Illinois Railway Museum Blog

I spent Wednesday at the steam shop with Phil and Ed.  The main focus was on sealing all significant leaks at the tube ends that showed when the boiler was filled with water.  By end of Wednesday we were to the point that , when filled well above the crown sheet, we had only minor dribbles and drips.

Saturday was a normal and fairly successful work day at the shop and Sunday I spent working with the Jim West and the Operations Department on switching for the Diesel Days event.  So the blog is a little late this week !.

So what happened Saturday at the steam shop?.  Overall a great deal was achieved although there was one set back which meant that we were not able to get as far as our most ambitious targets.

On 1630 I guess I had better try to answer one question I was asked a lot at the event on Sunday - when will you be hydro-testing the boiler?.  The answer has to depend upon what exactly you mean by hydro-testing.  As the pre-requisite for moving on the steam testing we must demonstrate that the boiler can be pressured using heated water to 125% of operating pressure (so 225 p.s.i. in our case) and sustain that pressure with minimal leakage for a period.  Our current expectation is to reach that point in about 3 weeks.  However our path to that involves using water, at first simply filling the boiler, then applying increasing pressure to identify and test the correction of any leakage.  This is the process that we are currently following.  On Saturday our objective was to finally seal any leakage at the tube ends on simply filling the boiler and then seal the boiler to allow some pressure to be applied.

·         Following on from the work that Phil and I did on Wednesday, a team including Phil, Collin, Eric and Sean took it in turns to identify and seal the last little leaks that showed by carefully rolling the identified tube ends slightly more.  This was hard and tedious work but, by early afternoon, the tube ends appeared to be dry with the boiler full of water.

Tighten to correct the last drips

·         Dennis annealed the copper sealing rings for the two covers.

·         In parallel with this one team worked on cleaning the threads of the studs that attach the dome cover and another on fitting the cover of the inspection hatch.  These are the last two components required to seal the boiler and allow pressure to be applied.

Cleaning threads on the dome studs

·         All seemed to be going well until one of the studs securing the inspection hatch sheared off during tightening. 

Fitting the inspection hatch

Luckily everything seems to be shaping up well on replacing the stud.  Dennis was in the shop and did a great job of welding a nut onto the broken stud and, to our great relief, this stood up to several of us pulling on a large wrench and the stud unscrewed from the seating.  In this view you can see the broken stud with the nut welded onto it.

Broken stud prepared for extraction

This was very good news as the alternative, had it failed to extract, would have been to grind it flush and drill it out, potentially a day's work.  The studs screwing into a boiler are quite unusual.  The thread into the seating is tapered and must be specially machined.  However, by end of day, Tom, Cameron and Bob had substantially machined the new stud and, when I dropped by on Sunday, work was progressing.  We should have it replaced ready to fit the cover next weekend.

·         With the stud out, work focused on fitting the dome cover.  This was the first time that we had used the new boom for the forklift, which was made with this type of lift in mind.  It was highly successful.  The cover was lifted by the forklift in the shop and placed fairly easily. 

The fork lift raises the dome cover

Phil and Jerry locate the cover

Working the securing ring into place

In place and ready to tighten

It was then tightened down without issue.  This was a great deal easier than the previous method that required the locomotive to be pulled outside to use the boom truck to place the cover.

·         Jason tested the remaining gauges, which all proved to be accurate, so these are now ready for refitting.

·         Jane finished stripping the air tanks.  These are now ready for painting.

·         With Jim West's assistance we refilled the milk car so should now have a water supply sufficient to support testing under pressure.  We have now run about 9000 gallons of water thru the boiler which should have removed most of the debris from sand blasting.  From now on we should be able to re-circulate the water.

In other areas:

·         Stu and Bob ran the wiring for the planer.  The one remaining requirement is to locate a breaker to fit our old style supply panel.

·         Dennis was rebuilding the damaged grease keeps for the axle boxes on #428.

So a lot was achieved this week.  Hopefully next weekend we should be able to fit the inspection hatch and start testing under pressure.

Nigel