As we are restoring 6029 outdoors we always make a note as to what we can expect with the weather for the upcoming workday. Showers with the possibility of rain and at 9am things were quite wet. Lucky for us the showers had cleared by lunch time and ironically we were feeling the effects of the sun by day’s end. As most of the loco ops guys were in Sydney with our operating locomotive 3016, the BBQ was held down on the 6029 work site. The 4468 diesel guys came over for lunch and as usual we solved all of the world’s problems before we went back to work.
The first bogie is now almost complete with only a few minor tasks left to do. These being the fitting of the pedestal keep plates and the manufacture of a new centre pivot bowl. The lateral control springs had to be fitted before lowering the frame into position. They were assembled with the aid of the ten ton hydraulic portable power pack. It took a few goes and we were all happy when the last pin was fitted. The reassembly went very smoothly, however the bolts holding the inner manganese liners had to be modified as they were rubbing against the suspension equalising beams. The bogie work site is starting to look like a traditional bogie repair shop and visitors can now compare a completed bogie with the striped down version.
Ian is continuing to fit the boiler cladding sheets and as a result of his efforts the drivers side is now complete. He is now concentrating on the fireman side. Now that drivers side cladding is fitted the injector feed pipes and starting valve were trial fitted and as expected some adjustments are required. Paul removed the old insulating rope to facilitate the annealing of these pipes. One advantage of copper feed pipe is that they can be adjusted for alignment after annealing. Unfortunately steam engineering of the 1950’s didn’t allow for true replication with manufacturing. As a result of this each boiler is slightly different dimensionally and most pipes have to be adjusted for fit. Ian has also experienced this issue with the cladding sheet metal and several trail fits and adjustments are required before final fitting.
Our next workday day is Sunday 21 March 2010.
