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Replica builds for heritage lines.

Discussion in 'Steam Traction' started by 50044 Exeter, Apr 25, 2016.

  1. S.A.C. Martin

    S.A.C. Martin Part of the furniture

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    The feeling is mutual Paul. I also have you on "ignore". It's a good policy which, judging from the quality of your posts in this thread, will continue into the future. :)

    "Arch Big Chufferite?" I love all God's steam locos equally...;)
     
  2. S.A.C. Martin

    S.A.C. Martin Part of the furniture

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    RE the Q class - no, it's not the biggest freight locomotive. However given at the Bluebell Railway we also have the two 0-6-0s from the SECR, it is significantly larger and more powerful than both. I was quite grateful for its additional tractive effort and adhesive weight last night as the snow started to fall over the sussex hills.
     
  3. D1039

    D1039 Guest

    Please excuse my ignorance, how much/many uncatalogued drawings are there? I appreciate it's a not easily quantified answer and I'm not looking for a number, just a general feel for how much of the collection is catalogued/uncatalogued?

    Thanks

    Patrick
     
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  4. 30854

    30854 Resident of Nat Pres

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    Add my name to Patrick's request. All I know is that the issue seems to crop up every time a group wades through the archives.
     
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  5. johnofwessex

    johnofwessex Resident of Nat Pres

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    While I may well disagree with some contributors points of view, less so if I think that there is some thought behind them, with one or two exceptions most manage to come up with more than enough of interest to outweigh what I do not like about their contributions.

    So for that reason, and with one exception which I have considered but not acted on - not I might add on this thread I have never entertained the idea of ignoring anyone.
     
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  6. ragl

    ragl Well-Known Member

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    Paul Hitch has been ploughing this particular furrow for years and I, for one, would genuinely miss his posts on his favourite, pet subject, more for the splendid entertainment value if anything. I do think that Paul - if you will - has his tongue firmly planted in his cheek a lot of the time beside the sometimes soundly reasoned argument of his posts. So, carry on Paul, despite the fact that the whole of the railway preservation movement has been purely driven by WIBN.......

    Cheers,

    Alan
     
  7. paulhitch

    paulhitch Guest

    Thanks for your thoughts. It's a good opportunity to say I have only used "ignore" on three people, all because they have IMHO crossed the bounds of civility rather too often and one of these was not in respect of me. To avoid confusion, incivility is a bit more than "doesn't agree with me".

    Continuing to press for a little more consideration than pure W.I.B.N.

    Regards

    Paul H
     
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  8. S.A.C. Martin

    S.A.C. Martin Part of the furniture

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    Paul, as I (accurately) recall, you put me on ignore because I had the temerity to call you out for a number of particularly crass comments you made on the Brighton Atlantic thread.

    You’re not the victim there by any means.

    Still waiting on you to apologise for those comments - aimed at fellow railway enthusiasts who have put thousands of man hours, blood sweat and tears into a terrific project.

    No doubt you will continue to play the victim into the future when others “cross the line of civility” in your view.
     
  9. estwdjhn

    estwdjhn Member

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    Very true, however laser cutting can be had done essentially at the same cost as buying a blank plate, while water jet cutting remains irritatingly expensive.
    My favorite steel stockist/profiling outfit has just invested in a CNC drilling/boring bed of some sort, so I might try that for price next time I've the need...
     
  10. Steve

    Steve Resident of Nat Pres Friend

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    Water jet cutting won't give you a parallel hole, though, so you still have to machine it to a size suitable for tapping out. Probably easier just to drill or rotabroach.
     
  11. estwdjhn

    estwdjhn Member

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    Waterjet can give parallel holes - on fancy modern rigs, the jet is movable, and angled to give a straight edge on the job, and double the usual spread angle on the scrap.
    The same techniques are used in some fancy flame cutting and plasma cutting rigs - my pet profilers have a flame cutting rig that gives almost perfectly parallel edges through 3" plate!

    The big advantage of getting things like stay and rivet holes profiled in is the saving in marking out time, and the accompanying increase in accuracy. While the hole finish usually isn't good enough to tap through (although I have seen some waterjet cutting that probably is), one can just shove a bridge reamer through with an air drill, and it's job done - much faster than marking the holes out and broaching them.
     
  12. Steve

    Steve Resident of Nat Pres Friend

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    Time and technology have obviously left me behind, then! My experience of water jet cutting was that it was all sales hype and pretty poor when I got the finished product.
    Does this modern technology mean that my next boiler job will be a good bit cheaper when you quote me?;)
     
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  13. martin1656

    martin1656 Nat Pres stalwart Friend

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    Thats assuming you can get the correct grade of boiler plate, with the forging( pardon the pun) of material certificates in the far east recently how can you be sure that the new plate is the right spec? and how availible is good quality copper these days, then you have to ask the question, if your replacing or making an all new firebox can you substitute a steel box with changes in the staying pattern, to an copper box? with RO water and regular washouts would a steel box last as long as a copper one now ?
     
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  14. W.Williams

    W.Williams Well-Known Member

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    Water jet is good from my experience. Used widely in Oil and Gas, we used it to cut API5D 5-1/8 drill string, demanding parallel cuts. S-135 is pretty tough!

    As for material certs, using reputable suppliers is key right now. The global markets are awash with rouge certificates, so its best to pay more for assured quality.
     
    Last edited: Dec 11, 2017
  15. Hirn

    Hirn Member

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    Very interested. Knew twenty or thirty years ago how surprisingly accurate a flame cutter could readily be - accurate enough to cut the teeth for a rack out of slab,
    and not a high tech flame - oxypropane. But you did need to set it off from a small drilled hole - there are tricks to everything.

    And it is such tricks that make all the difference. I had not realised that you could by allowing for the spread of the jet in water jet cutting get such an improvement
    in accuracy - it sounds like it may be an order of magnitude.

    Thinking: welding has been applied to boilers - with unexpected side effects: thicker plate comes out lighter - but not developments in cutting and setting out.
    Would it be possible to use lasers to get stay holes parallel in both inner and outer fire boxes and then grind out the hardening round the holes? Possibly by
    "centreless " grinding with enough accuracy to obviate reaming? The possibilities of 3D graphics/solid geometry by computing for setting out probably
    needs large computers and development - the are some suprisingly old CAD programmes in use but big computers are almost taken for granted. ( This sort of thing has been used for boiler design: not news for everybody, but on this forum, go to Mutual Improvement Classes, "Locomotive MIC" & "Boiler Design and Construction" where contribution No 7
    by W Williams is instantly illuminating. Also Meiningen having never met such a shape as a banjo steam collector on large LNER boilers referred the one
    for Tornado to finite stress analysis on the Bundesbahn's best computer - of course all has gone well with such an elongated dome but, in fairness,
    it must have been the first one welded on and not riveted.)

    Boiler are so exigent and essential - safety, design, manufacture - which with the care and checks - oversight, insurance, certification, inspection -
    all ramify at compound interest as cost, that any good effective help to mitigate what it takes should be explored and taken up.
    You can reckon to get an engine out of the way on on one cylinder but no boiler......
     
    Last edited: Dec 11, 2017
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  16. fergusmacg

    fergusmacg Resident of Nat Pres

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    I read somewhere that the hardening caused by laser cutting is not very deep (less than .003") so it's interesting that estwdjhn had so much difficulty?
     
  17. Steve B

    Steve B Well-Known Member

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    I hadn't realised what could be done with water jet cutting until I saw this a few years ago (read through and you'll find several references to the process):
    http://www.bluebell-railway.co.uk/bluebell/locos/atlantic/latest_09.html

    Steve B
     
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  18. Hirn

    Hirn Member

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    You are quite right about the need about the need for good water treatment with a steel box - in N Wales you need to ensure some alkalinity in the water.

    You are right about the grade, which is important but not as critical as copper where some arsenic makes all the difference to its strength and durability
    -there was some coming and going when arsenic came to be removed as standard to improve conductivity when the electrical industry got going

    However, a steel inner fire box is stiffer than a copper one and there need to be differences, it is not as simple as just using a thinner plate.
    Wether because it was cheaper or sourcing difficulties the Keithley and Worth Valley replicated a copper firebox with steel and it was not a suceess,
    soon abandoned and later replaced. (With much smaller boilers it may have been misleading that there was and is not such trouble on the Talylyn
    or in new boilers on the Ffestiniog - though according to a footplateman "Douglas's digestion" was impaired.)

    The Americans never normally used copper inner boxes and they were of good grade wrought iron before they were steel.
    Ahrons's "The British Steam Locomotive 1825 -1925" has a page on steel: particularly why with the Crewe steelworks, Webbs particular interest on steel,
    and that both Webb and the Wordsell then senior at Crewe had been in the USA and employed at Altoona where the Pennsylvania was one of the few
    American railroads to build their own locomotives, steel fireboxes were not a success on the LNWR in the 1870s. He does not discuss stiffness much but the details
    of an early and successful attempt suggest there was some idea of it c 1860.
    During WWI shortages steel was substituted for copper: the ROD 2-8-0s with steel boxes were not preferred and the original boilers on the first batch of
    the Highland Clans - the four delivered in 1919 - gave embarrassing trouble, all the final batch had copper boxes. This was presumably due to
    using steel instead of copper but not altering the nesessary details.
    For export they were were successfully made here and when Bullied needed steel fireboxes for the Merchant Navies - because of the pressure
    as well as the thermic syphons - the first came from North British and the main firebox shell of itself has never given trouble - to help with the stiffness
    do have longer stays and hence a wider water space than usual. (There was considerable trouble early on before the water treatment was altered to the French "TIA"
    - Treatment Integral Armande - and the syphons are a weakness but - no doubt with North British knowhow the actual steel inner as fitted, with an appreciable
    extra weight from the wider foundation ring - is well established as quite sound.)

    The results of the longer stays are quite considerable: a smaller grate, in particular a narrower one, which means a rearrangement of the firebox tube plate which
    would need to be about 2 inches narrower, this is enough to ensure that you will probably have to lose some tubes which will mean a new front tube plate.
    It is one of the examples of how on a steam locomotive if you change one thing others need to be adjusted to keep everything in harmony and it may be better to
    stick with what it was originally. (Says me: always inclined to wonder why when the old Paris Orleans treated its veteran Forqenot express 2-4-2s of 1876 to steel
    boiler shells between the wars - excellent locos, still working local fasts about 1950 but then looking like the design of design of 1864 they were developed from -
    however, brand new boilers but no superheaters, not even two flues.)

    Popping a steel box into anything like a larger firebox - say over 10 sq ft grate area - is to be done with circumspection, certainly to be watched afterwards.
    If to be done, reckon to investigate wether it would need a complete redesign, recalculation and safety case.
    Done: watch the water treatment with serious care.
     
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  19. estwdjhn

    estwdjhn Member

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    Possibly, but in reality a tape measure usually does the job at rather less expense. Pushing stay holes true with bridging reamers is a pretty quick and easy operation.

    The difficulty we had with the laser cut holes was probably due to the cutting action of a bridge reamer - they take very shallow cuts as they sort of "peel" the edge of the hole away, so even a thin layer of very hard material is a fight with them as they refuse to break through it, or blunt rapidly in the process. I seem to recall getting round the problem by opening the hole up a fraction first with a multi-flute drill, which cuts end on, rather than side on to the hole.

    As for steel vs copper, you pays your money... It's perfectly possible to make steel fireboxes that work well enough, and have reasonable life spans. I've just removed one that went in an Austerity to replace a copper box in around 1955, and ran until about 6 years ago without many long periods out of traffic, and it hadn't been given water treatment for at least the first 25 years of that, equally last week I saw a narrow gauge loco boiler which was in need of a new steel box after a massive 7 years from new.

    Water treatment is certainly a consideration (the 7 year old boiler I mention clearly had never seen any) as will be the type of usage (flogging the thing all the time, and particularly pushing it into steam fast doesn't improve boiler life), but so should be design - not just with regard to the staying and it's flexibility or otherwise, but also things like the sizes of the waterways, and shape of the throatplate. To improve the lifespan of a firebox, you really need to ensure that it doesn't overheat, which means it needs adequate water flow around it - not all the designs I've seen for steel boxed boilers really seem to have had much thought gone into this area.
     
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  20. johnofwessex

    johnofwessex Resident of Nat Pres

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    How though did the rest of the world manage with steel fireboxes?
     

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