Saturday 17 & 24 May 2014

Tube removal continued, working from the top down, steady progress made. Work also progressed on the removal of fittings to enable the cladding to be removed.

Saturday 10 May 2014

Another day of superheater element removal, a bit easier this time round as we knew what we were up for. The last two rows of seven (a total of 14 elements) were removed and now onto the small tubes.

To explain how to remove the small tubes its probably best to explain how they were originally put in. Basically its like this;

1. Each tube is cut to the correct length allowing for the correct amount of overhang at both ends.
2. They are inserted into the boiler from the smoke box end and starting from the bottom row inserted through the tube plate. The far end of the tube is pushed through its corresponding hole in the firebox tube plate. This is repeated until all tubes are fitted.
3. The tubes are then set with the correct amount of overhang at the firebox end to allow for beading.
4. Each tube is then expanded until its tight against the tube plate. Regular checks to ensure the tube has not moved whilst expanding upsetting the beading allowance. Repeat until all are expanded at the firebox end.
5. The smoke box end is then expanded.
6. The fire box end is then beaded over to form a smooth rounded edge.

   

   Beading The Tubes

7. The tube is then sealed with a bead of weld.

To remove you basically do the reverse. The bead/weld is removed, the inside of the tube is warmed up which allows it to shrink when it cools down and then the tube is punched out with a special drift or punch. They are removed from top to bottom so the tube can rest on the ones below as your sliding them out.

Sounds easy doesn't it, but again its hard work.

We removed some of the top rows before we called it a day.

Saturday 3 May 2014

Today we will tackle the removal of the superheater elements, should be easy enough, just remove the nut and pull them out, WRONG..!! bloody hard work.

Attempted to remove the superheater element nuts but realised they weren't going anywhere..!!!
Had to call in reinforcements by the name of oxy, the first nut was warmed up but no luck. Heated it up again and got it to budge and with much effort removed the nut freeing up the element. Back breaking stuff. After the nut had been removed, the element needed to be dragged out of the flue and man handled to a set of trestles. By the end of the day two rows had been removed and we called it a day, absolutely stuffed.

Thursday 1 May 2014

The last of the remaining obstructing parts of the spark arrester were removed, which now gave us full access to the super heater elements.

 

Another one of the small tubes was removed to allow for the tube punch which was manufactured earlier to be fine tuned by Harvey who was of the mid week crew that helped put her together 20 years ago.

 

 A 1-11/16 socket was also purchased to remove the superheater element bolts which hopefully would commence the following Saturday.

Friday 4 April 2014

The new replacement small tubes have arrived...

Saturday 29 March 2014

Today we achieved a lot with many hands coming to assist, word must be getting out that things were happening with the old girl...

We removed the blower and brake exhaust pipes from the smoke box, this was followed by the petticoat also from the smoke box. Doesn't sound like much but the petticoat at my rough calculations is over 150Kg, It was an operation lifting it out of the smoke box and onto a trolley without breaking it (without a crane). We used the smoke box door as the crane. By removing the petticoat it has given us better access to the rear of the spark arrestor segments and super heater elements.

Saturday 22 March 2014

The start of what will be the restoration of S549 to service commenced today, that is the labour side of the project. The hot weather has just about passed and what better time to start but now.

To get to the tubes, first the spark arrester needs to be removed followed by the petticoat and then the superheater elements. So work commenced on the spark arrester, where possible the wedges holding the panels in place were removed but where they would not budge the oxy was bought in to help out. By the end of the day a large portion of the work was complete.