An end and a beginning.
At an early December work session, the Build 11 team formed the throat sheet for No. 10, the last piece of the new boiler. Following heat treatment and a preliminary fit up, the boiler components will be prepared and welded by Maine Locomotive & Machine Works. By mid-2022, the completed boiler will be placed on No. 10’s frame, offering the possibility that No. 10 may return to active service this year.
And the best news of all, on January 5, the folks at Dakota Foundry poured the first cylinder half-saddle for No. 11. The 1800-pound casting is a major component of the locomotive, and the other half, as well as other major parts of the locomotive chassis, will be poured in subsequent days. Dakota Foundry has been major partner in our effort, overseeing and producing these complex castings, a point of pride for them.
On February 2 and 3, the build 11 team is planning the first of what we intend to be regular work days devoted to making and finishing parts for No. 11. We are looking for some more folks who would like to be involved in this project, and we invite anyone interested to sign up to join us.
Learn more and sign up at: www.wwfry.org/volunteer
As soon as shop space is available, in April or May, we will begin assembling No. 11’s rear frame extension. In the meantime, however, the team will be working on the main frame sections, making the pedestal binders which hold the drive wheels in position, machining a number of castings and forgings that then will be attached to the main frames, and readying other parts for assembly of the frame.
Learn more and contribute at build11.org
We can sympathize with Dakota, as our shop is backed up with projects, too, and there is currently no space available for us to begin assembling No. 11’s frame at this time. Next spring….
This photo shows the completed pattern for one half of the mold. As you can see, it is a large piece. The tape measure at the bottom shows that it is about 32 inches wide.
This photo shows several of the cores and core boxes, which create cavities inside the mold during the pour.
This image is of the cope, or top half, of the two part pattern used to make the casting. On the right side, the curve is where the casting will be mated to the smokebox of No. 11. At the center left is the valve portion of the casting, and on the extreme left is where the frame of the locomotive will be bolted to the half-saddle. The bottom half of the mold (not shown) is known as the drag.
In other news concerning Dakota Foundry, the drive wheel center patterns, as well as the cranks (created by Bernie Perch) and the rear frame extension (by Alan Downey) castings, were crated by Harold and Alan Downey and were picked up by the trucking company on Thursday morning. Those pieces will be ductile iron rather than grey iron.
Several members of the No. 11 Project engineering committee were in Sheepscot over the past several days, during which they continued the work of forming parts for locomotive fireboxes. Jason, Rick, Gordon (pictured) and Wayne were involved in the process, using the flanging machine to form the rear firebox and the door wrapper sheets. In addition, a method was developed to form the throat sheet using the flanger.
Here, Wayne Laepple (center) and Jason Lamontagne (left) are positioning the first sheet for bending in the flanger.
The first attempt to use steel bar as a stop, seen here, was unsuccessful. A second try, bolting the bar directly to the sheet, worked much better.
While it may seem like we did not accomplish much at this session, a good deal of time was necessary to lay out the bends to follow the contours of the sheets. The actual forming operations took less than a third of the entire time we worked.
In other news, the arrival of the “shop annex,” a 12 x 24 foot structure that has been positioned adjacent to the shop, was followed by the installation of a rack for storage of lengths of flat, angle and round steel stock, steel shelving, and bolt bins. Materials from several locations in the shop have been consolidated into this structure, which will also house various tools and equipment not frequently used that occupied valuable floor space in the shop. Thanks to Brendan Barry, the storage spaces have been set up and lighting has been installed.
It is also planned to modify our home-built Beatty-style flanging machine to serve as a brake, adding another layer of versatility to this most useful tool. With that, we will be able to manufacture various parts for coach No. 9’s trucks. While we have a number of parts already on hand made for us by Cattail Foundry, we need a few more components before we can begin to machine and then assemble the trucks. As for Coach No. 9 itself, the exterior is essentially complete, so Eric and Ron and Lou will soon turn their attention to the interior of the car.
And to the delight of our hard-working steam crews, a brand spanking new Nathan “Simplex” No. 4 boiler injector, made by Eccentric Engineer of Orange, California, has been purchased and is being installed to replace a troublesome “legacy” injector on locomotive No. 9. Some minor modifications of the piping will be necessary, as will making a bracket to hold the device. If this injector proves successful on locomotive No. 9, additional injectors will be ordered for locomotive No. 11.