Our latest Build 11 work session was held on November 12-14.
Jason Lamontagne and Earl Leavitt have begun welding components to the valve gear tumbling shaft, taking care to ensure the shaft did not deform during welding. The tumbling shaft is shown supported by the chain fall in preparation for further welding. The two rocker arms are also seen on the table.Joe Monty joined us and began work on the front coupler; he’s done with the rear coupler. We have a drawing for the coupler modifications and Joe is grinding away excess material.Excess material is also being removed from the coupler shank.We received the partially machined driving boxes from Mountain Machine Works on Wednesday.Jason, Harold Downey and Gordon Cook planned to press the crown brasses into the driving boxes. Because the brasses are intentionally bigger than the corresponding space in the boxes, we first measured the interference for all the brasses.We wanted the brasses to slide along the “ears” and shear excess brass from the top and sides of the boxes so we applied press grease to the brasses.Starting to press… We used our 80 ton Baldwin shop press to “gently” press each crown brass into its driving box.Completing the press… Each brass required almost 20 tons of force to be fully seated.One of four completed assemblies. We returned the driving boxes to Mountain Machine Works on Thursday – a one day turnaround! Because installing the brasses spread the sides of the boxes as we had calculated, Mountain Machine Works will now perform the final machining for these assemblies.The driving wheel crankpins are fabricated with a ridge located on the inside face of the counterweight. These are designed to be peened over to prevent absolutely any motion of the crankpin in its seat. Harold and Quentin Bethune did a great job beading these crankpins.Rick Sisson spent Wednesday and Thursday preparing areas on the forward frame, spring hangers, equalizers and driving wheel assemblies for priming (including masking).On Friday morning, Harold, Gordon, Quentin and Rick busied themselves priming these components. We used a two part epoxy made by our friends at Epifanes. We now prefer the light gray color over black because it’s easier to find missed spots!By noontime all these components were primed. We will apply two color coats as time allows.Gordon brought in his 1/8th scale model of our locomotive. Gordon, Jason and Harold used the working model to investigate some brake gear design issues.Earl has been spending time in the shop fabricating two link hanger brackets – part of the valve gear assembly. Here Earl is boring the hole for the pin that slips into the lifter arm. Mounting holes will then be referenced off of this pin and the mating links as the location is critical.Earl has also made a positioning fixture which will be used to help locate the lifter arm pillow blocks. Two sets of course, one for each side. These will help as we use Harold’s tram data to locate the correct position of the lifter arm.
…and thank YOU for giving more than 111% to this project! As the 2025 campaign comes to a close, our friends and followers have donated an astounding $142,131 towards Build 11 – 118% of our $120,000 goal (for 2025.) All additional funds are being used to ensure the locomotive is on the rails as quickly as possible.
