MNGRR Steam Team Work Session Report 03/08/2008

Mechanical Department Work Session, March 8, 2008
By Hans Brandes

If it's a Saturday, there is weather.

Yes, this has how it has been for the past month. After getting lucky in January, Mother Nature has decided to ask for payback in the form of weekly Friday and Saturday wintry weather. This has wreaked havoc with progress on working on #7 as many of the steam team travel quite a few miles.

In attendance on this winter day was a smaller, but determined crew: Rick Knight (CMO), Gerry Bagley, Hans Brandes, Trevor Hartford, Bill Piche and Bob Meckley.

The day started out dry so #7 was pulled out of the house to give us better light to work on the firebox and boiler. Today was a day to continue work to prepare for the journey to Boothbay Railway Village.

Rick, Gerry and Trevor worked in the cab to finish the hard job of heating and loosening the last nine flexible stay bolt caps and two tapered inspection/cleanout plugs. These caps must all be removed for inspection of the flexible bolts. With much effort this was finally completed. In parallel, Hans, Bob and Bill worked on more gridding and spot polishing of the barrel and firebox in order to take ultrasound readings. Bill and Hans marked the grid on the steam dome while Bob ground more spots on the barrel. Then Bill added more grid marks on the lower part of the barrel, which is harder to reach.

By that time it was time to break for lunch. Our great chefs of the first few worksession were taking a much needed break so we dined on "round steaks" and fries from MacDonalds.

After lunch, we continued to shine up more spots for UT. Unfortunately, the clouds darkened and the rain begun, light at first, then a downpour. We quickly pushed #7 back into the house using #1 between revenue runs.

Once back in the house, Hans finished gridding and spot shining the outside of the firebox. In the meantime, Rick worked to clean out all the flexible staybolt half couplings now that all the caps were off. Bill found an unused fluorescent light and hung it in the cab to help with the lack of indoor light.

As the day started getting late, Rick and Hans took some random UT readings in the cab. First it was on the outside. These numbers looked pretty darn good. Then it was onto the inside of the firebox. Jay Monty had gridded this. Hans attempted to get inside but found that the door is really smaller than #4's door and could not get all the way inside. So in this case, he reached inside and took some readings on the side and crown sheets. The side sheets appear to be in pretty good shape. The crown sheet is questionable. Boothbay will be consulted with this preliminary data to determine what path we may take.

By now it was after 4 PM and the last two souls (Rick and Hans) decided to call it a day. The engine house doors were closed and the heat was turned off.

The volunteers still have a lot of work to do before we can transport #7 to Boothbay.

The next Steam Team work session will be on Saturday, March 22nd. We still need to begin ultra sounding the boiler, remove the throttle, drill telltale holes into the stay bolts, remove the branch pipes in the smokebox, and remove tubes in the boiler. Please come and help out or send along monetary contributions!