Yeah this has been a great discussion! Kelly and Dave have input a lot of information and I second Dave's encouragement to add more rings to your pistons and valves and rod packings. The savings are noticeable. Concerning the video posted of our "frosty sleeve" - it was one of two sleeves from Birmingham bought for the N&W #1218 - sold to Grand Canyon at the auction. GCRR Mr. Franzen installed one sleeve in the 4960 and sold us the other to install in the left cylinder during our initial restoration of Soo Line #2719 in Altoona, WI. This loco had been in a cornering accident that broke out the bottom third of the front part of the cylinder casting. I usually think these accidents happened when engines are moved by hostlers with no one watching the left side. We've seen many locos with damage to the left sides - front and rear.
Before we removed this loco from the park, it was abated and the damage to the cylinder was seen when the jacket came off. We removed the cylinder head and also saw the cylinder liner was broken - but the men at Shoreham Shops had brazed it all back together - using the liner as a backing plate for the pieces of the cylinder casting. We removed the liner and rebrazed the cylinder casting repairs from the inside of the bore. We then bored the cylinder casting true with a .250" step in the bore half way back ( just as Kelly's post described). That way it all goes half way in before you are into your fit. Because of the braze repairs to the cylinder, we chose to keep the fit on the light side - .006" interference. We were assisted in the sleeve application by a crew from the local power company who had a team that was all set up in a special service truck to apply sleeves to steam turbine journals in the big generating stations. Our sleeve was the smallest one they ever installed. They came with their dry ice, a cooler about 4' x 4' x 4' and some propane weed burners. The cylinder casting was warmed with the burners as the sleeve soaked in the cooler. These guys rule of thumb was " if you get these two parts at least 300 degrees difference in temp - it will go together! We got the sleeve pretty close to -60 and the cylinder casting about 250 on the outer 2/3 of the circumference. As the video showed - we lifted the sleeve out of the cooler, set it down on an alignment fixture and slid it right into the bore - all the way - aligned the ports with a bar and listened to it chatter and rattle about 30 seconds. The frost started to come off where the casting was warmest and in about 3 minutes the liner was now about 100 degees.

Thanks, Gary, for the post and the clarification as to which locomotive it was and the methods used.

These skills and methods will be in demand as we move forward.

A real posting containing real information from somebody whon has been there and done that.....thanks Gary, we're all in your debt. Time to make friends with your local power company.

I'm trying to locate real information on lightweight piston and multiple ring design specs for steam locomotives, with not a lot of success so far. I did find one source who quoted a 67% steam waste figure for the traditional arrangement - I'm inclined to believe him, but even if his estimate is half wrong wouldn't it still be much better to do it a better way?

dave

We also added a third set of rings to the 1522, which had an empty groove on the piston. Made a difference. I think it was Gary who suggested it while we had her down.