Illinois Railway Museum Blog

It was a very productive day in the steam shop and, for once, the progress is very obvious.

Two new volunteers came to the shop for the first time, Ethan and Evelina.  As it turned out, it was one of those days when there were a number of things going on in which they could be fully involved so they had busy days.  Hope we did not put them off !.

Just about all activity was on 1630:

·         Phil and Brian did a thorough check of the smokebox, firebox and tubes to remove all tools and other items left over from tube fitting and other completed activities.  A lot of what we are doing now seals up areas that we have been working in for months ........... so we certainly do not want foreign objects sealed up in there!.

·         Ed worked on the cab lagging and located the connections needed to link in the pipe to the steam chest pressure gauge.  This is important as it has to be connected and run thru the next section of sheet metal that has to be fitted.

The large casting of the fire hole door was lifted into the tender ready for refitting.  Rick, who is our expert with the fireclay, was not around this week so hopefully it can be fitted next week.

Brian and Phil cleaned up the parts of the butterfly door ready for fitting once the casting is in place.

Much of the sheet metal for the backhead was sorted and moved up into the tender.  This keeps it separate from the boiler lagging and convenient to where it must be fitted.  In doing this we found  the paint on a couple of sections was in bad shape.  So Jane took charge of these, wire brushed and primed them.

·         Jane and Evelina used the thread chaser on the hangers that support the air tanks under the walkways alongside the boiler. Another job to ensure that key parts are ready for immediate use when we come to final fitting.

·         Eric continued work on the boiler lagging.  Jim and Ethan ran a production line to split and taper the blocks to the required shape and Evelina worked with Eric to fit the blocks around the first two courses of the barrel.

Eric and Evelina fitting lagging blocks

This is a thoroughly dirty job as the lagging breaks up easily and generates a clinging white dust.  However, they kept at it and, by end of day, had set the lagging blocks around both courses and applied steel banding to finally secure them into place.

Two rings of blocks in place

In the evening, Jerry and I experimented with the lagging mud.  This is another unpleasant material.  It is a dusty large grained powder that must be mixed with water to produce a sticky sludge that has a reasonable tendency to stick to things (including you as well as the boiler!!).  With this we were able to fill the gaps so, provided it stays in place as it dries, the first course is now ready for fitting the sheet metal.

Two rings of lagging now complete

·         And then there was the major event!.  As noted last week, we had set up the staging and brought in the super heater elements for the first row.

Everything was prepared in the morning to start fitting the super heater elements. All the ball ends of the elements and the sockets into which they fit were cleaned.  The channels into which the bolt heads slide were checked and cleaned.  All the nuts and bolts had been prepared some months ago.

In the afternoon, under Tom's supervision, the fitting started.  Each element is secured by a special bolt whose square head locates into a channel in the super heater header.  The bolt passes thru a yoke around the two pipes of the element.  A specially shaped washer, designed to allow the yoke to bear evenly on both pipes is fitted and a special deep nut used to secure the yoke and so drive the balls of each pipe tightly and evenly into their sockets. 

The ball joints at the end of each pipe must then be carefully checked for alignment with their sockets.  The nut is then tightened, ensuring that the ball and socket remain accurately aligned.  The tightening requires quite a bit of torque as the environment around this area is pretty brutal.  In operation it is in the path of the fire gases!.

A production line developed.  Cameron and Brian became the experts on the actual alignment and fitting.  Sliding the element into place is tricky as the bolt must be in place in the yoke and its head must slide along the channel as the element is pushed into place.  So you have the combination of sliding a 17 foot element along the flue and the bolt head along a tightly fitting channel.

Locating in the header

Once in place, the balls are carefully aligned into their sockets and held there as the nut is tightened.

Positioning to tighten

Here, Ethan, Jerry and Jim feed an element from the staging while Cameron and Brian locate it into its flue.

Feeding an element into the boiler

As it became clear that the process was going smoothly Ethan, Bob and I started fetching the elements for successive rows from the boxcar.

Brian fitting the last row

The longer down pipe are very obvious as Brian treats the bolt of one of the last elements with the anti-seize compound.

The change in the boxcar is remarkable.  From being full of parts a few months ago, it is now substantially empty.  So we took the opportunity to put some of the rods from #938 under cover for the winter.

By around 5:30 it was all done.  27 elements had been fitted.  (Although built with 28, one was removed and blocked off before 1630 came to IRM so she now has 27).  The view of the smokebox is now very different and 1630 now has a complete super heater again (subject to pressure testing in a couple of weeks).

The super heater is complete

·         During the week Tom had worked on machining the throttle.  That needs final lapping but is hopefully nearing completion.

Overall a good day. 

I will now be out of circulation a great deal in the next couple of months, with a trip to the UK for a couple of weeks leaving today and for 4 weeks to Australia in mid October.  Blog updates may be a little erratic for few weeks.  I will need to rely on messages from the guys on what is happening to provide updates in the next couple of weeks.  Then hopefully someone else can take over for a while.  So, in the next couple of weeks, I will be awaiting the Sunday progress update like everyone else!.

Nigel