Steam & Excursion > Monday Meets: On the Texas State Railroad

At Maydelle, Texas back on 05/11/2013, the Texas State Railroad's eastbound "Railfan Photographer's Special", pulled by T&P Ten-Wheeler 316, holds the main for the passing westbound train from Rusk Texas.

Larry W. Grant
(olddude41)
Dallas, Texas

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Sweet!

PQM

Posted from Android

Sweeter than you think.....

2013 was the last year 316 was in steam, that day was the only time that year we had a passenger train meet at Maydelle.  316 (when it was TSRR 201) was always the unwanted step-child of the TSRR.  No one liked it and several years before one engineer actually succeeded in "breaking it" when a pin fell out of the valve gear and he kept running it until the valve motion turned into bent steel spaghetti.  With a little valve tinkering, 316 turned into a quite capable little mill, and I liked running her.  Alas, serious firebox issues were discovered as a result of poor design of the replacement boiler.  316 was parked after the 2013 season, and unless some minor funding miracle develops, I doubt you will see her in service for a long time..
 

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I sure like that ole gal.

Earl, can you elaborate on the "poor design" of the replacement boiler?


Earlk Wrote:
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> Sweeter than you think.....
>
> 2013 was the last year 316 was in steam, that day
> was the only time that year we had a passenger
> train meet at Maydelle.  316 (when it was TSRR
> 201) was always the unwanted step-child of the
> TSRR.  No one liked it and several years before
> one engineer actually succeeded in "breaking it"
> when a pin fell out of the valve gear and he kept
> running it until the valve motion turned into bent
> steel spaghetti.  With a little valve tinkering,
> 316 turned into a quite capable little mill, and I
> liked running her.  Alas, serious firebox issues
> were discovered as a result of poor design of the
> replacement boiler.  316 was parked after the
> 2013 season, and unless some minor funding miracle
> develops, I doubt you will see her in service for
> a long time..
>  

In a nutshell, the boiler was built with a 3/4" barrel, 3/4" wrapper sheet (outer firebox), and a 3/4" firebox (sides, crown, door sheet, etc)  From what the boiler experts tell me, you can make a firebox the same size as the wrapper.  Because to the action of the fire, the firebox expands and contracts at a much greater rate than the wrapper sheet.  But, because it is so thick and has such mass, and it is held in place by the wrapper sheet, it has to go somewhere.  Additionally, it was built with staybolts with much greater than required tensile strength.  Instead of the bolt flexing, it simply dug a hole in the crown sheet around the staybolt.  In about 1-1/4 years of actual days of service, nearly 1/2 of the firebox sheet has been lost around the staybolts.  the attached shows the damage - all this from 420+- days of service with good, treated water.

The fix is to replace the firebox with a proper sized crownsheet, with somewhere around 1/2" material.

The boiler that was made for the Santa Fe Pacific is even worse.  I was built entirely of 1" material (barrel, wrapper, firebox, and all).

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Earl, so the staybolts were too rigid for the crownsheet, which required more room for expansion and contraction?

Such a shame to hear that about the Pacific's boiler as well. Guess it's safe to say they did not have a qualified engineer reviewing and approving the boiler designs for these two? Were actual boiler designs done with complete calculations or did they just trust and leave it up to the vendor to supply a matched replacement boiler with no independent review?

TrackGuy

Posted from Android

I have seen the original drawings supplied by the boiler shop, along with the original specifications.  It's all spelled out in the specs.  They got what they paid and approved everything that was done.   It seems that the folks at Texas Parks & Wildlife weren't as hip on locomotive boiler construction as they ought to be.  If the boilers were used in a powerplant situation of constant firing rates and fairly constant loads, the boilers might have been OK, but not in locomotive service where you go from drifting down hill to working wide open in a short span of time.

To second Earl's comments, 316 was IMHO the queen of the TSR fleet in recent years.   28 and 7 are powerful enough that they don't have to work to hard with a 6 car train on the 2+% grades on the TSR, but the 316 had to work to get over the road.  That is what made riding behind her a real steam experience.   Listening to 316 on Oakland and Fairchild hills was like listening to a symphony in steam.  She was the loudest saturated engine that I have been around for a long time, and as a representative locomotive of what the TSR was and is (basically a glorified logging railroad or a rural branch line) she carries the torch for all of the te wheelers that worked those operations all over the south.  28 and 7 are excellent representatives of what freight locos were on those operations, but the 316 stands in for all of those ten wheelers that hauled the varnish on those lines from 1900 through the end of steam.

And, the T&P has a whole lot of 10-wheelers, many had larger drivers 67" applied, and superheaters  along with piston valves.  But 316 is in her pure form except for an added speedometer,  and to hear her beat her heart out on those hills is something you will not forget.

Wish I knew if the TSR state people are ever  going to fix it.