Of course he should........they are notorious. It would pay in the long term to build tooling to use in lapping in the seats on boiler checks frequently - just as they start to show leakage - rather than wait until they are steam cut deeply and need a lot of attention to seat. Another strategy is to use off the shelf checks that are piped to be easily interchanged quickly so the faulty one can be rebuilt on the bench without shutting down.

Don't know how intensive the operating schedule is or how hard she's worked, so only general impressions and possibilities here.

dave

Thanks for the continued insight. I agree that keeping the seats lapped before steam cutting is good general practice. I've not taken these particular valves apart yet, however when we trade out engines next month I plan on getting into them.

To give an idea how much we are using the engines, a typical day starts with hostling at 7 AM and then we usually have our first run around 10 or 11. We have a 3 mile round trip and climb a good 5% grade to the upper reversing loop. The whole trip takes around 20 minutes, and we have 45 minute or hourly departures. Engines are banked at night 7 days a week. As you can imagine keeping boiler pressure consistent and water at the proper levels for the grade changes is a bit more challenging than you might find at other operations.

As long as the other injector is running ok You could wait till next month. But if the other engine is ready to go, I would switch them out & fix that check valve before it turns into a dangerous problem. OOPS next month is this friday!!

Dave Huffman