P2 Locomotive Company and related matters

The tender wheelsets for P2 class No. 2007 Prince of Wales have returned to DLW following balancing at Sulzer in Teesside.

 

Apparently balancing a wheelset by grinding out bits of the rim is normal...

 

Just can’t get those LNER knock-on weights any more. I don’t recall this happening on Tornado’s tender wheels. Assume you’d have to repeat every time they fit new tyres?

 

I would have thought the tyres would be considerably more uniform than the centres. Presumably Tornado has disc wheels, so the machining for balancing would look different.

I seem to remember from the RCTS books that the LNER did not originally balance tender wheels, but realised in the 30’s that it would improve the high speed ride considerably.

 

I used to work on the Wheel Balancer occasionally at BREL York as a relief machinist.
A Wheel set came to me direct from the wheel lathe.
I would then set it up on the balancer rollers bolted by the threaded connection on the axle end, driven by an electric motor.
Any previous weights were removed. Nut and bolt job with spanner or if difficult an air chisel.
When ready the balancer was started and rotated the wheelset.
The Electronics then worked out what weight to add and were on the disc it should be fitted.
All this was very similar in method to a similar set up in your local Kwik Fit tyre depot, just on a heavier scale.

As an aside the whole shop I worked in was devoted to Wheel set renewal.
First was the strip down of a bogie with all small parts rebushed on the 50t general press.
Then if a new tyre was needed, the wheel set was set up vertically in the lathe to remove the Gibson ring then into the fire to
expand the tyre till it dropped off.
Then measurement was then carried out to create a matched Tyre to suit a skimmed Disc and repeated at the other end.
A return to the fire then occurred to fit the new tyres.
New Discs and Axles could also be fitted here, using the 200t Axle Press.
The finished wheel set was then moved to the Wheel Lathe for profiling and matching.
If a BR 1 Wheelset needed any Journal work that went to the journal lathe mainly to have the bearing surfaces rolled.
From there the last stop was the balancer before axle boxes could be fitted, usually by induction heating of the new roller bearings.

 

Was that the machine made by CEMB in Italy?
I did some work on one of the ones that went there but lost touch after installation.

 

As an engineer, what a wonderful description of procedures involved. I commissioned some wheel lathes in my career but never got to see the full process. Many thanks for your dialogue... very interesting....

 

My period on the balancer was between 1985 and 1987. When repair work finished.
No idea as to make of Balancer but the Wheel Lathe was a Hegenscheidt

 

With the wheels balanced, surely a quick win is to build up the kit of parts that are to hand to build up the tender.
It was mentioned in January, and see no reason to not start, manpower dependent.

As @Sheff says, fitting the boiler, without doing the cylinder block makes design and measurement for the inside valve gear difficult.
Much better to complete that and be happy before fitting the block, then boiler.

 

Deleted

 

If nothing else, it'd give the Trust something to crow about at their Convention.