Carson & Colorado Railway

Tender

All that’s needed is attention to the details…but there are lots of them; valves, hoses, gauges, fitting the running boards, securing the tool box. It all must be done if everything is to work properly. We’re very close.

Boiler

    
50 years of outdoor storage led to water damage of the wrapper sheet. Ultrasound testing revealed one spot which must be patched but we want to re-confirm that no other repairs are needed so we drew a finer grid in preparation for additional testing.

Patches must be rolled to the correct radius…so we’ve had to check the radius very carefully before ordering. That requires some knowledge of advanced geometry.

Support

Our work is done by volunteers…but without great food and decent lodging no one would show up. So never forget the ladies – Betty, Steph, Jill.

Some other accomplishments included crack checking the tender draw bars, lapping the steam pipe seats in the smoke box and most importantly…Water and Power dropped off our new power pole. We will finally have power right at our tent!

$39,440. That’s how much we raised in 3 months.

The Narrow Gauge Preservation Society will match $20,000 so, in total, we’ve raised just shy of $60,000. Enough to do most – or all if we can find volunteers with the right skills – our boiler repair during this year.

Tremendous news! Who do we have to thank? About 300 people in 11 states. 1 person made a huge contribution. 100 others donated between $100 and $1000 each. We won’t forget any of you. Somehow, we’ll find a way to share our restored locomotive with you.

We have some preliminary plans for boiler wrapper sheet repair.

The white area in the black rectangle will be patched and all worn out/damaged flexible sleeves and caps replaced. We may patch another area which we are still measuring.

For you techies:
an area must be replaced if it is wasted to a thickness that does not meet a safety factor of 4 (4 times the max operating pressure).

The lower photo is a shot showing the area to be replaced that has been prick punched out. All of the bolts in that area have been cut on the inside near both sheets and removed [time consuming and difficult].

The next step will be to lay out the center locations of the sleeves off the center line of the boiler and the end of the wrapper course. After that, when we have the new piece in hand, we will be cutting out that area.

Rick Eckert installed a roll-up door in our tent.

On the tender, Rick Cromer and Doug Mull worked on installing the wood on the sides.