I don't think so, but of course it has been a while.
Has there been any offical comment from UP does anyone know?
Matt
Were they even asked? I have no idea. But I do know that the Tornado's boiler had to be sent back as staybolts broke. A boiler built for an Australian locomotive had to go back also, from what I've heard. I just don't think that rolling equipment is all that rare either here in Canada, the U.S. or in Europe, it's a matter of who has the knowledge of a steam locomotive and in the case of the Canadian builders versus Meiningen, who has the most recent experience? But like I wrote earlier, the boiler shell of the UP locomotive may not need replacing at all.
I find it rather surprising that Ontario alone has all that but Europe only has 1 plant with that capability. Makes me wonder if they're as capable as you think if someone came calling for a boiler for a 4-8-4.
The ability to roll the steel for a boiler shell such as the Tornado might be limited in Europe. Here in Ontario, Canada there is Babcock and Wilcox in Cambridge, O'Connor Tanks in Toronto, Superior Boiler in Hamilton and Cleaver-Brooks in Stratford. All of these are capable of doing it, I've been in these plants, (I am a National Board certified boiler inspector) and all have the rolling equipment. O'Connor has World War Two vintage equipment, rebuilt many times. Then there's Ferro Metal who build large pressure vessels and there are several in Quebec. The Meiningen plant is a lot closer to Britain I will admit. I've been there too on their open days in September and it is one of the greatest things I've ever experienced! Every single thing to do with steam locomotives is done there, plus you can walk around the plant with a beer in your hand while say, a type 01 Pacific is cruising around in the yard. I've got to get back there!
By the way, the Babcock plant has a small side-rod diesel to move cars around in their yard.
54light15 The quality of the steel in a boiler is no big deal. The proper steel is available to make any kind of boiler, that's not something that will ever go away. It's only a matter of paying for it.
The quality of the steel in a boiler is no big deal. The proper steel is available to make any kind of boiler, that's not something that will ever go away. It's only a matter of paying for it.
The machines to roll the steel plates aren't widely available. That's why Tornado's boiler had to be made in the former East Germany at the Meiningen Steam Locomotive Works since it's the only facility in Europe, perhaps the entire World, that is capable of producing large locomotive boilers these days.
Firelock76 For these skills to survive two things have to happen... 1) Young people have got to get interested, or be gotten interested in it. 2) They have to be able to make a decent living at it. The first might be easy, the second, I'm not so sure.
For these skills to survive two things have to happen...
1) Young people have got to get interested, or be gotten interested in it.
2) They have to be able to make a decent living at it.
The first might be easy, the second, I'm not so sure.
I'm not saying it can't be done. What I AM saying is if the rail preservation movement is serious about this they better GET serious about it.
The kids are out there. You can find them in power mechanics classes, trade schools, anywhere you see young men and women that fidget themselves half to death in a classroom but LOVE getting their hands dirty making something out of what looks like nothing and making it sing. There's your future. Go find it.
54light15 For getting young people involved, go to England and see some of the heritage railways and do whatever it is that they do. There's no shortage of young people eager to learn. I was on a steam powered train at the Severn Valley and the driver was a Chinese girl (!) no more than 25 years old. The firemen were about 18. In one of the British railway magazines there was an article about one of the new board members of the National Railway Museum in York. How old was he? Eight! Haven't you ever noticed about kids that age is that they generally know what they're doing?
For getting young people involved, go to England and see some of the heritage railways and do whatever it is that they do. There's no shortage of young people eager to learn. I was on a steam powered train at the Severn Valley and the driver was a Chinese girl (!) no more than 25 years old. The firemen were about 18. In one of the British railway magazines there was an article about one of the new board members of the National Railway Museum in York. How old was he? Eight! Haven't you ever noticed about kids that age is that they generally know what they're doing?
Ya, its a shame no one recognizes that. Some museums push young people away because of their age. Let me tell you, it happened to me a long time ago. A real big turn off for getting involved with them.
The quality of the steel in a boiler is no big deal. The proper steel is available to make any kind of boiler, that's not something that will ever go away. It's only a matter of paying for it. No one makes iron boilers at all unless they are cast iron and then they are limited to 15 psi for steam and usually 30 psi for hot water. Cast iron is a heating boiler and that's it. I've never heard of a high-pressure iron boiler unless maybe you go back to the 1820s.
Corrosion on the shell of the boiler can be rectified by doing a minimal wall thickness test and then welding up the pits should they require it. The tubes are considered a wear item anyway and no one I've ever heard of takes the tubes from one boiler and puts them in another. That's nuts! They make fine fence posts.
There has been talk here about the quality of steel available if a new boiler needs to be fabricated. I'm not that knowledgeable about metallurgy, but I think wrought iron is considerably less prone to corrosion than steel. How about sandwiching a layer of iron inside a steel boiler? I'll let the more knowledgeable pick at this idea.
_____________
"A stranger's just a friend you ain't met yet." --- Dave Gardner
Call me a curmudgeon and a cynic, and I know it's a silly generalization...but unless there's an app for that....
I might add a third criteria - there has to be enough continuing demand for the skills for the practitioners to remain proficient in using the skills. Use it or lose it.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
CSSHEGEWISCH The situation with UP 844 may be pointing out a problem that isn't going to go away. A lot of the institutional knowledge and skill that existed for the operation of steam locomotives is going away and is unlikely to be replaced. Maintenance and operation of steam locomotives has become an increasingly specialized skill set that is becoming more difficult to maintain and continue in its own right. If these skills disappear (a real possibility), then UP 844, UP 4014, N&W 611 and a host of other operating steam locomotives will become little more than static displays.
The situation with UP 844 may be pointing out a problem that isn't going to go away. A lot of the institutional knowledge and skill that existed for the operation of steam locomotives is going away and is unlikely to be replaced. Maintenance and operation of steam locomotives has become an increasingly specialized skill set that is becoming more difficult to maintain and continue in its own right. If these skills disappear (a real possibility), then UP 844, UP 4014, N&W 611 and a host of other operating steam locomotives will become little more than static displays.
The day those skills dissapear will be the day I die..... I would hate to see such skills go....
They basically already have, she has been made available for preservation and probably still is available. It's up now to a worthwhile group to raise the funds, develop a plan, and secure her by making a deal with Union Pacific.
I'm not sure if they've held on to 844's old pieces to make her cosmetically complete someday (Would be nice if they've been planning for that eventuality over the years), but locomotives in far worse shape have been turned into fine displays before.
About the only thing she could really contribute at this point is her boiler and maybe some running gear components. Assuming they wouldn't scrap something like 844's boiler, it shouldn't pose a major issue if that happened someday. Just swap the parts.
As for taking 838's flues. Forget it. It's kinda sad seeing her just being slowly cannibalized for parts. In good time, MAYBE 10 years or so, UP should do something with 838. I mean, how many steamers of her type are left? Two? Maybe three?
Eventually, there won't be enough left of 838 to make it worthwhile. UP can support 3 steamers, why not run a 4th while one of the others is down for 1472 inspection?
So stop using 838 for parts like she's junk, UP!!!!
BARFlyer You are right, the "Best Steel" was needed. My point is thats Not an easy task these days...in the world of toss and replace. People mention, "oh just get a "new" boiler" .. if it was only that easy, to get one made the exact same way with the same durrability...
You are right, the "Best Steel" was needed. My point is thats Not an easy task these days...in the world of toss and replace. People mention, "oh just get a "new" boiler" .. if it was only that easy, to get one made the exact same way with the same durrability...
That's what I meant. A new boiler, even one for a small consolidation (2-8-0) costs from $100K to $200K. And I doubt that it will even last 3/4 the time the original did.
Lets hope just the removal of scale on 844 will be enough.
Taconite was mined in the late 1800s along with Iron ore and yes most of the raw Iron ore was from Minnesota. By WW2 the US had mined all the raw ore and Taconite became the main source of Iron for locos built after the war, which includes a bunch.
Unfortunately, I believe that since UP has put over $120 million into the 4014, I don't think there will be enough to go around right now for both 3985 and 844.
I doubt they'll be willing to take some of the money away from 4014 to help out a bit with them. By the pictures, 844 could be in some serious trouble. Like new boiler trouble.
Of course I could always be wrong. Just what I think.
When these engines were built, there was no taconite. There were many different types of iron ore mined in Minnesota (not Wisconsin) and they arranged them carefully to get the best steel.
BARFlyer When these engines were built, as with the US made autos,Tanks, etc.. USA mined Taconite in Wisconsin, made into pellets, shipped across the Great lakes ( Edmund Fitzgerald sank full of Taconite). When melted at casting and foundries it was pretty high quality, pretty pure, and Dense. Nickle added to castings made them very durable. Today's recycled Steel and cast is of poor quality most made over seas now. If you take a look at a NOS car fender from 1950 with a magnifying glass it looks solid. A reproduction fender through the same glass is porous and looks likes Swiss cheese. Making new boilers must be pretty tough these days. I would bet the boys at Age of Steam in Ohio have a good handle on that. Their Steam engines run in Revenue freight service. Water, I remember at Steamtown ( back in VT) talking with a worker there about how they used CT River water, and that the PH was close to neutral and it didnt have much Iron in it he said. He also said that he ran an air hose from a painting compressor with a water filter on the line and into the boiler fill to help dry it out fast. The Steam used in boilers at power plants is condensed and recycled and seems to be a closed loop system which I am guessing is chemically controlled and the amount of fee oxygen is low. The 844 looks bad but I have seen worse in the shops at Stasburg parts engines , and at Steamtown in VT on early engines just starting to get flues and tubes.I can only Imagine how bad the UP 4012 tubes and boiler look on the inside. UP's site says the 844 WILL run again... so we sill see...
When these engines were built, as with the US made autos,Tanks, etc.. USA mined Taconite in Wisconsin, made into pellets, shipped across the Great lakes ( Edmund Fitzgerald sank full of Taconite). When melted at casting and foundries it was pretty high quality, pretty pure, and Dense. Nickle added to castings made them very durable.
Today's recycled Steel and cast is of poor quality most made over seas now. If you take a look at a NOS car fender from 1950 with a magnifying glass it looks solid. A reproduction fender through the same glass is porous and looks likes Swiss cheese.
Making new boilers must be pretty tough these days. I would bet the boys at Age of Steam in Ohio have a good handle on that. Their Steam engines run in Revenue freight service.
Water, I remember at Steamtown ( back in VT) talking with a worker there about how they used CT River water, and that the PH was close to neutral and it didnt have much Iron in it he said. He also said that he ran an air hose from a painting compressor with a water filter on the line and into the boiler fill to help dry it out fast.
The Steam used in boilers at power plants is condensed and recycled and seems to be a closed loop system which I am guessing is chemically controlled and the amount of fee oxygen is low.
The 844 looks bad but I have seen worse in the shops at Stasburg parts engines , and at Steamtown in VT on early engines just starting to get flues and tubes.I can only Imagine how bad the UP 4012 tubes and boiler look on the inside.
UP's site says the 844 WILL run again... so we sill see...
Mechanical Department "No no that's fine shove that 20 pound set all around the yard... those shoes aren't hell and a half to change..."
The Missabe Road: Safety First
BARFlyerUP's site says the 844 WILL run again... so we sill see...
Paul, it's interesting what you said about scale having the possible effect of protecting the steel from corrosion. In one of my rail books concerning steam the author said a LITTLE bit of scale is OK, as it helps seal any possible gaps in the boiler shell and also seals where the flues meet the flue sheets. The author didn't say anything about the possible rust prevention benefits of scale, however.
The possibility's certainly there.
That old book of mine does mention boiler foam, however they called it "scum". I'll have to check what it says about same. As I've said there's gold in these old books. It's enough to make me think there's been more forgotten about steam engines than there's known now.
Paul Milenkovic Firelock76 Chemically pure water is that which has no impurities...and were a quantitiy evaporated from a perfectly clean vessel, there would be no solid matter remaining." "But strangely, investigation has proved that water of this purity rapidly corrodes iron...more readily than 'hard' water does." Maybe you just hit on what went wrong, and it has nothing to do with "pool chemicals." Do you suppose someone thought, "We'll solve the boiler scale problem, just use RO (reverse osmosis) to purify the water from its mineral content." They didn't go the next step and pay attention to the dissolved gas content (O2) as they do with a high-pressure watertube steam system in a power plant, and they ended up corroding the steel? Do you suppose the "conventional" approach of using hard water and doing the boiler maintenance to periodically remove scale protects the metal from corrosion? These various witches brews you speak of were formalized by the French TIA water treatment followed by Porta's recommendations. Livio Dante (L.D.) Porta's recommendation was to use doses of water softening chemicals but not "blow down" the boiler very often so as to allow a high concentration of "dissolved solids" to accumulate. This primordeal soup in the boiler instead of distilled (or RO purified) water apparently did a good job of keeping the boiler free of both scale and corrosion. Part of the brew, as you mention, is tannin. I don't have my copy of Wardale in front of me to figure out if the tannin prevents foam formation or if the anti-foam is yet another chemical. The problem is that with this mineral soup in the boiler, scale will not form, but you will "blow bubbles" when the stuff boils, and those bubbles will wreck your superheater and maybe even your pistons if they entrain a slug of water. If the wrecked this boiler by using purified water, an experiment the "old timers" never ran because distilled water was costly and RO was not in wide use, this is a useful piece of information for steam locomotive lore, but it is too bad this knowledge was gained in this costly fashion.
Firelock76 Chemically pure water is that which has no impurities...and were a quantitiy evaporated from a perfectly clean vessel, there would be no solid matter remaining." "But strangely, investigation has proved that water of this purity rapidly corrodes iron...more readily than 'hard' water does."
Chemically pure water is that which has no impurities...and were a quantitiy evaporated from a perfectly clean vessel, there would be no solid matter remaining."
"But strangely, investigation has proved that water of this purity rapidly corrodes iron...more readily than 'hard' water does."
Maybe you just hit on what went wrong, and it has nothing to do with "pool chemicals."
Do you suppose someone thought, "We'll solve the boiler scale problem, just use RO (reverse osmosis) to purify the water from its mineral content." They didn't go the next step and pay attention to the dissolved gas content (O2) as they do with a high-pressure watertube steam system in a power plant, and they ended up corroding the steel? Do you suppose the "conventional" approach of using hard water and doing the boiler maintenance to periodically remove scale protects the metal from corrosion?
These various witches brews you speak of were formalized by the French TIA water treatment followed by Porta's recommendations. Livio Dante (L.D.) Porta's recommendation was to use doses of water softening chemicals but not "blow down" the boiler very often so as to allow a high concentration of "dissolved solids" to accumulate. This primordeal soup in the boiler instead of distilled (or RO purified) water apparently did a good job of keeping the boiler free of both scale and corrosion.
Part of the brew, as you mention, is tannin. I don't have my copy of Wardale in front of me to figure out if the tannin prevents foam formation or if the anti-foam is yet another chemical. The problem is that with this mineral soup in the boiler, scale will not form, but you will "blow bubbles" when the stuff boils, and those bubbles will wreck your superheater and maybe even your pistons if they entrain a slug of water.
If the wrecked this boiler by using purified water, an experiment the "old timers" never ran because distilled water was costly and RO was not in wide use, this is a useful piece of information for steam locomotive lore, but it is too bad this knowledge was gained in this costly fashion.
Add this to Randy Stahl's remark " ...I"m a little baffled. In the steam days they (usually) took water from a well, I'm assuming that a water tender added the boiler treatment in the water towers regularly..." [snip]
I cannot attempt to speak of the technical aspect of water quality, what a railroad might do, or not do, by way of ensuring water quality for its steam locomotive consumption.
I am simply a rail fan, and my knowledge base for steam is only in the area of an interested bystander.
What really concerns me is the extent that this problem of maintaining a workable water quality in these times when the knowledge base for operations of active steam engines, is somewhat anecdotal, to those long, dying operational skill sets, are very problematic in these times.
To most of us, water is 'water'. Some of us are aware that water is 'hard' , and some water is 'soft'. Beyond that we leave it to the experts who can use the available water to their specific needs. The 'Chemistry' of water quality is somewhat a mystery to the large population.
I have watched tenders refilled from City Water Hydrants, and out here, in Kansas the MKT used, in some places ponds, and lagoons for locomotive water sources. We all know that steam locomotive are periodically 'blown down' the why is generally just accepted as a necessary practice for operation.
It is scary to think that an organization as big as Union Pacific, can get caught in this web of water quality issues. That those very seemingly, necessary details, can verge on the possible side-lining of their years of a successful steam heritage program.
A.) The other aspect of this is what is being done about this potential major issue at some of the other Steam Heritage Operations?
B.) How do others handle their steam locomotive water quality issues?
1.) The TVRMs partnership with the Norfolk Southern's 21 Century Program ?
2.) The Strasburg Railroads Steam Operations ? IRM?
3.) Have they had these Water Quality, and Maintenance Issues Crop up?
a.) What do they do for their water quality?
I suspect that this issue of water quality in Modern Steam Operations is going to become a much bigger consideration than it has 'til now?
It seems to be the big question is: How bad is the condition of 844 or even 3985? Will they be repaired, after 4014 is back in operation? You can bet it will be more closely monitored for its quality of boiler water..
I"m a little baffled. In the steam days they (usually) took water from a well, I'm assuming that a water tender added the boiler treatment in the water towers regularly.
Not exactly pure in the sense that they certainly didn't use any type of osmosis. Seemed to work fine. Maybe the thing to do is use only well water, I'll bet they could still find the old wells.
Does any one know if the boiler on the 838 is condemned ? Maybe the thing to do is migrate parts from the 844 to the 838?
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