Ok- I'll try to keep up.
Pics 1-5 show the new rear truck swing links. When we got the engine in 1995, it sat too high by several inches. Harry and Zack arranged and had made new hangers around '98, which helped a lot. Turns out- the length that they figured on was based on no 9's then bent frame; when applied with the now new, straight frame, we one again found the engine too high in back. So, we made new ones again. The original hangers had pins running sideways, weakening the bar and necessitating a much heavier bar than otherwise needed. (They were 1 1/2" by 3"). This time we opted for a thinner, 1" bar, which we pinned through the end of the hanger. To trap the pin, we "mortised" a slot in the hangers to receive a nut. Jonathan St Mary was a major part of this job, and gets extra credit for taking the time to neatly radius all 8 ends of the 4" wide bars.
Pics 6-7 show a tidy little strap that Eric Schade and I forged up to hold the hand brake reach rod off the truck. The original solution? Let it ride on the truck- bending as the truck swung for curves. There's also a little forged hanger at the front of this rod (not pictured) to keep it running true.
Pics 8-15 show the various components of our grate shaker. This got tricky as the original shaker location is now blocked by a frame crosstie- this crosstie used to be bolted to the boiler backhead but got moved back a few inches as part of the frame/boiler separation redesign. This required a new shaker location- nicely figured by Gordon Cook and others at the fall work weekend. We then had to devise a way to make up for the new lateral offset in the gear. We ended up pivoting a bar from the mud ring on the engineers side, through the shaker bar (forged up from 3/4" round bar), and out to and in line with the shaker. Works nicely- good group effort with Eric, Jonathan, and myself pushing this along. Also seen are the new ashpan slotted mud ring studs that Jonathan made.
Pics 16-17 show how much of a smithy Eric is becoming- both are forged handles which will ultimately actuate the damper doors on the ashpan. Portland company arranged these front and back- with solid side walls on the ashpan, with pull out trays on the bottom to dump. We will reproduce this design of ashpan- fitting around the grate shaker apparatus we added.
Pics 18-20 show the new rear jacket standoff made by Leon. This is the most decorative of all the standoffs as it will be seen in the cab. It is thicker around the radius to clear the flexi stay sleeves and caps. This also accentuates the keyhole look a bit.
The remaining pics show a smokebox effort- today Gordon C and I started figuring out the header, steam pipes and spark arrestor. Most of it can be rescued- including the screen, believe it or not. You can also see the templates for the boiler jacket that Wes Carpenter has been charging ahead on.
We've had other shop help as well- JB Smith, Greg Klein, Zack, Keith Taylor, Ed Gilhouley, Brendan, who am I forgetting? Just yell at me...
Upcoming- we have been focusing on rear end work so we can give Zack the ok to deck the rear frame. That should commence shortly. We will focus on side rods, jacket template , front end, and will be thinking about a steam test.
Thanks, Brendan for the pics. Let's keep it up.
Questions are welcome!
Jason
(Edit: grammar, and picking 'an' for Brendan- first version had both that and 'en' just to cover all the bases...)
