the top pair of flues.  This is "really good fun" as you have to work tight up against the top of the firebox.  But it works!.

Progress was limited by a few set-backs.

Working in a confined space, yours truly managed to drop the expander, when removing it from the tube we had just expanded.  Unfortunately the little rollers jumped out when it landed on the grates.  So we spent quite a while digging thru the track bed under the loco to find them.  However we did find them and, after re-assembly, everything is worked fine on the next two flues.

Despite all the checking a couple of weeks back, one flue proved to be marginally short of the required length.  Luckily the adjacent one was slightly over length so we could cure the problem by removing and switching the two adjacent flues.  At the same time we double checked all the remaining flues to ensure we have no such problems on the fireman's side.  With this done, both flues were rolled to complete the engineer's side.

We also found an issue with the steel spacer fitted around in the top right flue.  The spacer is a perfect, lathe cut, ring of about 5 1/2 inch diameter but the tube sheet is not perfectly flat in this area.  So the ring could not fit flush to the tube sheet all around the flue.  The beading will not work properly if there is a significant recess or projection anywhere around the ring.  The solution involved Collin crawling into the boiler so that he could driver the spacer out to be flush with the tubesheet at its lowest point.  This was quite an effort as the space with the tubes in place is a tiny fraction of what it was when the tubes were removed. 

Well done Collin !

However, once this was done, the ring could be carefully ground flush with the sheet all around the hole.  This all had to be done before we can safely expand the flue.  ASfter all this effort, it should now be ready to expand next week.  This shows the spacer with the flue inside.  The spacer is now flush to the tube sheet while the face of the flue shows how the spacer has been ground to align with the face of the sheet.

Spacer ground to fit

·         The remaining small tubes were annealed and brought up to the locomotive for Jerry to finally clean ready for installation.  So everything is ready to get the last tubes in.

Elsewhere:

On the Shay

·         A small but determined team started by annealing the 7 tubes for 1630 and then annealed the 43 tubes for the Shay that were swaged last;

·         Having taken a break, after 2 hours working on the furnace, we decided that we were real suckers for punishment, moved the tubes around, and swaged the remaining 45 Shay tubes.  So all the tubes for the Shay are now swaged and, once the last batch are annealed, will be ready to go back to storage until required for fitting.  A big bonus is that we should now be finished with the swager and can free up the access to the heavy work area.

·         Dennis was able to start on the smokebox welding.  First step was to make good holes and weak areas on the section that is not being replaced.

Weld repairs to smokebox

One of the areas being reinforced is around some of the holes for bolts that secure the front of the smokebox.  These have been reinforced to ensure that we have adequate strength in around the bolts.

On the machines:

·         Bob Rugg continued with wiring the planer; and

·         Bob Milhaupt, who we have not seen in a long time, located and fitted the guards around the backhead drive of the wheel lathe.

So, good progress this week despite the limited number of people available.

Nigel