3801 Overhaul

Does anyone know how the overhaul of C38 3801 is progressing?

last update on the overhaul website was in April?

 

According to the NSWRTM's E news, nothing overly spectacular. Just more progress.

 

More progress.

http://heritageexpress.com.au/pages/legendsofsteam/3801/default.htm

 

Yet more progress.


http://www.heritageexpress.com.au/pages/legendsofsteam/3801/updates/3801update-2010-11-17.htm


The frame is re-wheeled.

 

Boiler trial fitted.

http://3801.com.au/

 

Any more news please since their 23rd November update?

 

This has been posted elsewhere by someone from NSW who isn't involved with 3801 directly but knows people who are:

"1. The boiler is too long. Maybe it was incorrectly designed that way? It IS a
new design, even if its shadow closely resembles the original's.

2. The barrel is not co-axial witht the firebox (skewiff) by approx 10".

3. I was told the conical barrel is improperly developed/formed, and this may be
the cause of the preceding para?

4. The tubeplates (For'd and Aft) are out of parallel way beyond acceptable
limits.

5. There are butt joints where the plates are well exceeding the allowable
limits of lack of co-planarity (3/8" out of line was one figure I was told).

That is not an entire catalogue of the defects, BTW."

I can't state the above is accurate as I don't have first hand knowledge but do know it is true there are serious issues with the Meiningen built boiler.............

 

So were else was this posted they seemed happy when they trial fitted it in November pictures on there website.

 

steam_tech on Yahoo Groups.

 

http://www.railsafetyconference.com...erhaul-update-of-famous-3801/?searchterm=None
Nothing 'official' since then apparently.

 

i find it hard to believe that anyone would have built a boiler with so many obvious errors surely things like the tube plates would have been noticed you would think? its best to wait for an official statement on this before believing that its completly true ,the boiler might well have problems but to deliver it and hope that the customer wouldnt notice, does that sound right to you ? Boilers out of true is nothing new, i can remember, wasnt the boiler fitted to one of the MHR mogols, 31625 i think, didnt the front tube plate / smokebox joint end up being found to be missaligned slightly

 

There is some, shall we say, "anecdotal" comment on the robustly named Australian http://railbastard.freeforums.org/ site. There is a thread under the "general b*ll*ckery / getting up people" forum (can't imagine why Nat Pres doesn't have one of those), although it has the usual newsgroup tendency to wander off topic. Makes Nat Pres discussions look a bit tame.

 

What interests me about 3801's recent troubles is regarding the choice of Meiningen to construct the boiler.

Although I have no issues against the German manufacturer itself (they've done as good a job with Tornado's boiler as most of us could expect, given the circumstances), but when I went to see her in February 2009, one of the officials at her base informed me that this wasn't the best deal they had come across.
The cheapest quote for a new boiler they found was from Mitsubishi Heavy Industries for $1.25Million AU Dollars; with the added bonus of a spare boiler being built free of charge. The reason for this, apparently, being down to spontaneous generosity!

What happened to this deal, I can't fathom; there doesn't seem to be anything published regarding this agreement.
Could anyone shed some light on this subject?

 

...you COULD say that!
Apparently the Japanese were making this a special case just for the fact that this was for 3801; then engine that all Japanese rail enthusiasts flock to see whenever they go to Australia. I'm not sure how the quality of the work would have been like, but the use of a spare boiler if one develops problems seems to be forward thinking. Atleast, once boilers are swapped, the engine can keep on running while the failed boiler is being repaired.

 

i should imagine that it would have been very high quality like them or not, the japs do tend to build in reliability into most things they make( recent toyota cars excepted) how much would have it have in gb£ equated to assuming that both boilers(A1& 3801)are about the same size?

 

By way of todays currency exchange, it would have cost around £838k.

I think I could probably see why they went for the Germans, if a boiler similar size to Tornados' would be around £500k less...

 

A statement has been issued on the troubles with 3801's new boiler:

http://www.heritageexpress.com.au/pages/legendsofsteam/3801/updates/3801update-2011-08-10.htm