Illinois Railway Museum Blog

We keep pushing forward on 1630.

·         The replacement valves had arrived and Richard, Michael and others fitted them to the milk car.  By lunchtime it had been filled with water and it was then moved back to the shop by the operating crew at end of day.  So we have the water supply in place;

·         Phil had worked during the week on caulking the rivets.  This is a tough job with the air hammer carefully sealing the edges of the rivets into the sheet of the boiler.  He had worked on this during the week and finished the outside on Saturday. 

Phil caulking rivets

By evening he was working on the rivet ends inside the firebox.  Access to the area around the patch remains the limiting factor in getting the boiler water tight.  Two stays have to be fitted to complete the repair.  The holes are drilled and the stays ready.  We must now cut the threads into the inner firebox sheet,  screw then into place and then caulk the projecting end.  However, this is not possible at the same time as the rivet caulking;

·         Eric worked all day on the smokebox ends of the super heater flues.  Having trimmed these to exact length, the ends need to be slightly flared to improve the seal ahead of the water test and in preparation for beading.  By end of day, after a lot of hard work, these were all done;

Eric flaring super heater flues

·         During the week, Tom had measured the throttle seat in the boiler and ordered the steel to make a blanking plate to seal this during hydro testing.  The blanking plate should make a better seal than the throttle valve itself during hydro testing and should make inspection a great deal easier.  After the hydro test the braces must be inspected.  It will be easier to get thru the dome and onto the top of the tubes without the large body of the throttle to crawl around.  Hopefully the plate will be available for the Wednesday working session;

·         The gauge plates in the cab were given a final coat of black paint so that gauges can be permanently fitted as soon as they have been tested, which we hope to do next Saturday;

·         One very awkward job was lapping the seat of the main turret shut off valve.  This critical valve is located at the very top of the turret at the highest point of the firebox in the cab.  It can only be accessed thru a hatch in the cab roof and by threading wrenches in between other fittings on top of the firebox in the cab.  This shows the location with the valve body removed. 

The valve fits right at the top of the firebox

Its purpose is to enable the turret, from which all auxiliary devices are supplied with steam, to be isolated from the boiler in an emergency.  While it is seldom closed when the locomotive is complete, it will be important as the intent is that the first tests will be done without letting water into the turret.  It is also important that the valve should shut correctly when required. 

Michael and Brian had great fun with this.  However, with a good deal of hard work the objective was achieved.  The valve body was removed from its seat in the turret and rigidly attached to a shaft that would guide it accurately onto the seat and allow it to be turned repeatedly against the seat.  The guys worked for several hours working the valve head against the seat with increasingly fine grades of abrasive lapping compound until an even seal was achieved all around.  Here Michael displays the end result !.

The valve body after lapping

The seat of the valve viewed thru the cab roof

Then everything was reassembled.  At the end of the day everything looks as it did before.  Only those involved know that a lot of work was put in and we now have confidence that this key valve is in good shape.

Job done - back in place

Aside from work to seal the boiler for first testing, one very visible achievement was the removal of the fireman's side air tanks.  These are now with the engineer's side tank on the floor of the shop and have been marked up for hammer testing.  If no issues are apparent from hammer testing, they will be hydro tested then cleaned and painted ready for service.

Air tanks ready for testing

Leaving a large gap on the firemans side

On other areas:

·         Bob made good progress on setting up the power supply for the planer;

·         The mounting brackets for the air pump were test fitted to 428.  This was a revealing exercise.  When she was stripped many years ago the additional brackets were found mounted between the casting that secures the pump to the boiler and the pump itself.  With some measurement it is now clear that this was an essential modification at some stage in the life of 428. Absent these extensions, which set the pump out and lower than if it were directly mounted to the bracket, the top of the pump would foul the feed from the injector to the boiler.

So continuing progress.  The plan is now for quite a few people to work on Wednesday.

Nigel