Another year...

One quick look at the blog posting dates shows why the naysayers think that my grand-kids will be lucky to see this engine come to life.  Although higher priorities have conspired to dramatically slow the already snail-like construction pace, all is not lost.  Measurable progress has been made......

The guides have been shimmed into alignment, the pistons have been made twice, the crosshead is nestled into its guide, and the entire piston assembly has been bolted into place!  Shimming and aligning everything was definitely an exercise in patience but once completed, allowed everything to move back and forth with no binding.  "Woot Woot!" (with a fist pump) as my eldest child would say.

So it's on to the valve gear.   First up are the links:

Ed's 1970's era CNC mill decided after 3 1/2 decades of use it finally had enough and gave up the ghost for the final time.  When the standard rebuilding efforts kept running into roadblocks Ed took the opportunity to ditch the ancient electronics and rebuild the CNC with new drivers and such and bring the mill at least into the 90's.  With Mach 3 now acting as our user interface, even a CNC illiterate clod such as myself can now operate the mill.  Yes, I pushed the buttons and clicked the mouse that made this piece.

Crosshead Credit

Ed has forged ahead and began work on the crossheads themselves. As this involves pretty much all CNC work, he has done a bunch of this work without me getting in the way.  They look pretty good to me! 

My Idea of Recycling

After making the crosshead guides, it was time to move on to the "shoes".  The 2900 has a 2-part, well actually 3-part assembly that makes up the entire crossshead.  There is the "shoe" - the part that is grooved to fit into the guide and is the piece that slides back and forth while in actual contact with the guide, and then there is the crosshead itself which is made up of 2 symmetrical halves bolted together while kind of sandwiching the shoe.

First up was to make the "shoe".  Residing under the bandsaw in a pile of old metal chips, dust, and cobwebs was a grimy, worn-looking odd-shaped piece of golden-hued metal. Ed identified it as 1/2 of a former diesel locomotive traction motor bearing and perfect for use as the crosshead shoe. So in the interest of doing my part to save the environment, it was time to recycle old diesel train parts into new steam engine parts!

First up was to cut out some workable stock from the old material.

Then it was time to machine it into something useful.

And then spending a few hours filing and sanding so as to get a good fit in its new home....

Groovin Good Time

Its time to turn the sanding and polishing of the side rods over to the silent partner in this project (my brother) and move on the the next step.  I know I have a steam-related disease real bad when I dont want to remove the rods as I could just stand there for hours staring at them mounted on the drivers.  With the side rods in place I it doesn't take much of my imagination to visualize a sort of a mechanical symphony of organized chaos with wheels rotating and rods moving back and forth.  Thats it, it must be a disease - its either that or just plain lunacy (according to my wife).

On to the crosshead guides!  The guides were made of 2 pieces of bar stock that I machined and ground to get real smooth and flat and then bolted together.  I performed this work about 3 years ago and then moved on to bigger and better things.   After digging around in the back of the bottom drawer the guides were once again allowed to see the light of day.  We profiled the outside of the guides and then started the groove down the middle where part of the crosshead shoe whould reside.

Then it was time to cut out the pockets at each end and take a final pass to the finished dimension.

Next step is to split the halves and mill in the "T" slot.

Way To Start The New Year!

Happy New Year to me!  We finished machining the side rods right after New Year's and then needed to make the spacers and caps.  After a bunch of measurement checking and mocking up, and parts modifying, Ed cranked out the rod pin caps and spacers while I ground/sanded on the side rods.  Then we mounted everything to see how well it all mated together.  Kudos to the Live Steam God as it was AWESOME!  We needed to perform a few slight modifications but it all fit great.  No binds or kinks when all of the rods were mounted and it rolls smooth as silk with very little effort.  Happy New Year to me indeed......!

Visit to 2925

Ed started working on the drawings for the brake rigging and came up with a bunch of questions.  Unfortunately he does not have any brake rigging drawings and had to improvise using the erection prints.  So, to try and fill in all the missing details, it was off to 2925's haunting grounds to pay a visit to the real thing.

I will freely admit that I am a bit spoiled to have the full-size engine that I am trying to model only a half hour away.  Heck, there is another engine #2921 (in much better looking condtion I am told)  only 1 1/2 hrs. away.  Speaking of 2921, that is the first steam engine that I can ever remember seeing (not counting Knotts Berry Farm) up close in person.  (I think that I will number my engine 2921.)  I was probably about 11 years old and my dad took his train buddy and I to go see 2921.  Turns out that "train buddy" was none other than Ed of "Live Steam God" fame whose path I would later cross in life. Kinda one of those "small world" things....

2925 had been moved since my last visit.  She is stored on some tracks owned by the California State Railroad Museum next to a bike trail and the Sacramento River.  It looks like they shuffled around some other freight cars and 2925 was moved a bit in the process.  It still is a sad thing to see her there all stripped of her boiler jacketing and just rusting away.  At least she is not all yet covered in graffiti like all of the other freight cars that were around her.  Climbing over her running gear,laying on the ballast and sort of wriggling in under her between the massive drivers revealed all of the missing information.  (The driving wheels dont look ALL that big until you are standing next to them and have to look UP to see the top of them.  They are huge!  Another one of those "amazing facts" for me is that this giant platter of cast iron would rotate fast enough to propel this monster to over 100mph!)  For those so inclined, one to the solved mysteries was to determine exactly how the vertical brake cylinders were mounted to the frame.  Here is what we found.

I'll Have Rods for Christmas...

Trying to get the side rods mostly complete by Christmas turned out to be a pipe dream but, I have come pretty close.  While I finished plowing out the middle of the rods, Ed started boring out the ends for the ball bearings. 

Of course the purist in me wants to use Timken roller bearings but the practical side wins on this one and we are installing sealed ball bearings.  At least the rod ends will have bearings like the real ones.  Now that we are almost done with the machining, it was time to relish the moment.  THEY FIT PERFECT AND LOOK GREAT!  So far we have 3 rods mounted in place and everything spins freely with no binding or kinks!  WOOHOO!

Merry Christmas everyone!