October 5, 2017 It has been awhile since I’ve provided a TW3 report. Since this last report Madame Secretary and I took a couple weeks which should have been some R & R, but was intermingled with several calamities. Upon our return the open house preparations began along with the open house itself and work […]

September 4, 2017 This week preparations are being made to reinstall the blast pipe after it was moved out of the way. A bore scope camera was used to look into the steam cylinder passages to the blast pipe. Several rocks were seen and removed from them. An old rag was also found in one […]

August 28, 2017 Last week we removed the blast pipe for cleaning and inspection. None of the nuts were, to say the least, cooperating as they were subjected to the blue torch wrench for removal. If that wasn’t bad enough all the special shaped bolts were rust frozen in place. Hammers were used to unseat […]

August 22, 2017 I have a few items to reveal this week. Our firebrick crew formed around the combustion air inlet tubes and put in place the castable refractory around them.​ Repairs are needed at the floor inlet box as much of the metal has wasted and is very thin. Replacement plates were cut Saturday […]

August 14, 2017 A few weeks ago test plugs were fabricated for the superheater header to be installed in place of the superheater bundles. This enabled us to pressure test each vertical column of superheaters as they are installed insuring we have a good seal on each bundle. Our crew has been hard at work […]

August 2, 2017 Since our successful hydrostatic boiler test workers have been inserting superheater bundles on each side of the boiler leaving a work area in the middle. We had superheater header plugs fabricated so as each column of superheater bundles can be tested for leaks before moving on to the next column. After testing […]

July 11, 2017 It has been a while since I wrote a TW3, mostly due to the many photos available on our website and Facebook. After all you know what they say, “a picture is worth a thousand words!” Anyway, there needs to be a written account of activities ​from time to time. Our air […]

June 13, 2017 This week was very busy as more sheet metal jacketing was fitted to the smoke box area of the locomotive.​ Our painting crew has almost finished the sanding of the tender. They feel it will have a new coat of paint by this coming Saturday. We worked on the last of the […]

June 7, 2017 For the good news the 26L air brake components and piping installation is complete. Crews are testing the system and have begun adjusting the slack adjusters. Our painting contractor has begun sanding the tender for final painting. Workers are sanding each rivet removing orange peel and paint runs from the last paint […]

May 23, 2017 The work, for the most part, mirrored the past several weeks as we continually prepare for the official FRA hydrostatic test. Many of the minor st​aybolt leaks are being closed by Dr. Scott A. We now have one washout plug to address and a few studbolt leaks. The secondary dynamo piping was […]