Railroading Heritage of Midwest America has been hard at work taking big steps towards our goal of hydrostatic tests for Union Pacific #3985 and Union Pacific #5511 these past few weeks. Following the success of “Silvis Train Days & Classic Cars”, our team wasted no time and went right back to work on the two locomotives. With summer now upon us, let’s take a moment to highlight some of our biggest accomplishments since April.

We are getting significantly closer to a hydrostatic test on Union Pacific #3985 than ever before. The last batch of flexible staybolts for the wrapper sheet and backhead have arrived, in addition to the staybolts for the combustion chamber that were removed when the rear tube sheet was removed. 

In addition to the batch of flexible staybolts that have arrived, so has the rear tube sheet! The sheet was sent to be stress relieved, and then to have the tube and flue holes water jetted according to the original Union Pacific drawing. The sheet was lasered upon arrival, and crews are now preparing to take the next steps in prepping it for fitment and installation.

This is to allow the sheets to flex during the welding process. Additional stress in a firebox is not ideal, due to the firebox being under enough stress as it already is because of the numerous heat cycles it goes through in its lifetime.

Once again, another very significant milestone has been achieved on our 2-10-2, #5511! In conjunction with the staybolt work on #3985, crews have also been working to prep the dry pipe and superheater header for installation on the locomotive again. And now, the superheater header and dry pipe have been joined together and are now fixed inside the boiler- ready for a hydrostatic test between the two flanges.

The dry pipe was constructed from scratch- due to the lack of drawings available for this particular locomotive. The TTT Type drawings are very limited, so our very skilled crews are having to do lots of work to perform the proper calculations and create new drawings in order to match what was in the locomotive originally- while still meeting FRA safety standards. When the original dry pipe was constructed in the early 1920’s, it measured much thinner than most modern day dry pipes.

With this being the case, similar to the additional staybolt we installed covered in a past update, the dry pipe did not meet our crew’s safety standard. Therefore, the dry pipe was upsized in metal thickness and cut to length. From there, our friends at Quad City Engineering created our brand new flanges to go on each end of the dry pipe. They were then heated to 500 degrees Farenheit, and then pressed onto each end of the pipe and then welded on each end to ensure a steam tight seal. Each seating surface was then lapped to its respective surface, and then the pipe was placed inside the boiler to be lapped to the front tube sheet.

While this was going on, we also began work cleaning the superheater header. Each surface was lapped to its respective surface and then prepped for installation. Each seat for the Type A superheaters was polished and cleaned- ready to be lapped into each superheater unit individually. Once the dry pipe was lapped and ready, the superheater header was then carefully lifted into the smokebox and joined the dry pipe and sealed together. From there, we are now transitoning our focus to lapping the throttle valve and prepping it for installation after tube sheets are dressed and tubes are installed.

Another very important project we would like to highlight in this update is the installation of our brand new track into the shop, Track Zero. Zero is located in our truck shop, just south of our ramp tracks 1-4. This track was removed at some point in the Rock Island dieselization era, and has not been used except to work on locomotive trucks. RRHMA has been working closely with TN Track Services out of Peoria, Illinois to not only re-facilitate our track, but to bring our vision of RRHMA-Silvis to life. TN Track Services was more than willing to tackle this project. At the end of May, Track Zero saw it’s first train rolling on it in decades.

So much more has been going on at RRHMA-Silvis, and we are extremely excited to share it with you all. Without members like yourselves, we would not be able to work as hard and as fast as we can. And for that, we thank each and every one of you for taking the time to donate to our organization and our restoration projects. Look at the pictures below for even more accomplishments from our dedicated steam crew!