A friend of mine was in Cleveland recently, and visited Midwest’s roundhouse. As you all know, American Steam Railroad (ASR) is housing former Reading 2100 there while they do some work on her. Only recently has ASR began to tackle the firebox sides of 2100, which need partial replacement. Here are some photos snapped by my friend.

Given the way in which they have torched off the mud ring rivets, I wonder if they are going to replace it as well. After all, the crude manner they were cut out is evidenced in the photos. Why take care if you are going to keep the foundation ring?

Anyway, hope everyone enjoys!

Yikes, that looks worse than I thought. Thanks for posting these here as well. I’m curious - Is ASRR backtracking on the claim that they made that the firebox was in perfect condition, despite what a contractor had said after inspecting it?

Appears the side sheets are coming out down to the bottom of the mudring, to be replaced with new side sheets and new rivets.

If that is the case, neatness doesn't count for squat. Rivets are darn hard to remove any other way, and they would still have to be replaced, as would the sheets, so who cares?

That will all cleanup. I recall the N&W 4-8-0's had reworks on the boilers thru their ages so it should come together fine.

Great photos. Good to see they are moving along. Hope they have better light to work with than was available for the photographer. I figured that any slag could just be ground off the mud ring. Are there any precautions that should be taken when doing this kind of work to not locally overheat the mud ring?

Scranton Yard ... "making a run st[sic] the title of most irrelevant keyboard warrior on RYPN" - RobertJohnDavis

No. You and Dinwitty need to look a little closer. The sheet goes all the way to the bottom of the mudring, and thus is between the torch and the mudring. The only thing that got torched were the rivet heads. Grinding the slag off the sheet that is going to scrap as soon as they get it out of there would not be a productive use of time or money.

The new sheet that goes in in it's place won't have slag on it. And the rest of the rivet that is still in the mudring and (presumably) the wrapper sheet will be removed, scrapped, and replaced with new rivets as part of the process. Old or cutoff rivets
cannot be reused.

Much ado about nothing, IOW.

Very low quality pics (low res and low light). The middle photo in particular seems to show the end of the sheet having the rivet hole slotted through the end of the sheet and with about 1" of mudring exposed, especially towards the right side of the photo. Guess we'll have to wait for better pics or commentary from Mr. Wilkins' friend. Either way, I agree, no big deal. Glad to see work being done.

Scranton Yard ... "making a run st[sic] the title of most irrelevant keyboard warrior on RYPN" - RobertJohnDavis

Scranton Yard

We are not short-sheeting this repair. We have only cut off the rivet head on the fire side sheet for now to maintain the structural integrity of the overall firebox while two major parts of it are carefully removed. The rest of the rivet through the mudring will be removes and replaced after the new sheet is fitted and welded in place. The mudring has not been damaged despite what the NNN's seem to be set on proving. More info to follow later.

Rob Gardner

Mr. Gardner - Thank you. Tough pics to tell what is going on. Looking forward to the updates and finally having a chance to ride behind a T1.

Scranton Yard ... "making a run st[sic] the title of most irrelevant keyboard warrior on RYPN" - RobertJohnDavis