Day 1 Antonito.
D&RGW 315 spent the winter in the C&T engine house in Antonito. A little dusty from setting around. Spent the winter with her big sister 489.
Fellow crew member Gene and I were tasked with replacing the “blower”, We had some issues with the Blower clogging up on out last excursion, and one of the projects for the winter was to make a “New and Improved” blower.
For those that don’t know: This is the inside of the smokebox. In the top of the pic, is the petticoat pipe. It collects the used steam from the cylinders ( that big pipe in the bottom) that is shot up to the smoke stack. The steam creates a draft up the stack, that draws the hot gases from the firebox, thru the boiler.
This is our all new design for the Blower ring. This will fit around the steam tube. It is powered by steam being passed thru the feed pipe on the right, into the ring and shot out thru the nozzles and up into the petticoat pipe creating a draft to draw the fire thru the boiler while sitting, when there is no steam from the cylinders.
Gene uses the cutting torch to clean up the old mount, and cut holes for the new Blower ring. BTW the smoke box is a really dirty thing.
Here’s the finished blower around the steam nozzle.
We (the 315 crew) removed the gages last fall and had them re-calibrated. Crew member Paul re-installs onto of the boiler in the cab.
Dennis and I replace the re-calibrated pop off valves. BTW there is two “Pop off” valves on 315. One high pressure, on the engineers side and a lower pressure one on the fire mans side.
BTW, the nut on the bottom of the valve is about 5" across the flats, and has to be tight enough to handle the full 165 lbs. of pressure.
Thats about it for our first 1/2 day. We cleaned up, and went into town for dinner.
Heres downtown Antonito CO. A really fun place to vacation.
Yah, thats about all of the town.
Back at it tomorrow:
How dirty is it, here is my flashlight, clean went in.
Tomorrow, replace the re-built air pump.
This is the gearing that drives the rotation of the unit.
And a friend shoots me up on the engine. I’m on the right.
Thats our 5 chime whistle in the back, High pressure pop off on the left(165 lbs), and the low pressure (160 lbs) on the right.
First smoke !!
As the boiler warms up, things start to expand, you don’t want to heat the water to fast, to allow for thermal equalibum. As things heat up and pressure builds, you look around the boiler for Things, and stuff. One of the things we check is the stay bolts, They connect the inside of the fire box with the outside of the boiler shell. These are the stay bolts on the engineers side, low on the side. There are hollow, so if they break or crack, they leak to the outside and you can tell that they need to be replaced.
When you have a valve that leaks at the packing you usually just tighten the packing nut, But when you have 160 lbs of live steam behind it, you have to be very careful not to break the valve, Very dangerous to your health. In this case I tightened it up as much as I dare, and we let it leak, until it’s not under pressure.
Oh and BTW it’s snowing…
Im going to bed, and tomorrow we service 315 and then home. Many more pics to come.