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

Rolling Tubes

Boiler tubes must be expanded to make them water and steam tight using a tool commonly called a roller.

Here Wayne rolls another of the 253 tubes. The machine he holds is an air motor which drives the roller.

Once all the tubes have been rolled, the next step is to form a bead on the end with an air hammer and special forming tool. - J. David

Only 246 to Go...

A milestone in our rebuilding of No. 40 has been reached: All of the new boiler tubes are in the boiler! Wayne and Kjell, assisted by Morgan and Ron made short work of sliding the tubes into their holes in the front and back tube sheets.

Here Kjell lines up a tube in its hole.

Now the process of expanding the tubes into their holes making them water and steam tight will begin. Once expanded, the ends at the back (fire box) end will be beaded using an air hammer and specially shaped tool. Then any excess material at the front (smoke box) end will be trimmed off, the beads seal welded to the rear tube sheet and then lightly expanded again.

When all this has been done, No. 40 will be ready for a hydrostatic test of the boiler. - J. David

Hot Stuff!

As part of the 15 year inspection of our No. 40, all 253 boiler tubes were removed from the boiler to enable a minute inspection of its interior. A new set of boiler tubes were purchased to replace the old ones.
 

Here, Kjell anneals the ends of the tubes in our rivet forge. Annealing softens the steel so the tube can be easily expanded into the tube sheets and made steam tight. - J. David