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.