Back to Kardes' book......I've laid hands on a reprint of parts 1-3, but my interlibrary loan tells me there's a 4th volume. If any of you have volume 4, please let me know what it contains so I can decide whether or not to obtain it?

dave

This is by far turning into one of the more interesting technical discussions for on RYPN this year.

Question from a lay person: What is the life expectancy of a sleeve? When it is time to sleeve? I assume the cylinder gets to a point where it can't be bored out any further, but was just curious.

Now that you bring this up, I've been after volume 1-3 of this set published by the American Technical Society for ages and have come up with nothing thus far. Dave, would you or anybody else on this wonderful forum know where I may acquire copies?

Best,
DC

It, like most things, depends.....

Mainlines would bore out cylinders when they wore out of round to exceed certain tolerances, and replace pistons and rings with larger stock sizes to fit the larger bores. After a certrain number of bores for wear, there is insufficient metal left to bore again and so a clean-up bore was made, and a new cast iron liner fitted as described above. Rate of wear is determined by a number of different variables, so any estimate of life expectancy is impossible other than in a hard working population of identical locomotives doing the same job.

I spent one interesting few days at Mt Rainier with the late Jack Anderson volunteering to help with the geared engine events many years ago. One job I'll never forget was using a drill and a diamond rod hacksaw to cut a sort of raggedy blank for a new piston ring out of a cast iron plate for the Climax, which Jack then bored and turned to the size he wanted. When we went to fit it, the bore was pretty egg-shaped, and he used a ball peen and punch to fit the ring to the out of round bore, we bolted her back together and life went on just fine. Of course, efficiency and maximizing power wasn't critical in that operation, blowby was tolerated. So, there's a lot of fiddling around you can do as a shortline or museum demonstration line without getting into the heavy work, at least for a while.

dave

Thanks Dave and others, interesting topic.

With the 15 year/1472 day recertification cycle now mandated by the FRA, I suspect that such "fix it on the fly" procedures will be a thing of the past. Recertification is so expensive and extensive that it seems that correcting cylinder/piston wear conditions would be part of the process. An owner/operator would certainly not want the 15 year clock ticking while the locomotive was down for cylinder maintenance!

Again, it depends. What if you have 6 months and 12 operating days left until you are due and you can get by that long?

I can't find a section called "cylinders" in my copy, I presume this falls into the broader scope of running gear being "safe and suitable for service." So, what is safe and suitable for the little museum engine running 18 times a year for demonstration and the hardworking tourist or mainline steam locomotive using up all 1472 within the 15 calendar years may be demonstrably different and equally legal based on different circumstances.

dave

Have been at races where a competitor was forced to strip the motor down to prove it wasn't modified or bored out past stock specs. So far I have not heard of FRA inspectors having a cyl head removed to check this out? No one running main line steam would neglect this during a rebuild so I do not see this as a problem with the 1472/15 inspections. Maybe this is addressed in the reporting? Running 8 miles and 4 trips at 15 miles and hour I think you might get away with a lot more from a mechanical issue point of view. But indeed that is a good time to straighten things out. If the bore is that egg shaped, just keep working your way back as everything else is kitty wumped too.

As Dave has stated running repairs is a fact of life, with RR, industry, farming and your own car or truck. An egg shaped cyl may effect performance and efficiency with all sorts of blow by/leaks with never sealing packings, but is no threat that I can see. There are times where running repairs are a necessity of life. This is not a "perfect world" except in some dreamers mind. When doing a major work such as a 1472 that is indeed the time to address the whole running gear or wait till off season if you have a shop and crew who can "gitterdone" in 6 months? When Jim Eng was CMO at MCRM he did "gitterdone" with the #1385s running gear in very short order back in the 1980s.

These locomotives were never Swiss watches and are incredably forgiving. Not suggesting that needed work be skimped on, but some people get their panties twisted tight living in a world of "the sky is falling" if things are not 100% perfect. You get a locomotive that perfect and it won't work! Cheers, John.

Just for the record we do things differently at the mrsr these days. And I would say that steam locomotives are not as forgiving as some might believe. At least not on our railway with three percent grades, 300 ton trains, and 70 to 80 ton locomotives. Quality work rewards any operation with reliability, on time performance, customer satisfaction, and lowered maintenance costs.

Best,

Stathi

Couldn't agree with you more about quality work and the paybacks from doing it right, in all aspects. In no shape or form was I implying otherwise. My thoughts which were not spelled out were from my experiences in the 60's and 70's when worn out locomotives were kept going for yet another 20 years with little if any major work done to them. Now my experience was not mountain or mainline railroading at high speeds. And I do know that you can't go back and I wouldn't want to anyway. I have seen some very worn out logging and mining locomotives just keep on going and they had lot's wrong with them. In heavy use like mountain or mainline service they wouldn't of held up, period. But in the flat lands of the midwest, rolling along at 15 miles per hour they did. This is where my statement came from about being "forgiving".

For instance the Western Coal and Coke #1 { the Montreal}had two broken driving boxes, a crown brass in 2 pcs, egg shaped cyl, a barrel full of solid scale up to the bottom flues, tires that slipped on the wheels, worn everything. Doesn't appear that the loco ever had a rebuild. It shuffled coal as a switch/transfer engine most of it's working life never getting out much on a main line. That thing came like that and ran for almost 20 years with only a few bad days, the worst I know about was a hot box on middle driving axle firemans side back in 1972. We nursed it back into submission and it ran into the early 1990s. Had this engine been pulling large trains in the Rockies or Serria's it wouldn't of lasted very long at all.

Red Green once made my most favorite quote "This is just temporary..........unless it works". I thought it was funny and it reminded me of the old days and what we did to make it through the season. But SouPac, for the record I am with you all the way on not skimping on repairs during rebuild. Cheers, John.

PS congrats on the #70

Has anyone ever tried flame/metal spraying to build up a worn steam locomotive cylinder? It could offer an alternative to boring the cylinder and installing a sleeve.

It's been a while since I studied the process, but I believe it'd require pre-heating of the base material (in this case the inner bore of the cylinder). Between that and trying to manipulate a sprayer inside the bore of a cylinder, it might be prohibitively hazardous for the guy doing the spraying.

As to trying to build up a worn cyl I don't really think it would work well. From what I have seen, the worn part {usually the bottom} of the cyl is so worn that you would be adding an awful lot of material to try and fill it in. Just speculation on my part, but feel boring out and either building up the old pistons or replacing them altogether or a whole new sleeve would be the only real option. I am capable of learning new things so if I am wrong about these few options mentioned, it will be a good thing anyway. Being a former welder by trade a couple of life times ago, I think building up things with spray or welding to re-machine has merit in some places, but not all. Sometimes I think it easier just to start over with a new blank such as a sleeve or piston if things are fubar. Open for further education on the subject for sure. Cheers, John.

Yeah, I'm a bit uncomfortable with the possibility of adhesion problems with metal spray onto porous cast iron after decades of saturation with pressure-impregnated steam oil. I have been told some people have built up some worn parts of piston rods with it very successfuly, though.

Couple things: the "banding" passed over lightly in previous posts is part of the application of sleeving to repair a cracked cylinder casting, or to reinforce a bored-out one that is just a but uncomfortably thin to prevent cracking. It is essentially the application of a ring of steel to the OD of the flanges at either end of the cylinder - where the studs are installed. Kelly and I have no formula for doing it, but someboody must know of a procedure somewhere or you can probably use the formula for sweating a tire onto a wheel and get by OK. I'd want to install the sleeve first....and maybe, while the boring bar is nicely centered on the counterbores, try to take a skim around the outside flange with a flycutter or something to give the band a lot of face to face contact. Anybody with better knowledge please post it here.

And, pistons..........if we're going to replace pistons why not engineer lighter ones with many smaller rings? The work done on Red Devil and in Patagonia clearly demonstrate the large amounts of ring blowby common to the two bigass ring design we are accustomed to.....and do the valves while you're at it. Could save as much as 20% of the steam.........

dave

Thanks for your input Dave. Somewhere can't recall if it was on RYPN or a thread on Practical Machinist about replicating old pistons. It is way more complicated than turning a blank of cast iron or cast steel. Found it very interesting how careful one might want to be making them, and welding/brazing to build them up {old accepted practice}. Would be interesting to know more about making new and lighter weight pistons. That subject is new to me like so many others. Being that I am not a rocket scientist or Mechanical Engineer would be interesting to know how much lighter you could go without compromising strength and reliability. The original pistons I have seen on older designed locomotives are super heavy and a lot of weight hanging out there at the end of stroke. On the other hand the R&D by trial and error could get expensive and time consuming.

Cheers, John.

You might find some good information on built-up lighter pistons in later - say, post WWII - technical literature, or from countries in the developed world where they maintained commitments to steam after we set it aside. Apart from that, the articles I read which prompted my post were of course the book "Red Devil" and an English translation of Porta's papers which had a lot of good information on the amount of blowby as measured in an almost newly built steam locomotive in the 1990s using the traditional ring design. Hugh's Ultimate Steam Page web site can point you in the direction of good information as well. Generally, a series of narrower-faced rings set up so as to prevent circumfrential rotation that could allow the compression splits to align replaces the two free-floating heavy rings we are used to seeing. What i can understand of tribology makes me think it also helps reduce friction and wear........a smarter person can explain tribology better than I can.

And while we're at it, stacked segmental rod packings with girdle springs such as France Compressor furnishes D&S prevents much more steam loss that King or PM, much less rope.

There's a lot we can do when repairing to make old things work better without making visible or irreversable changes apart from those which would be required even if replicating older repairs, like the boring out in the first place.

dave