Author: Randy Babcock

After a great 2013, we kicked off 2014 with our awesome and talented welder Robby Jett repairing some old Southern Pacific welds inside the firebox. Back in November when the FRA was in town they had examined the areas between the firebox sheets and outside sheets with their inspection camera and in doing so discovered two areas that totaled about 24″ in length which the S.P. had not achieved 100% weld penetration on their repair. While this old repair was likely done in the late 40’s and operated as such for numerous years it is not considered acceptable. Whenever doing flush patches – such as the wrapper sheet patch we did in 2012 – you must have 100% weld penetration between the old and new materials. Thankfully this is a relatively easy fix if you have a really good welder.

To achieve the desired full penetration on the new weld, Robby first ground out the old welds in question until he had about a 1/16″ gap.

After having the desired gap he went about welding in his “root” pass of weld. The root pass is done with 6010 welding rod. Robby – like many pressure vessel welders – lays his root pass in a keyhole manner, burn through and then pull out, over and over.

Once he has a root pass to his liking he starts to lay his “hot” passes. In our case he put down 3 hot passes with 7018 welding rod. He would start on one end, weld about 6 inches and then jump to the other end and weld about 6 inches. This is done to keep the heat concentration at a minimum and not distort the sheets.

Finally, after about 12 hours of grinding and welding he had fixed everything that needed fixing. And Robby donated his time to do this! We are now almost ready to roll flues in and fill the boiler with water.

Aside from the welding, we also have received word from the Mt. Rainier RR that our drivers and boxes will be done by February 10th. Dave and Rick’s trucking will be headed north and should have them back in Independence the following week. Currently we are planning on putting them back under the locomotive in early March.

Other January progress occurred with the completion of four new cab windows. The new windows were constructed all to the same size (the old were not) and of poplar wood. They also had tempered safety glass installed in them. All four windows are now ready for paint.

Finally, we are working on getting all the final signatures from the county officials for our museum plan to permanently house the locomotive. If you would like to contribute funds towards the track and building please feel free to do so. Your contributions towards that aspect of this project will be greatly appreciated.

Over the weekend of August 28-29 we were back at it in Independence. On the top of the list of projects was to set up Marty Westland’s custom made valve surfacer. Some times its not about how much money you can spend to fix something, but simply to have the creativity and the resources to do the fix. Marty Westland came through for us with some creativity. His machine started life as an industrial size radial arm saw, most likely from the Kennecot Corp. in Ely, NV. Marty had aquired, cleaned and modified the the column and arm of the saw to mount on the side of the valve chest. On Saturday, Forest Newman and Doug Mull spent all day getting the rig mounted.

After some final adjustments to the height and swing of the machine, Marty mounted the grinder and off He and Forest went grinding a few thousands at a time. With the valve surface almost 1/4″ out of square it took about half the day to get it ground down flat.

After a few polishing passes, it was time to start lapping. By the end of the day on Monday, Marty had the rebuilt valve over 3/4 of the way lapped into the ground surface and complete. In September we should be ready to fully assemble the right side valve and piston.

While Marty and Forest were on the right, the rest of us were installing the left side piston.

Some of the other things we worked on included doing a final clean up on both the front and the rear tube sheets. We actually put a couple of the new tubes in to see how they looked, but we didn’t roll them into place. We also removed the fuisible plugs out of the firebox. These are a special plug that melts out if the water level is too low. Looking ahead, we should be ready to start intalling the tubes in the not to distant future.

Also on the agenda was the removal of the final small bit of wood flooring under the firebox door. The floor will be reinstalled in September. Scott Shaffer was also able to finish lapping the steam pipe seats in the smokebox, this has been a long time project that is nice to have complete. Finally, the cab is now back in Independence and all done except for some final window work, paint and wiring. Tom and Betty Dews really did a nice job on it. For now we will cover it up until we can move the engine and put it back on.

With all that work we were also able to meet with the County officials on our engine house site at the Eastern California Museum. Although not finalized yet, they are very supportive of the concept and we look forward to meeting again in September to complete some details. Check back on the website for drawings and pictures of our plan to be added in the near future. Thanks for your support!