I thought some of you might enjoy seeing the blog that I have going on the restoration of the Georgia Agrirama's Vulcan 0-4-0T engine:

http://agrirama.com/main/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=98

Our little narrow gauge 0-4-0T has been operational now for many years but this summer, we were forced to do a pretty major tear down in order to expose the boiler for our ten year boiler inspection. As long as we were taking her apart, we figured that the least we could do was give her a fresh coat of paint and take care of a few minor mechanical problems.

Our plans are to have her back under steam and riding the tracks at the Georgia Agrirama on Saturday, Sept. 19 (two weeks from yesterday). As of right now, we are just putting everything back together.

Enjoy!

Keith Rucker
Tifton, GA

Wait a minute, wait a minute......... you got a steam locomotive stripped down and repainted in less than six months?!?!?!? What, TWO months?!?!?!?

Stop that. You're making the rest of us look bad. >;-D

Equally impressive to their timeframe is the volunteer work, culled from the local student body. Many hands make quick work of any task. Just look at all those people
working at once in the same picture, how rare of a sight is that ?

Ok. I am confused. What is the real number for this engine? Images of the locomotive over on another page on the Agrirama website show this engine operating with #1 on the front number plate. In the restoration blog, the former tender has #3 painted on, and the restored engine is carrying #5 on the front number plate.

And what is the other engine shown in the background in these photos?

Wesley

Never ceases to amaze me how much attention a steam locomotive will garner. People will come from all over to work on steam. And the short span of time it took to get this little loco back in shape is truly amazing! As stated, you are making the rest of us look bad. But #5 looks good! Keep up the good work.

Later!
Mr. Ed

The red locomtive in the background is #3 a 0-4-0 Porter.

Check out the diameter and pitch of the staybolts, the #3 has 1 1/2" diameter stays, (I forget the pitch), and no telltale holes. These are Code boilers, and this type of construction, large stays at max plate pitch, is permitted. However it does not make the firebox very flexible, as opposed to more stays of a smaller diameter.

Robert Yuill
http://www.historicmachineryservices.com

Fortunately, in light service with a boiler this small flexibility probably isn't critical. I'm more baffled by the slots cut in the smokebox to allow it to slide on the saddle bolts - which I'm told was done at the behest of a notorious individual famous for manufacturing boat anchors in a very small New England state.

dave

Brother Yuill,

I, too, was looking at the boiler. Large diameter stays, max stay pitch, no telltales, small cleanouts, etc. Hmmmm.

I believe that telltales are required for a code boiler if the stays are less than 8" long, regardless of stay diameter? I'll have to look at the code book I guess....?

Mark

OK, lots of post since I looked at things this morning and lots of questions. I have been out working on the locomotive all day and am just getting home.



It has not been an easy task - and it has been largely due to a lot of volunteer work in conjunction with the Agrirama staff working as fast as they can as well. The Agrirama has two full time employees and one part time employee in the Maintenance and Restoration Dept. and they have been working pretty much full time on the project the past two months. And then you have our core group of volunteers who come in mostly after work and work into the evenings and on weekends. Then there are the students - the 35 freshmen from the local college that showed up a few Saturdays ago for about three hours put a big dent into things. And then there is Moultrie Technical College who has had four or five students in their auto body and paint class working on cleaning up and painting the cab, tender and saddle tank pretty much solid for the past month and a half. I wish that there was a way that I could have kept up with all of the volunteer hours put into the project but I bet that it is approaching 1000 man hours in the past two months.



Wesley - yes, it is confusing. Let me see if I can straighten it out. The Vulcan engine that we are currently working on was originally sold to the Hardaway Contracting Company as No. 5. When the Agrirama got the engine in the mid 1970's, there was no number on it at all (it has the builders number painted on the side) so the Agrirama decided that since it was their first locomotive to put No. 1 on the engine. In the years after that, we were able to start putting together the history of the engine and discovered that it was originally No. 5. As part of this restoration, we are atempting to put her back as close to original as possible, and decided to re-number her back to her original number. Therefore, the old pictures of the engine show her as No. 1 but we are re-numbering her back to her original No. 5. Make sense?

No. 3 is a second locomotive that the Agrirama has - a H. K. Porter originally built in 1925 (Builders Number 6932). This locomotive was acquired in the mid 1990's from the International Toy Train Museum in Orlando FL. At the time, the Vulcan had developed boiler problems - the museum decided to have a new boiler built but needed a locomotive to run while the Vulcan was down. The Porter was available not too far away in Orlando and was in more or less operating condition. A deal was cut, and the museum acquired the red engine with the number 3.

The Vulcan never had a real tender since it was originally a tank engine. When the new boiler was put on the Vulcan, the museum decided to convert from firing with coal to diesel - the Porter was set up that way and it was a nice change. We were having problems catching the woods on fire from cinders from the coal and coal was getting very hard for us to keep on hand as there were no local sources. So, when the Vulcan went back to work again in the early 2000's, the tender from the Porter (it is not original to the Porter - it was fabricated at some point in time but we acquired it with the Porter) was pulled behind the Vulcan to provide a tank for the diesel oil.

Our plans are to paint the tender to match the Vulcan. If and when we ever get the Porter back up and running again, it will first receive an overhaul to make it appear a bit more historically accurate - which will include getting rid of the red paint job and painting it black like the Vulcan. That way, the tender could be used with either locomotive.



The Porter engine had a major overhaul done to it back in the early 1970's by the Tweetsie Railroad Shops - long before the Agrirama ever had anything to do with it. In the process, they put on the new boiler and built a new cab. As a result, about the only thing original to the engine is the undercarriage and running gear. The engine was originally a side tank engine (not a saddle tank but two side tanks - one on each side.) I am not sure why Tweetsie went with the boiler design that they did - the boiler has a much larger diameter than what was original. My guess is that somebody already had that boiler built or had the engineering worked out on that design and in an effort of saving money, they went with that one rather than building one like the original. I really do not like that boiler at all - there are all kinds of things that are more or less funky about it and it is nowhere even close to being original. At least when we built the new boiler for the Vulcan, we used the original boiler as a pattern and kept things as close to original as we possibly could while following current boiler code. The Porter works and looks like a steam locomotive, but from a preservation stand point, it is a mess....

Keith Rucker
Tifton, GA

Probably the Porter had a perfectly adequate boiler for the purpose of shifting a car a short distance as required in an industrial setting, but not for an extended trip ovwer a track like Tweetsie's. Increasing boiler capacity with a larger boiler would be a good solution to making it into a useful locomotive from their perspective. Tweetsie is a tourist railroad, not a museum, much like your attraction where recreating an authentic historical reality is subservient to creating an artificial reality based on a vague sense of nostalgia for the purpose of entertaining visitors.

Generally pays better than preservation.

dave

Hi Rick,

Are the two Glovers still around? they were in pretty bad shape last time I saw photos. As I recall, both are Chattahoochee Brick locos, one is an 0-6-0t and the other an 0-2-0t (formerly and 0-6-0t).

Doug vV
Atlanta

The two Glovers are are both still at the museum. Yes, they are in really bad shape. Unfortunately, that is pretty much the way that our museum received these locomotives when they were donated. They were both 0-6-0T originally, but one of the engines had had two of the driver wheels removed, leaving only one driver left.

At some point in time, if we can raise enough money, we would like to cosmetically restore one of the engines. Since both of them are basically the same design (there were only minor differences between them when they were new), we can probably come up with enough parts to make one nice engine for display. Considering the engine that has the missing drivers also has a broken frame, that one would be really difficult to do any kind of restoration on.

The locomotives were donated by Cherokee Brick and Tile from Macon, GA - not Chattahoochee Brick (there was a Chattahoochee Brick also and I think that they had at least one Glover as well). The Agrirama also has two dump carts that donated by Cherokee Brick that they used to haul the clay from their pits to the brick factory.

Unfortunately, these locomotives were never very pretty to look at. They were special designed for Cherokee - which had a low tunnel that they had to go through that went under the main line railroad between the clay pits and their factory. Because of this, the locomotives were built low to the ground and look squaty. Also, saddle tanks are real boxy looking rather than the more graceful rounded type. The tanks are so big that you cannot even see over them from inside the cab - to look down the track, you basically had to lean out the window. Most of the time, they ran the engines backwards, pushing the loads rather than pulling them so that the engineer could see what he was doing!

The museum was in talks with Cherokee Brick and Tile a couple of years ago about getting some money to restore one of the engines. They were more or less agreeable but then the rescission and building crunch hit so that is on the back burner for them at least for now. Maybe when the economy gets better, we can approach them again.

Considering that there are only seven Glover's left that I am aware of (two of which are at the Agrirama) and the fact that Glover was the only locomotive builder from Georgia, we would really like to see the engine restored and put on display at our museum. One cool thing about Glover is that most of their old patterns have been preserved, so even if something is broken or missing, there is a good chance that we could have a new part cast from the original patterns!

Keith Rucker
Tifton, GA

The ASME Code does not require telltale holes is staybolts attached by welding.
But what is holding the crownsheet up?

Hi Keith,

I almost recalled it right! Of course close only counts in horseshoes. <grin>

I was not only lucky to see the old Glover buildings but was allowed inside to see the facility and the three locos that were still inside in the mid-1980's.

The site is now a highway overpass.

Thanks for the update and corrections to my memory.

Doug vV

I won't even try to pretend that I am any kind of expert on boilers - but I can promise you that it is made to code. Hurst Boilers built that boiler for us, I think in 1997. It was built externally almost exactly to the same design as the original, except that it is welded rather than riveted. When the boiler was inspected this year by the State of Georgia, the chief boiler inspector for the State came down with our regional inspector and everything passed with flying colors. I can tell you that there are no staybolts in the crown sheet like you see on older boilers. Perhaps modern boiler construction does not require them or if the crown is less than some size they are not required by code? I don't know, but the boiler is up to code...

Keith Rucker
Tifton, GA