OTHER RESTORATION WORK
These photos document some of the steps that went into restoring number 113 to active service -- and that go into keeping her active. Over time, we will add more and more to this page, both to offer an education into the process and also -- as with this whole Web site -- as a "thank you" to the many people whose dedication and skills make it all possible.
In these two photos by Vince Labert, our volunteer machinist has installed a grinding tool to repair the holes through which a pin will secure the renewed tender drawbar. Unlike the cars of a train, which join with couplers (making the assembling and unassem-bling of trains safe and easy), a locomotive and its tender join with a semi-permanent -- and very strong -- drawbar. All of the locomotive's pulling force gets tranmitted through the solid steel bar.
SHEET METAL
The jacketing on a steam locomotive does more than look good: It protects the boiler from the weather, and most importantly it protects the lagging, or insulation, which wraps the boiler barrel and steam chests. Although remarkably inefficient machines thermally (only about 6% of the heat value in the coal 113 burns actually goes to moving a train), steam locomotives do benefit from their lagging, keeping in some of the hard-won heat of the fire (hard-won through all of the fireman's hard work!).
When 113 first left Pennsylvania, she still wore jacketing, but it got removed in her time in Delaware and unfortunately scrapped, so we could not use the old pieces as patterns for the new. It will take a lot of work to make the couple of dozen patterns, in corrugated cardboard, and then a lot more work to make the jacketing, out of 18-gauge steel, with all of its curves, bends, cut-outs, and holes. But the locomotive sure will look better, and her fireman will work just a little less hard!
In mid-July of 2015, Mike Fenster-
maker and Bob Kimmel worked on the jacket for the engineer's-side steam chest. In the photo at left, they have it well along, with the cut-out for the branch pipe (steam supply to the cylinder) at the top and various small holes drilled -- the smallest, in rows running vertically near the edges, to match the studs that will secure the sheet to the steam chest casting.
In the photo at right, Mike and Bob slide the sheet onto the top of the steam chest; in the course of making this one sheet, they put it on and took it off the engine MANY times . . .
In the series of photos above, with the sheet secured at the top, Mike marks the location for a stud to replace a broken-off original (left photo). He drills through the sheet and into the casting (center). Then, with the sheet once again removed, he uses a tap to create screw threads in the new hole (right), into which a threaded stud gets driven (as in the photo below left). Once the stud gets cut off to length (center below), a cap nut gets installed (Jim Garraway on the smart end of the wrench, below right). The strap in the center and right photos, with the 2x4 wedge, helps to hold the jacket sheet against the casting as each nut gets tightened.
With the sheet's studs all in place, it comes off the engine yet again so Mike can cut the excess metal off each side (left), using the cut-off wheel to smooth the cut edges (center); Mike also then enlarges the hole through which the valve-pressure-relief pipe comes through the sheet (right), using a die grinder. At American Locomotive's Schenectady Works, during 113's construction, a large number of professional sheet-metal workers produced jacketing for hundreds of locomotives a year -- and of course they had patterns to work with that had come from the mechanical engineers' office. At the lower right, patterns for the valve and cylnder covers; originally, these would have gotten made of stamped steel sheets, a prohibitively expensive option today, so we will make the covers out of welded sheets: a shallow ring and a disc.
At left, the "finished" sheet -- but a lot of work remains, to fair the curves at the lower edges, and to make the small sheet that will get welded to this one that will wrap the bottom of the branch pipe (in the photo above, Mike marks that shape from the pattern onto the steel from which he will cut it). Also still to come, the sheet that will wrap the bottom of the cylinder casting, and the one that will wrap the top of the branch pipe, as far up as the smoke-
box. And then the steam chest on the other side of the locomotive, and the boiler, including both sides of the firebox, and the backhead in the cab . . .
