Home What's New Building the Daylight Daylight Tender Observation Car Engine Stand Gondolas Gauge Bell Ringer Air Pump Gas Switcher Taffy Puller

#21 Stationary Runner

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Getting nowhere fast!

Also made a stationary runner (for lack of a better description) to easily turn the drivers of the Northern while on the engine stand.  This helps in timing and eventually running it on air.  Used 16 old bearings attached to angle iron.  I cut the angle iron on each side into 4 separate sections.  I then bolted the bearing runners to the engine stand.  Here's what it looks like.

 

We'll the next thing I had to do is figure out some way of turning the drivers to "break in" everything I did so far.  I wanted to do this to determine if anything was binding and to wear in the driver bearings, crossheads, crosshead slides, pistons, piston rods, side rods and the connecting rods.  Couldn't run it on air because the valve gear wasn't ready.  There are tons of ways to do this and I quickly realized that I could spend many hours making something work.  I took the fast easy way out.  I'm not proud of what it looks like but "IT WORKS".  Basically, I took a toothed belt I had laying around and put it on the rear left driver (had to remove the brake hangers for that).  The other end went on the drill chuck of an old 1/2" drill which was strapped to the frame.  Looks ugly, but I lubed her up and locked the drill in the "on" position and let her run for about a half hour.  Was it cool...  This was the next best thing to getting her to run on air.  Need I say, but everything worked excellent and I didn't have to make any changes.  I noticed some metal shavings on the stand by the crosshead, but I realized that it was only from the breaking in process.  Before I ran it, it was somewhat hard to rotate the drivers.  After I ran it, I could easily move the drivers with one hand.

 

The best part of all of this is that it takes less than 5 minutes to setup and take down.

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#01 So It Began #2 Frame #3 Drivers #4 Quartering #5 Trucks #6 Frame & Wheels #7 Side Rods #8 Cylinder Boring #9 Cyl/Valve Liners #10 Cyl/Valve Cover #11 Pistons & Valves #12 Cyl Assembled #13 Boiler #14 Suspension #15 Crosshead #16 Brakes #17 Link Support #18 Bell #19 Crosshead (again) #20 Connecting Rod #21 Stationary Runner #22 Smokebox #23 Valve Gear #24 Running on Air #25 Piston Rings #26 Axle Pump #27 Plating #28 Lubrication #29 Blast Nozzle #30 Stack #31 Steam Turret #32 Burner Manifold #33 Mounting Brackets #34 Boiler Insulation #35 Jacketing #36 Cab #37 Throttle #38 Reverse Lever #39 Track Test #40 Smokebox Access #41 Electric Blower #42 Turbulators #43 Burner Test #44 Piping #45 Cab (part 2) #46 Inaugural Run #47 Post Steamup #48 Smokebox Lights #49 Running Boards #50 Pilot #51 Skirting #52 Paint #53 Lettering #54 Whistle #55 Skyline Casing #56 Fuel System Mods #57 Odds and Ends #58 Turbos

Home What's New Building the Daylight Daylight Tender Observation Car Engine Stand Gondolas Gauge Bell Ringer Air Pump Gas Switcher Taffy Puller

 

 

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Last modified: 03/02/2018.