Work Session Status Week Ending 01/25/2014

January 28, 2014

Good progress was seen this past week.

Ron T. is putting the finishing touches on a device to secure the magnetic drill to the bottom of the firebox. It will be used to remove several broken stud bolts.

No welding on the flexible staybolt sleeves was done on Wednesday however more removal of old wasted sleeves on top continued. Also more replacement sleeves were custom cut to fit the firebox.

Dave V. picked up the refurbished “lollipop”-shaped adjusting bolt for the Franklin snubbers. Noor Mfg. did a great job repairing it. Having this bolt allowed the reinstallation of the binder pedestal, wedge and the buffer. However it was discovered the female threads in the flange nut were a bit ragged so it was taken to Noor for thread chasing.

The cab crew was busy laying out and cleaning more electrical conduit and researching the foam meter routing.

More piston ring segments were cleaned and stored for later installation.

Welding of the heavy radial buffer piece has resumed. Several pounds of welding rod will be used by the time it is finished.

Welch’s Boiler Service sent three welders to the site Saturday. They were able to weld 28 mostly large size replacement sleeves. The larger ones require a bit more time than the smaller ones. Thanks again to Welch’s for sending their crew out. We always enjoy seeing them on the site.

We have superheater bundles for sale. We’ve sold about 21 so far and going fast! They are $100 each bundle and there’s 220 of them. Our Webmaster, Rich, has done an excellent job on the posting of them and creating a nice sheet for you to view them. Kind of like the one for the tubes and flues we had. Check it out and help us out by buying several. Thanks to Rich for his hard work on that. I know that was laying on his heart really hard to get that accomplished. I think his sweet wife might have had something to do with it too, but I won’t say for sure.

Weather has been good to us lately so come see what’s going on at the site, and as always . . .

Keep on Steamin’,
Rick Kirby, CMO
NMSL&RHS