No. 40 Returns to Service

After its 1472 Service Day / 15 Year Inspection, 95 year old Locomotive No. 40 is back at work hauling passengers.

Valley shop crews began the Federally mandated inspection shortly after the last runs of our 2014 North Pole Express trains.

The work included removing all the piping, jacketing and insulation from the exterior of the boiler and all the fire tubes from inside the boiler. Once this had been accomplished, the entire boiler was cleaned inside and out, "minutely" inspected for defects and ultra-sonicly tested for the current thickness of all its parts. Armed with fresh thickness readings, new "Form 4" calculations can be made to determine the boiler MAWP (maximum allowed working pressure) for the next term of service.

The boiler was painted inside and out with special paint designed for the purpose, a new set of boiler tubes installed, insulation, jacketing and the piping applied.

Mechanical work included babbitting the side rod bearings and making new bearings for the main rods. All the rods were converted to oil lubrication.

It will be remembered that the mechanical work was "fractionalized", with the locomotive's wheels being reprofiled to meet Federal standards two years ago. Also, the spring and brake rigging was rebuilt at that time.

No. 40 is back pulling our "Fall Foliage" trains through October 25th, and will be busy working our 2015 North Pole Express trains (along with No. 3025) beginning in November.

J. David Conrad

Chief Mechanical Officer