WW&F No. 9 - Official Work Thread

[Dave Crow]

Thanks, Keith.

[john d Stone]

Great pictures! What are we looking at in the top two?

[Jason M Lamontagne]

Piston rod packing glands, with new metallic packing cast by Gordon Cook.  These parts are now installed.

A little correction to Keith's post: the rod wedges are held by set screws, threaded through the wedge keeper (not seen in that photo) into the side of the wedge.  That's Portland Company design; there's enough whipping action that without a keeper the wedge would launch out of the slot.  We needed to make two new keepers; volunteer Phil Bleauvelt made them over the last couple of weeks.

I've asked Ed to post a few photos I took today as well.

See ya
Jason

[John McNamara]

Jason,

Your mention of "whipping action" reminds me of #10's tendency to throw the tops of the lubrication cellars (?) onto the R-O-W where Clarissa Percival would recover them during her walks. I also remember that Gordon Cook made a reduced size model of the mechanism in his garage in an effort to analyze it. How did we ever solve that problem?

-John M

[Stephen Hussar]

We were actually documenting these in order to compare the two...

[Ed Lecuyer]

3 photos from Jason:


Dry fit for valve boxes:




Dry fit for whistle:




Rod view shows bearing wedge keepers made new by volunteer Phil Bleauvelt, per PoCo design.

[Jason M Lamontagne]

Thank you very much, Ed!

In the end Gordon permanently attached the caps; the cups are now filled through a small inlet hole with a pump can.  In other words, enough is enough.  We're still finding those dang caps in the ditches...

Jason

[Jason M Lamontagne]

If you look carefully at the pic no 10's rod ends, you'll see fly-ash has settled all over the bearings, etc.  This got down in between the bearing halves and wreaked havoc on the new (11 years old now) crank pins.  Because of this we fit felt strips between no 9's bearing halves.  You can see it in stephen's picture on the previous page (that taken prior to installation of the wedge keeper).

See ya
Jason

[john d Stone]

More great pictures! And thanks for the explanations, Jason. It's really great that you experts, on sight, share this wealth of information with the rest of us. I always look forward to these posts. I'm really excited about getting to see her in person (in locomotive?) during the work weekend.

Thanks again,
John

[Rick Rowlands]

Jason,
The felt strips is a great idea.  I'll have to remember that.
Thanks
Rick

[Keith Taylor]

Jason, does the wedge keeper set screw screw into the wedge? If not it is still technically friction holding it in place....just from two directions.
 
Keith

[Wayne Laepple]

For your listening and viewing pleasure, here is Steam Into History No. 17. The whistle on this locomotive looks very similar to the one recently constructed for No. 9, so I believe this is about what No. 9's will sound like. Enjoy!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ra-HgpNIFk

[Hansel Fardon]

Jason decided to put on a better sounding bell. After I learned how to thread a metal rod (clapper), it was put in place of the old bell.

Here's a little teaser! :-)

http://youtu.be/JSloYrhLIow

[Ira Schreiber]

It has a nice ring to it.
Lots of a-peal.

[Steve Smith]

My Monday 4/20 post re No. 9’s bell vanished—don’t know why. Here is attempt # 2:

On Monday Eric Schade chucked No. 9’s brass bell in the lathe and polished it, with excellent results.




Wish I’d made a “before” picture to contrast with this “after” shot.




Eric used polishing compound, fine sandpaper, steel wool and a Scotch-Brite kitchen cleaning pad.