TVRM 610 was unwheeled this weekend by a dedicated group of tireless volunteers. Steve Freer has posted some pics of the event on his TVRM Update page. Click on the link, it has been working all day today!


TVRM Update
aw90h@cs.com

Hey, Mark, how about starting the American Museum of Wheeless Locomotives!

Just kidding. What's going on with 610? Does this mean 630 will be next out? Or is this just one of those stunts that folks with the best wheel shop in North America can pull to impress their friends??

Any how, good luck with both. 604 is needle-scale city these days, so it's definitely a big shop year for 2002! Jim

Wrinnbo@aol.com

> Hey, Mark, how about starting the American
> Museum of Wheeless Locomotives!

> Just kidding. What's going on with 610? Does
> this mean 630 will be next out? Or is this
> just one of those stunts that folks with the
> best wheel shop in North America can pull to
> impress their friends??

> Any how, good luck with both. 604 is
> needle-scale city these days, so it's
> definitely a big shop year for 2002! Jim

Does Mark now have to send them to Wheeling W.Va. to put them back together?

The Electric City Trolley Museum Association

The 610 needs its tires turned (for the first time ever since being built in 1952). We'll probably turn the crankpins as well. It would have been nice to have done this work while during the 15 year boiler work but it didn't work out.

The 610 will be ready for opening day. We are only doing this wheel work to her. I just hope I remember where I put the instructions when it comes time to put the wheels back under her.

I got I bit worried yesterday when one of the guys asked "Which one is the UP button?" when I asked him to operate one set of the jacks. The remote control (which operates one set of two jacks) has two buttons, one labeled UP and the other labeled DOWN. I also referred him to the UP location chalked on one of the columns in the shop building. We put it there years ago in case someone forgot which way is UP.

aw90h@cs.com

Mark;

If I remember correctly, crankpins are turned in-situ with a crankpin-turning "lathe". Is this correct? Do you have any pics or other information on this (interesting) procedure?

If I am correct, how many of these lathes exist in North America?

> We'll probably turn the crankpins as well.

Thanks;

John Stewart
Ottawa, Canada.

luigi@mainframe.dgrc.crc.ca

John,

As the saying goes, there are many ways to skin a cat. And that applies to turning crank pins. TVRM, Grand Canyon and the Durango and Silverton have a machine that is known as a Quartering Machine. This machine allows the wheels (after being removed from the locomotive) to be placed on dead centers at each end. Each end of the machine also has a head stock that is capable of surrounding the crank pin while turning a tool around it. The design of the head stocks also ensures that the heads are exactly 90 degrees apart. Very little set up time is required for this machine. Our machine and the one at Grand Canyon were built by the Niles Tool Corporation.

A portable machine can also be used to turn the crank pins while the wheels are under the locomotive. I can not speak as to the accuracy of this process.

A horizontal boring machine can also be used. Like the Quartering Machine, the wheels must be out of the locomotive. More set up time is needed when using this machine. After the first crank pin is turned, then the wheel set must be repositioned to allow for the second pin to be turned. I think it was Giddings and Lewis that made a fixture that allowed there HBM to be used as a Quartering Machine.

Mark

TVRM Update
aw90h@cs.com

I've seen one of these in operation at Steamtown a decade ago. From what I recollect, the tool wasn't all that large (the word potable comes to mind) and was powered by house air, at least in this case. One of my friends who still works there tells me that it went to the NS shop sometime before 1993 never to return. I wonder what became of it...

Dave Crosby

bing@epix.net

Was "tireless voluntees" inteded as a pun as well as a truth? If was meant to include the former, good one!!!

> TVRM 610 was unwheeled this weekend by a
> dedicated group of tireless volunteers.
> Steve Freer has posted some pics of the
> event on his TVRM Update page. Click on the
> link, it has been working all day today!

> A portable machine can also be used to turn
> the crank pins while the wheels are under
> the locomotive. I can not speak as to the
> accuracy of this process.

I can having done it recently since GOATs drivers are too small to fit Mark's machine.

I borrowed the electric powered portable from CATS. It hadn't been used in years and had no motor. We got it loosened up and running and mounted a 110 volt 1/2 HP motor. A large pulley was mounted on the driven shaft and a small one on the motor shaft for maximum gear down.

We build an adjustable stand on 3 screwy legs out of extra heavy, and cut some more extra heavy to strap the flat front of the unit to the wheel center using 3/4" allthread.

The process was relatively simple after squaring and leveling to our best ability. I wouldn't give us high marks for accuracy however - we just used whatever degree of quarterositude was left in the pins as datum. The ODs did come out pretty smooth after learning how to grind the tool bit properly.

We left a large margin of clearance between the brass and pin and so far no problems, but it truly is not as good as using a good quartering machine with a well trained operator.

Dave

irondave@bellsouth.net

I thought I saw that thing crated up on one of my 5288 moving visits to Steamtown last year. It was sitting near the steps next to the K-4 outside of Chris Ahren's office. Or was it the portable cylinder boring machine?

There was one in the NS collection. It was actually unearthed around 1965 by current TVRM President Bob Soule. I have been told that he found it in the basement of a steamship Captain! I never saw it being used and I am not sure what became of it. I hope that either Scott Lindsay or Bob Yuill has it.

aw90h@cs.com

I have a couple photos of me running that infernal contraption, the portable crankpin lathe. I will be glad to email them to anyone that wants them, but I have no way of posting them here. The photos do not show, for some reason, the blue quality of the air around the operator's mouth. I had to take many very light passes, and the leverage of the force of the cutters on the setup increased the closer you got to the wheel, so the dadburn thing had a tendency to want to dig in to the metal right at the end of a cut. I did, however, get a very nice finish on the pins, if I do say so myself. The machine centers off the center of the pin, but because the thing was apparently designed for outside frame lokes, that it, it seemed like it wanted to clamp to an outside frame type counterwieght, we had to use steel to shim it out off the hub, and readjust this for the two surfaces on the pins on the main. "Pitch" and "yaw" so to speak had to be adjusted with our threaded rod mounts by manually running the cutters in and out with the motor off. It took about 4 hours or so to set up for a cut if I recall. It did a pretty good job, but I cannot say I was sad when we hauled the setup we built to the scrap pile last Sunday.

rudd@cogdellmendrala.com