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Sunday, July 21. 2013Steam Department Update 07-20-2013
It has been a really busy week for me at the museum hence a
rather late blog update!!.
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.
· 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.
· All seemed to be going well until one of the studs securing the inspection hatch sheared off during tightening.
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.
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.
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
Friday, July 19. 20133rd Annual Benefit at Sanfilippo Estate
Sunday 14th July was the third annual Steam Department
Benefit at the fabulous Sanfilippo Estate.
I believe that a wonderful time was had by all who attended. Certainly I took some friends who had not attended before and they all judged it one of the highlights of their year so far. The collection of antique music machines is beyond description and you could spend hours watching these alone.
The fairground organs and carousel are superb pieces.
The grand Wurlitzer organ is both spectacular to see and, when played by an organist of the caliber of Dave (Jeff's brother), provides an enthralling performance. Some of my more musical friends watched in complete fascination. Dave seems to become one with the instrument with both arms and legs in constant movement around the keyboards, stops and pedals.
A new addition this year was the showing of a Buster Keaton silent movie. It was fascinating to see the organ used for its original purpose, providing the sound for the showing.
Many thanks to the museum volunteers who assisted in running the event. With the exception of JD who was elsewhere at the time, they are shown here with Jeff and Dave on the locomotive in the carousel house.
Thanks again to Jeff for organizing the event, to his brother Dave for another outstanding performance and to the Sanfilippo Foundation for the access to their wonderful collection.
Nigel
Sunday, July 14. 2013Steam Department Update 07-13-2013A busy day with some big ups and downs in the steam shop. There is not much to see externally and only one photograph this week but this shows a big milestone. We put water into the boiler for the first time. The focus was on 1630 and above all on starting to test the newly fitted tubes for leaks. · In the morning the focus was on closing every hole below the crown sheet level: the last remaining wash out plugs were installed, lubricated with graphite paste and tightened down; the pressure gauges were finally fitted and plumbed in to the boiler; all remaining flexible stay caps were cleaned, lubricated with graphite paste and tightened down. · Just after lunchtime this was done. We linked up the hoses from the milk car and started pumping. To be clear, there is no intention to pressurize at this point. We need to fill and empty the boiler several times before we can apply pressure. Pressure testing is carried out with water heated to about 100 degrees by circulating thru the pool heater. It is rather important that we wash out debris such as residual sand blast material before trying to re-circulate the water thru the pump !. These filling and draining cycles also allow initial testing of the sealing the tubes and other parts of the boiler. While no external pressure is applied, the boiler is at least 6 feet to the crown sheet so there is a good deal of pressure simply from the depth of water. The first filling was rather disappointing for those of us who had not seen this done before. I had expected some leakage from the tubes, where they seal into the sheets, when water was first added but had probably not expected leakage from 30 or more of the small tubes, some of it quite extensive. On closer review, it indicated some variation in how much we had expanded the tubes at different times. Interesting, we were not conscious on any great difference as we did the expansion but the water was very revealing. The smokebox was excellent. There are no more than 4 tubes there that show any leakage and then no more than a dribble. Great job by Brian, who did most of this area. In the firebox, the engineer's side was relatively good while the lower fireman's side had a substantial number of tubes with a lot of leakage. Clearly we did not get these as tight as other areas. So we noted the leaks, dumped the water, which came out looking really dirty, and got working. Brian and others set up the air motor driven expander and worked thru the list of 30 or so small tubes that had been noted with leaks. At the same time, others worked on a few issues noted such as a weeping plug, a couple of stay caps that had been missed and a check valve that was not fully closed. A second filling in early evening was very satisfying. Although there was still a lot of leakage from super heater flues - no surprise as we had not worked these, the improvement in the small tubes was remarkable. We still had around 8 with minor dribbles but these were generally ones we had not previously noted, probably because the leakage was missed at the first pass due to the far greater leakage from other tubes. All those that had been worked on after the first test were dry. In addition the minor leaks other than at tube ends were all now dry.
The shot above may look a bit confusing but is a big milestone for us. Water now covers all the tubes. Compare this to shots 6 months ago, when this area was wide open and you could look down on the open holes in the firebox tube sheet. It also shows the patches of debris lifting off the crown sheet as the water starts to cover it. This is the last area from which we must wash the debris before we can circulate the water thru the pump and heater to carry out pressure testing. The water was dumped again. This time it did not look significantly different from the input water. We will need to make sure that have thoroughly washed any debris off the top of the firebox crown but it looks as if we are now close to the point that the boiler is clean enough to allow us to circulate the water. Mike and I worked into the evening hand rolling the first of the super heater flues that were flagged as leaking. Hopefully we can get the same "night and day" result on these that we achieved with the small tubes. · While we worked on the water filling and tube ends, Mike, Tom and Jerry had been working on the blanking plate for the dry pipe. The throttle is now blanked off and ready for pressure testing. · Richard, Rick and others worked on the studs and nuts for the inspection hatch and dome cover. These are now clean and the threads prepared ready to fit these covers. Hopefully in the next week we can have the tube ends sealed tight under water pressure and the hatches in place so that we can move to the next step of applying some pressure. · Jane did a great job stripping the air tanks. These are now nearly ready to prime and repaint. This is a very unpleasant job involving long stints of needle chipping and wire brushing which creates nasty black dust. Anyway, nearly done. · Stu checked out and regenerated the softener in the water supply box car. This confirms that we have a full supply of clean water to keep on with the testing . Now all we need to do is get the diesels off the end of the steam shop spur so that we can move the water car to and from the supply water supply!!. While almost the whole team was busy on 1630, Bob and Stu have been working steadily on the wiring for the planer. Much of the conduit is now in place and we are moving toward the point when we will be able to start testing the operation. So it was a pretty successful day and we look forward to further testing next week. Nigel |
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Comments
Mon, 09-08-2025 08:22
Good job on the Burlington Nortern 9976. OK.
Tue, 08-12-2025 12:56
No new news that I have heard of thus far.
Tue, 08-12-2025 12:53
I'll also be doing another update on it soon. Keep en eye out for that.
Tue, 08-12-2025 12:47
A little work was done to it for Diesel Days this year. You'll see photos floating around for the temporary short term job that was done to make it [...]
Wed, 08-06-2025 13:01
Is steam car CN 15444 going to be coming to museum several times it was to be moved to muesum
Sat, 07-19-2025 18:56
Yeah, sadly it's still there as of 7/19/2025
Thu, 06-12-2025 19:14
Its been 14 years guys, where is the unit? Like really? Did you guys misplace it? Or are repairs taking that long? At this point be might we will have [...]
Wed, 04-09-2025 17:40
Jamie Thanks for the update. She's gonna shine like every thing else you guys do! Smeds
Thu, 03-06-2025 16:28
Yes, there is a wye. Those two have been MU'ed on diesel days a year or two ago.
Wed, 03-05-2025 14:04
7009 number boards look good. Is there a way to turn a locomotive around at IRM? In case you ever had a mind to connect 7009 and 6847?
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...