Entries by Nigel Bennett

Progress in the Steam shop continued steadily over the last two weekends.

Jeff has continued the shop reorganization to the point that many of the large parts are now arranged on the East side while still allowing plenty of space to work on the super heater flues when they return. He is now moving on to the machine shop which, when complete, will free up a lot more space around the wheel lathe.

Bob and others made use of the space around the wheel lathe to work on getting this operational.

The McCabe was refitted to its modified timbers, which allow it to be lifted on the pallet jack.  Thanks to Bob Kutela for his help and use of tools for this.  The modified timbers will allow us to move this machine, although moving what we estimate at about 6 tons will never be easy.

Moveable - with difficulty !

The trouble with this machine is that it needs a lot of space around it when it operates but is used only infrequently.  However, what it does, in smoothly bending heavy boiler plates, is critical  It was used last weekend in a first test for bending the new corner patch for 1630's firebox.  This successfully demonstrated that we have the dies of the machine correctly set up to make the critical curve.

First test bend for the patch

On 1630 substantial progress was made on the boiler cleaning. 

·         Having successfully tested the breathing system and sand blasting equipment, the next major job was to minimize the flow of dust into the shop.  The last time this was done the locomotive was pulled outside but we certainly do not want to wait for Spring to do this !!

·         Collin and I closed up the boiler with tarpaulins and set up ducted extraction from the chimney.  With fans on the footplate we can establish a flow from back to front and "most" of the dust is pumped out of the door.

Rigged for sand blasting

·         The first blasting was very successful.  We largely cleaned the critical firebox top and side seam areas in about 20 minutes.  Glad to say it all looks good and free of any sign of cracks so far.

The critical seam now clean and looks good

·         From this exercise we learned that the blast medium we were using works well, so we can order in a large quantity for next weekend.  We also learned that, while the ducting works pretty well, the missing firebox corner creates a significant leak that will need to be plugged next weekend.  Collin was very comfortable in the boiler with the new breathing system ..... the rest of the team, outside in the shop, were less comfortable than he was!!.

·         Cleaning of the boiler interior can now be moved forward quickly.

Getting the super heater flues back from sand blasting is proving problematic.  They have been ready since New Year.  Snag is that they must not get wet and need to be collected weekdays or early on a Saturday morning.  Each time we have set up a crew to take the truck on a Saturday, the weather has turned cold ...... and the truck does not operate reliably is really cold weather.

In other areas a good deal of machining was progressed for 428.

I am now away on business for two weeks so no update next week.  However, as the trip is to the UK, I may actually see some working steam next weekend.

Nigel Bennett

The snow made for a pretty quiet weekend at the steam shop.  Only a couple of brave souls made it to Union and Saturday.  I got there Sunday along with Tom, Jason and Brian.

Jason and Brian made good progress on cleaning and needle chipping most remaining areas of the boiler and the various pipes running along the outside of the boiler ready for testing. 

Needle chipping the firebox

Pipework ready for testing

The area remaining to be cleaned off is the one that everyone dreads - the underside of the barrel.  This is the real fun area requiring that you crawl under the boiler and brush / needle chip directly above where you are lying - gravity then ensures that most of what you remove lands on you!!.

I just about completed the set up for swaging ready to bring tubes in from the box car. 

However that will now be of lesser priority than getting the inside of the boiler sand blasted.  Potential contractors for sand blasting are not willing to do the boiler interior at a reasonable price so we need to do it ourselves.  Given that this will require several days use of a respirator helmet and  subsequent use for welding inside 1630's tender, we have acquired a suitable pump.  It is now the first priority to set the boiler up so that dust is generally contained within it and can be exhausted outside the shop.  The we can get on with the job.

I also got the help of Bob Kutella on modifying the timbers of the McCabe flanger so that it can be moved more easily.  Unfortunately this requires timber that we could not get on a Sunday so hopefully that will be done next week.

No report from me next weekend as I am in Florida for a week.  Let's hope that we have a lot to report in 2 weeks.

Nigel

A good day of progress on a number of fronts.

On 1630

·         Success at last on the swager.  Tom spent much of last Sunday honing the damaged bores in the dies.  We spent most of the morning carefully refitting and aligning them in the machine but it looks like we have success.  Several old tubes were successfully swaged and the machine operated smoothly throughout.  Now we are ready to go into production.  Having gone thru the set up the objective will be to do the tubes for both 1630 and the Shay so between 400 and 500 tubes in total.  The current major problem is that all the tubes are in the boxcars and the diesel guys were not able to switch these before the snow arrived.  So we are now dependent upon a break in the weather to allow the boxcars to be switched to a position where we can move the large bunches of tubes to and from the shop.

What does swaging achieve?.  The tubes of a steam locomotive boiler are expanded by rollers into the tube sheets to make the seal.  Commonly the tube diameter in the firebox tube sheet is smaller than the general diameter of the tube.  This is a crafty piece of steam locomotive design.  For efficiency you want as much tube area as you can achieve in contact with the water.  The hottest, and therefore most stressed tube sheet, is the firebox end.  So narrowing a couple of inches of the tube where it runs into this tube sheet allows more metal to remain in the tube sheet between the holes.  So on 1630 (and the Shay) the tubes are 2 inch diameter but are shrunk by swaging to 1 7/8 at the firebox end.

The objective of the whole process can now be seen in one of the test tubes.

A swaged tube looks like this

The process is first to heat the end in a furnace

Into the furnace

then hammer it between the dies, that we have had so much fun with, for about 15 seconds turning it as it is hammered so that you get a nice even 1 7/8 inch tube end.

The swager finally working

·         The dome cover was successfully removed to allow lapping of the throttle valve which is one of the key repairs to be carried out.  The fork lift made life a great deal easier as the cover could slid directly onto the forks and brought down to the ground.

Just slide it sounds easy!

The forklift makes this a lot easier

At ground level you can see how big and heavy it is

·         It is now clear that we have 4 or 5 stays on the back head where the sleeves are sufficiently worn to need replacing so that will start soon.

·         Mike continued with grinding out the rivet and patch bolt holes to enable fitting of the firebox corner patch.

On 428 an number of machining jobs were progressed

·         Bob and others continued honing the coupling rods to allow new bushes to be fitted;

·         Stu and Cameron continued with the packing glands; and

·         Tom and Cameron worked on the set up of a large piece for horizontal drilling.  (Looked very impressive but I did not like to disturb the efforts by querying exactly what it was!).

Around the shop Jeff continued the program to free up more working areas.

·         The space is now ready to safe end the super heater flues for 1630 which are coming back from sandblasting in the next week or so;

·         Some unused machines were moved out of the machine shop which will enable a really challenging move of a large turret lathe from the wheel lathe area to the machine shop.  This will allow the turret lathe to be activated and enable wheels to be stored away from the door and overhead crane;

·         We also lifted the McCabe flanger so that it can be properly mounted on timbers that will allow it to be moved.  This will free up space to handle large numbers of tubes that are to be swaged.

So another productive weekend.

Nigel