Wonderful sound! So reminiscent of O. Winston Link, except for a bit of wind noise.

I also notice the firemen must be getting a better hang of the job--outside of the initial start, very little smoke, not like the run through the station at High Point!

Said it before, need to repeat again--time to bring back heavyweight cars with six wheel trucks, rivets, and openable windows.

So I assume there's no 'leaning' out of crew car doors anymore? That was a hallmark of the old SR/NS trips. Heck, I never rode one from the seat I paid for and a few times I never even saw my seat. I was always, "leaning" (what we called hanging partially out of a vestibule of crew car open door) and taking in the sounds and wind.

I definitely noticed this

"Fireup611" just posted a new video showing 611 en route to Manassas. Rods seem to be knocking louder than ever. Impact loads aren't good for roller bearings; ability to handle impacts is one advantage of conventional bearings over rollers. Hopefully everything's OK or will be made that way quickly.

One of the 611 videos I saw of the trip back to Roanoke clearly showed some vestibule doors open with people (probably VIPs) waving. The train was moving. Why was this allowed, but it is not allowed on normal trips? It should be one way, or the other. I can't imagine the insurance company would like it, no matter who was in the vestibule.

Gary Bensman....tighten em uppers...

Ha! Hopefully Gary can figure those rollers out.

I helped out with some work with NKP 765 back in ~1982 (after the "second" restoration) when Gary was heavily involved; they almost fried the right main rod big end bearing on the ferry move from Fort Wayne to Bellevue. A Porta-power jack had to be used to pull the bronze bearing off the crankpin after it arrived.

The Bellevue General Foreman (a former NKP machinist) sawed the bearing into 4 segments and we put it back together that way. There was literally ~1/4 inch of slop in the big end and it ran at least 2 or 3 weekends that way sounding like God's own sledgehammer was at work on the right side of the engine, apparently with no ill effects. Somehow I doubt Timken's products would withstand such abuse.

A month or so later the Southern leased 765 to replace 2716 and railroad money instantly became available, so replacement brass was quickly purchased, machined and installed.

It's hard to imagine ~$200 worth of brass almost stopping the show back then, but they worked around it.

Hugh -

You just answered a riddle that's been around for a long time. That quartered main rod bronze survived a number of Fall Excursions in 1982. I don't remember exactly which weekend it was when it burned up (possibly Atlanta - Toccoa) but there was total disbelief in the steam shop when they pulled it apart and discovered the rod bushing to be in FOUR pieces! For years, we wondered if that was NKP standard practice!

Now I can sleep better tonight :-)

G. Mark

^ Ha! Glad I could shed some light on it. Clarence Williams, who was GF at Bellevue at the time, was the former NKP machinist in question. He said NKP had used the quartered bushings at various times; I got the idea it was an on-again/off-again practice. I just remember there was a LOT of space in between that steel bushing in the main rod, the bearing, and the crank pin when we reinstalled it.

The other thing we found when we pulled off the main rod/3-4 rod assembly in Bellevue was that the steel bushing which holds the 3-4 rod in place, and which was supposed to be a press fit in the main rod, fell out as soon as we removed the rod assembly(!). Clarence inserted some steel strips as shims when we reassembled it, but I don't think it held very well.

Clarence was an interesting guy that really loved steam. I learned a lot from him. He still had his small notebook with notes from ~1958 when he'd set the valves on 765 the last time it was overhauled at Conneaut. How cool is that?

I haven't listened to the latest Fire Up 611 video yet, but if what's being said is true, this engine won't run too long before ruining its bearings, and those aren't going to be easy to replace.

Another thought occurred to me, and that is that maybe the noise isn't coming from the rods as such. Recall that the Southern Railway (of England) Battle of Britain class 4-6-2 Tangmere suffered a rod failure about a year ago that was caused, if I recall correctly, by a loose piston. It's possible this potential problem may not be related to the rods themselves.

In any event, it's not something you should hear on a roller engine like this, and if the noise is becoming more noticeable, then the situation, whatever it is, is deteriorating, maybe quite rapidly.

Hopefully anything as drastic as a loose piston would be noticed and dealt with QUICKLY.

Actually the rod bearings should be fairly easy to replace, if required. While the rod roller bearings 611 was built with are no longer available, at least some of them have been converted to standard off-the-shelf production Timken bearings via adapters that Timken designed.

When the engine was restored in ~1981, Timken inspected all the bearings internally using a borescope, and a found pitting in at least a couple. At the time, the bearings' internal surfaces were carefully polished using grinding compound which was then flushed out. A few years later the adapter fix was devised and the worn bearings were replaced. The alternative was to have Timken's prototype shop custom-fabricate replacement bearings identical to the originals, which would have been a VERY expensive undertaking.

A lot of really interesting info in the past few posts. Thanks guys

And it explains a lot about how those bearings go together and get fit to the pins. Perhaps the adapters are hammered? It could also be the cannon boxes working their fit back into the jaws......

dave

Somebody over on TO said that it might be the cross head, and that the clank was on the list of work to do after the trips this summer. Also could someone explain what rod clank is fully, whether it be on the crosshead or the rod Itself.