Tornado

Steel fireboxes are not new, they have been in use for quite some time, I believe the method of securing the stays differs on the continent, than what if the norm here, ON the MN/ WC class they are screwed into the firebox then machined over and are solid , The Continental way seems to prefer hollow stays that are welded in place, and only expanded, then welded Are hollow stays more prown to cracking due to the fact that they are hollow? everything seems to indicate that work on the firebox, was not done right, or that patching, in sections has added to the stresses, where as a whole new firebox, to the redesigned drawingss, would have been a better, and possibly cheaper, in the longer term, solution.

 

A lot depends on how far things go, if the new firebox design still has welded stays how has the problem been treated? the only way to make the stays more flexible is to make them longer, which would look to me like a narrower inner firebox, which means that the tube nest would be narrower, so this would also mean a new smokebox tubeplate, so the only parts re-used would be the barrell and outer wrapper, which are well into their service life, and probably into need of work, so would it all be a hiding to nothing? The heating stresses in welding the stays is another case in point, continental standards only require what We would term a seal weld, much less heat/stress We require a full penetration weld in a ground out weld prep, lots of heat. As I posted earlier Meiningem were not prepared to apply a CE on the boiler, which had to be the responsibility of the A1SLT, British welders were also employed by meiningem well, We've just had Easter, remember what Pontius Pilate did?


P.S. is it worth remembering what BR were doing with 16 year old A1's?

 

BR was ridding itself of 16 year old A1s not because they were life expired but because Steam had finished and they were being replaced by diesels. Younger standard classes went to the cutter’s torch when they were still in perfectly good order.

 

I'm not disputing any of that, but how many of the scrapped A1's hadn't had a boiler replacement in that time? like every other class the boilers were worked on/repaired/rebuilt and worn out again, Tornado is no longer a new locomotive.

 

… Which is why the plan was to fit a new boiler.

 

Presumably at the time it was believed that refurbishing the original boiler would be quicker than finishing building the first of the new ones. With hindsight, possibly that was a mistake, but we don't know what snags may appear with the new boiler when it is eventually delivered. Will it even fit straight away?

We have been told that there was a clearance problem between the cladding and the rear driving wheel, but how did that arise? What had changed between when the boiler came off and when it went back on?

 

Good questions that deserve an answer.

 

I wouldn’t hold your breath ….

 

I don't think you will ever be told what happened, but I'm guessing the people who overhauled the boiler, did not have the same degree of skill as those who built it, and mistakes were made, which lead to the problems, first getting the boiler to fit, and lead to two sets of brand-new tubes having to be scrapped I keep coming back to the question, why send the Boiler to Germany, when there were people here in the UK, who possibly might have not made those mistakes,

 

The first of the two new boilers is already almost two years late with no recent update on when it will be delivered. No recent update either on the success - or otherwise - of the fundraising club set up to top up the funds already set aside for Tornado’s overhaul. The target for this was £50k and the overhaul is now estimated to have cost c£1m. I wonder how much has been borrowed from PoW and how that will be repaid?

 

IIRC work to alter the foundation ring has been ongoing since the first overhaul, again a British design realised with continental practice proving to be not ideal.
The foundation ring is where in relation to the rear driving wheels ?

 

And that's IMHO, why really a new firebox should have been constructed , correcting the issues, found with the original design, with the stays, done in the same way as on the steel fireboxes used on the Bulleid Pacific's solid Monal stays that are machined over, not hollow secured only by expanding then seal welding, posibly using the same idea of U channel forgings for the foundation ring instead of a separate forging

 

Why did you not draw this to the attention of the A1 Trust initially? Maybe your expertise should be helpful to the new POW build ....on cam profiles for instance ? I'm being cynical... it's easy to criticize after an event... I presume you could do better ?

 

Would they have listened? could i have done better, Well i would have looked at what designs have worked for the last 80 odd years, and had steel fireboxes, what the best designs were, and then, adopted the design if possible, .
Bulleid 's design of firebox, seems to have stood the test of time, and If I were designing a firebox, i would have started with the basics of that design, and how it was stayed, and Incorportated what's been learnt from that into the design,

 

Based a a friend's experience in contacting them following the seized inside cylinder piston valve and mangled valve gear affair with 60163 some years ago, probably not.

 

Are you sure about that? I think that the thermic syphones were the achilles heel of Bulleid boilers as they were (are?) almost impossible to repair. Didn't Eastleigh have a stock of spare Bulleid fireboxes so that they could be replaced as a complete unit when the need arose. I think this may well have been common practice in parts of Europe and the US where steel boxes were in widespread use. Didn't a spare steel firebox come as part of the package when the Austerity 2-10-0s were obtained from Greece back in the 80s. And is there not at least one spare S160 firebox around somewhere?

Bulleid boilers were excellent in so many ways but they were not designed with longevity in mind.

Peter

 

The 3 ex-OSE WDs came with 1 spare inner box, and one spare assembly (inner & outer). From memory they didn't have thermic syphons (at least as carried by Bulleids), but just a pair of tubes from bottom to top.
The single S160 came with a complete firebox assembly (inner and outer, all stayed up) which I believe went into the engine while it was being overhauled at Ropley.

A not-very-good shot of them ready to leave Ipswich. (It will be 40 years ago come August Bank Holiday - where has the time.)
Pat

 

Was it Gordon that had one of those assemblies fitted?

 

Syphon repairs may not be straight forward but they can and have been done.

 

Monel is both very expensive and very challenging to machine, so I imagine that deicion was made on cost grounds, both in procuring the material and the machining cost to make the stays.

Again, somewhere, there must be a stress report for all this, where someone has done some proper engineering anlysis. Its all well and fine to talk about the past, but it doesnt tell us anything about the stresses in the box in service that we have today.

The fact is, in the old days, nearly eveything was treated as expendable and life expired after 10 years. We no longer live in that world.