P2 Locomotive Company and related matters

This is what the brick arch looks like in a Bulleid Pacific

 

Mechanical engineers work to the nearest thou; civil engineers work to the nearest brick and boiler smiths work to the nearest boiler.

 

Does anyone build arches out of brick these days? I thought refractory concrete was the norm.

 

I’m going back a while …. a long while. The bricks were probably ‘acquired’ after the end of steam in the NW. There were drawings showing which pattern brick went where for various LMS and BR locos.
The arch was supported on a pair of bearer rods, one each side, which located on top of a row of studs screwed into the side of the firebox. There was a corresponding groove in the outer row of bricks.

Am I showing my age here?

 

No... knowledge and experience... irreplaceable....

 

Absolutely spot on! You can machine steel to any shape you want but if it need it to act structurally it needs to be done in a proper sequence of machining and stress relieving or it will just fall apart in use. A typical example being connecting and driving rods which always used to be forged IIRC. Blue Peter's would have been smashed to smithereens if they had just been lumps of machined steel.

 

You make no mention that components have to be made out of the correct grade of steel.

 

Flame cut and machined coupling rods became quite common on later build industrial diesel locomotives built by the likes of Hunslet, Sentinel, Hudswell, etc. and quite often the increased section at the bearings was done by welding plates onto the base rods. I’m unaware of such fabrications causing problems.

 

Well said Std Tank, but then hopefully you would use the specified grade for the component you were making anyway.

 

But if they were stress relieved after all the welding and machining there probably would not be a problem. I do not know if that was done or not. My experience is heavy mechanical engineering, not specific locomotive engineering. Engineering has moved on in leaps and bounds since those days, wonderfully!

 

One would hope so, but.