MNGRR Steam Team Work Session Report 4/19/2008

Mechanical Department Work Session, April 19, 2008
By Hans Brandes
Above Photo By Rich Currie
Description: Ultrasound readings being taken on Boiler

Operating Season is on our Doorstep

Summer in April. What a treat to wake up to sunny skies and 50 degrees. It felt like summer. No snow around, no rain storms. As usual, first order of the day was to haul #7 out of the house and put in another day of hard work.

In attendance today were Rick Knight (CMO), Gerry Bagley, Hans Brandes, Rich Currie, Trevor Hartford, Bill Piche and George Collard. Most importantly we had our special student photographer Donna up from Boston to capture our labor in pictures for her studies. Donna is really becoming 'one of the guys'. We got to look at some of her color prints and they were awesome. She has wonderfully captured in vivid clarity and color our gritty efforts.

With #7 outside, we were able to pull out the torch and the ultrasound machine and continue with tube removal and taking shell thickness readings.

Rick brought up and extra torch so we had the opportunity to work from both ends too cut more tubes. This is not an easy process as the tube must be cut using a torch at each end, then pulled through the king hole at the bottom center of the smokebox. Rich ended up being "Professor Acetylene" teaching Trevor and Hans how to heat and cut tubes.

As tubes were removed, we decided to ultrasound one of them just to see what kind of shape they are in. We found that they are perfectly good, but due to FRA regulations, they have to be replaced. What a shame, but that is the rule.

While tubes were being cut, Hans and Bill worked on taking more thickness readings. Before today, over 750 readings had been taken. The only thing remaining was the boiler shell and the throat sheet. A large surface, but possibly doable. George Collard showed up so we were able to put him on the ultrasound job too. This helped a lot and we were able to complete all the ultrasounding. This was a good thing as it is one large project over with and it frees up the machine to be loaned to the SR&RL gang for use on #3. Thank you again to Boothbay Railway Village for letting us use this at no charge.

A lunch break was taken with our favorite fallback meal of 'round steaks' from the golden arch. Thank you Trevor for being the runner today.

After lunch, tube removal work continued. Gerry worked on drilling staybolts on the backhead. After that was done, he and Rick worked on brazing the cracked T-fitting and the wishbone pipe flange fittings. Though cracked, brazing will fix this problem. This could be what is causing our steam leak on #8. As the day wound down we decided to pack it up around 5 PM. We had removed 22 tubes and have cut one end on at least 14 more.

Our time before operating season is quickly coming to a close. We have two more work session scheduled with the next one being on May 3. At these we need to do as much as we can on #7 and get #4 ready for the operating season starting on Memorial Day weekend. Whatever we get done by Memorial Day is what we get done. Every volunteer hour spent on removing tubes saves us money that would be spent at Boothbay. At that point we will send it up to Boothbay for the boiler work. So mark you calendars for some day after May 17 to see a steam engine go up the highway.

As you will see in the next issue of the Two Foot Flyer, we have come along way on #7 and a dedicated group of volunteers have put in many hours of labor and donated services. We continue to be in the 'discovery' stage of our repair work and will be all the way until we put things back together and get to a successful pressure test and FRA inspection. Our latest estimate as stated in the Two Foot Flyer is that value of this project will be on the order of $100,000 including the value of the volunteer labor. Please send your monetary contributions so that #7 can be under steam once again!