Pinging off what other Brother Kelly said, SRI did have new shoes and wedges cast to replace the existing ones, believing they are well worn and near if not at their end of their service life. When the work gets underway, the pedestals will get inspection/review to determine any needs there as well.

Kelly

As a well versed facebook user, I too get nothing but a facebook profile and the most recent activity of the user is a cover photo change on January 12th.

Can someone elaborate on what was posted, and why it was worth posting that profile link to this discussion?

Please note that I'm only copying and pasting from their profile:

"My day started off slow and boring, but it just keeps getting better and better! It's hard to describe how happy I am reading this resignation letter!!! :0

Greetings Steam Railroading Institute Volunteers, Members and Staff!

I hope everyone is off to a great start this new year. Thank you to everyone that assisted us during North Pole Express, our summer events and happenings during 2021. I am happy to report the year was a great success because of all of your efforts. After coming off a very difficult year and a half, we all have a lot to be proud of. Once again we overcame challenges, worked together as a team and made steam dreams come true!

As most of you know, I have been with SRI in some capacity since 2007. This month marks my eight-year anniversary with Steam Railroading Institute as Executive Director. It has been a challenging but incredible journey. When I took on the position of ED, this organization was trying to recover from some severe financial hardships. I am so proud of the fact that we have turned everything around and grown into a million-dollar + organization over the past eight years. This was no small feat, but we did it together.
With growth comes change. As our organization continues to move forward, the job structure of the executive director position will be growing and changing. SRI is ready to move forward to the next stage of growth and I feel that this is the perfect time for me to step down so that someone else with fresh eyes can step UP and lead the SRI into the future. This was not an easy decision. I have worked two jobs over the past eight years and I am looking forward to moving on down the tracks to my next, less stressful, phase of life. It is time.

My heart will forever belong to Steam Railroading Institute and I will always be involved in some capacity. I couldn’t be more proud of the accomplishments made during my time here and for the relationships that I have built. I will continue my job at the Shiawassee County Convention & Visitors Bureau, which directly relates to SRI, so you will still see me around. I also plan on volunteering which I am very excited about.

As the organization moves forward to find a new Executive Director, I will remain on staff and assist in a smooth transition. I will forever remain passionate and committed to the future of SRI.

This has been my home and you are my family. That will never change. I am so excited about the future of SRI and all that is to come. It has been my complete pleasure to serve you all and we all have so much to be proud of. The future is bright and I look forward to seeing Steam Railroading Institute continue to shine.

God Bless and I will see you all soon!

Best Regards,
Kimberly Springsdorf
Executive Director"

There's a LOT more in the comments...

Thank you for taking the time to post that.

Same here. Perhaps he made this most recent post only visible to friends or friends of friends.

I did scroll down quite a way and found another post from some years ago where he announced his departure from that group and gave some interesting reasons why. Some interesting comments on that post too......

Meanwhile…PM 1225 gets needed repairs.

Do y'all actually enjoy eating your young?

That the original post originated with Kelly Lynch ought to have been enough for you. If HE thinks FMW is going to do the job, I think it's reasonably likely they can.

I didn't particularly care for the early Davidson Ward essay into 'historic preservation' with Project 130, but evidently both he and the organizations he administers have matured. I clearly remember the same sort of thing over the T1 Trust project to build replica 5550, and there were some real early boners there which had serious preservationists discounting them -- but they have matured.

I cannot imagine that the locomotive will be jacked off the running gear and the pedestal faces not carefully machined true. Perhaps I'm naive but I would think they could be hard-faced with modern materials and techniques, and either restored to as-built dimensions or correctly dressed for replacement shoes and wedges as Kelly Anderson described.



Perhaps I've been involved with steam technology too long, but it's very obvious to me what this meant and what it implies, and yes, a simple knife-edge static balance test on the driver pairs with appropriate bobweighting will quickly establish if the counterweights are no longer 'correct'. Any preferential 'ovaling' of the wheels actually means ovaling of the tires, which I expect will be replaced rather than remachined to get the maximum wear limit for any future operation. I would hope that extra care into both static and dynamic balancing occurs with the wheelsets off, and perhaps even that some consideration be made about reducing some of the inherent dynamic augment in one of the more famous excursion-locomotive franchiese, second in public recognition perhaps only to little blue somethings, to suit it not for higher speed but smoother operation and track-preserving behavior at 'normal' speeds in its projected service.

Interesting - my take on the "losing lead" comment was about the taken up wear in the shoes / wedges being repaired, moving the axles relative to the frames, requiring the valves to be reset since the movement would move the crank forward or back as well.......

Greetings:

No Dave, I meant lead as in the material heated to a molten state and poured into the cavity(s) of the counter weights. After preparing to move and moving dozens of steam locomotives on their own wheels, that was one of the things that I would look out for (not that I could do much about a counterweight that was leaking a fine, grey powder...)

If the lead in a counterweigh was loose, it would rattle around and break down over time into a powder which would leak out.

I watched TangShan Locomotive & Rolling Stock Works check numerous driving wheels for the proper balance. They had three different sets of weights to hang on the three different crankpins while the drivers were on the test stand after being mounted on the driver axles. All of them balanced perfectly, of course: they had only one type of locomotive in production (Shang You=SY=Aiming High) at the time, and after over 1600 pretty much identical locomotives, you know that they had every step of the production process down pat. One advantage to mass production as opposed to the "one offs" that we do.

Be well & stay safe,

J.David

Thank you! Now I have to think about where the third crankpin is in a set of drivers....... unless maybe the crank that drives the valve gear is installed on the mains? What an experience that must have been.

I'll bet he's talking about one weight for main drivers, one for intermediate, and a third for front and rear...

They are tasty enough with a little A-1 sauce. Really, it's all in the presentation...

A good shop would have a set of bobweights for each combination of rods that might be present for each crankpin when a locomotive had to be transported. As noted, for a main that would include

With drive rods all connected, but valve gear return crank removed;
With main off, but side rods connected (not an uncommon way engines were moved dead);
With all rods off, as after a wreck

A good bobweight has the lateralcenter of mass the same as the resultant for the rod(s) it replaces, so the cross-balance couples are 'as designed'. (See Johnson for methods of calculating the rod moments to use in designing these weights)

My introduction to these was a picture in Staufer's book 'Thoroughbreds' that shows them applied to a chassis being moved on its wheels. Closer inspection of the original of that photo would probably reveal some design details.

In this country we did comparatively little dynamic balancing even though good European practice often found it desirable (and you can find pictures and diagrams of the equipment they used). This was not too surprising for a variety of reasoms I can go into if someone will sign my MEGO waiver, but in theory it is easily possible to balance a good main driver center to within the 80lb overbalance Voyce Glaze specified it contain on a J locomotive (incidentally, for the vertical component of piston thrust at high speed).

Hello,

This thread is getting interesting. (…ie the tech talk portion!)

Before asking questions on another topic, first, a thank you to the Kelly A & Kelly L. My curiosity on the pedestals renewals was on the point of the required axle center accuracy…. perhaps the needed tolerances are a little wider for plain crank pin bearings? Did I hear the statement on this forum previously…” it’s better to hear them than heat them?” ( of course this assumes spot-on quartering of all drivers)

And …..perhaps it’s a whole other story with roller rod locomotives like the N&W 611? ……or not? I believe there are thin bronze bearing (pressed in the rode eye) outside on the Timken rod bearing elements…..do I recall hearing rod slapping even even on the 611 on a fan video?? Maybe the 611’s tolerances are just as wide…..hmmm.

For major pedestal restoration are you, can you be forced to get out an optical alignment transit like a Brunson, etc or is that total and utter overkill?

I guess it all goes back to original construction and machining …. then base repairs off those unworn surfaces in the extremities?

It will be interesting to see the T1 trust finish fabricating that huge frame, and hoist up that bad boy onto a serious HBM for machining? :-)

Thanks again!

Regards,

Randy

The Berkshire owners' club (765, 1225, 2716) have the benefit of the Van Sweringen roads' Standard Maintenance of Euipment Instructions (SMEI) covering all aspects of repair these engines. I don't have the tables of dimensions in front of me, but I recall from when the 1225's rod bearings were renewed (before the engine even moved in the 1970s) that the new clearances for the journal-bearing PM engines were twice those of the rods on the roller-bearing NKP engines. We will probably find similar differences in the driving-box and pedestal dimensions.

Rediscovering these hidden facts is the fascinating part of doing this basic work. Already we've learned another difference between the PM and NKP 2-8-4s. The PM engines have plate frames instead of the one-piece cast engine beds of the other roads. The reason for this has never been explained, and was always presumed to be cheapness or tradition on the part of the PM. When removing the brake rigging and pedestal binders from the 1225, veterans of the same work on the 765 exclaimed, "There's a lot of room under here. On the Nickel Plate engine, there's always a casting web in the way." Were the PM motive-power men trying to make it easy to work on? Who knows, but there will be more such insights as this work progresses.

Aarne Frobom,
President,
Steam Railroading Institute