Stan;
Let's take a look at the new boiler for Sierra Railway number 3. Based on a conversation with a gentleman in Portland who worked on the new boiler, I am led to believe that it has threaded sidesheet stays made from SA-36 steel, which he threaded. What will be the replacement in two years if one breaks??

A.S.M.E. Section i, PG-13..."Threaded stays shall be of steel complying with SA-36 or SA-675."

N.B.I.C. Part 3, Section 6, S1.1.3.1 Threaded staybolts SA-31A, SA-675 with tensile strength of 47,000 to 65,000 psi inclusive.

If the boiler inspector takes a rigid line on the repair, code of construction materials are not acceptable, even one day after the boiler leaves the shop.

Regards, Nathan

Inspectors are human and in any trade you run into all sorts of opinions and positions. Some come from training, some from observation, some from the ether.

As I stated in my earlier post, the NBIC allows the use of the original Code of construction including the original edition and addenda for repairs and alterations. If the stay bolts on the Sierra #3 (for the record I know nothing about the Sierra 3 except it was in a couple episodes of "Little House on the Prairie") are SA-36 then it is reasonable to believe, based on the current wording of the NBIC that future replacement stays will also be allowed to be SA-36. I suppose a change to that ideology could come, but unless some hard evidence is presented to the National Board warranting a change in the use of original Code it is, in my opinion, unlikely.

I strongly encourage anybody with an interest in the formation of policy and standards for new construction or post construction activities to monitor the activities of relevant ASME and National Board committees. Communicate your thoughts, concerns and positive feed back and use the inquiry process to get answers to technical questions.

S.O.

Dear Mr. Hees,......sir moderator...kind sir:

I promise to be a good boy....kinda sorta...and comply with yer rulz.

Mark
(Purveyor of small quantities of Unobtanium......because I'm a boiler inspector and need to keep my job?)

Hi All

In returning from a Memorial Day weekend in Williams AZ to visit some good friends I saw Mr. Westland of Ely, Nevada, and he stated the next ASME meeting was in Alamosa, Colorado on October 30th.

Respectfully,
Robby Peartree

^^^Robby, were you able to gleen any information on what the Subgroup is up to?

S.O.

The word I received was that they were just in the preliminary stages.

Robby

I found this posted on the "Latest News" page of the A1 Tornado Trust website
http://www.a1steam.com/index.php?option ... Itemid=123

June 28, 2010 Tornado temporarily withdrawn
Two suspected faulty stays in Tornado's boiler were identified during a routine inspection of the locomotive by fitters at Stewarts Lane depot on the morning of Saturday 26th June. These faults were not present when a similar inspection of Tornado was conducted on Friday 25th June during the locomotive's lay-over at Crewe Heritage Centre following her use on 'The Border Raider' excursion the day before.

This new discovery follows the identification of five defective stays in late May/early June and the subsequent replacement of these five stays and seven neighbouring stays during repairs at Hither Green depot.

The A1 Steam locomotive Trust has therefore taken the safe and prudent decision to temporarily withdraw Tornado from service to enable a comprehensive repair to be put in place.



July 9, 2010 Tornado update
Although it is too early for firm conclusions to be reached about the causes of recent problems with Tornado's boiler, analysis to date suggests that the stay failures have occurred due to fatigue caused through usage.......

....Trust records show that Tornado's boiler has been through over 60 steaming cycles and been in traffic for over 200 days....

...This number of steaming cycles is beyond that which the original Peppercorn class A1s would have experienced in British Railways service before being sent to a locomotive works for overhaul, typically every two years...

....Following detailed metallurgical analysis we are pleased to be able to confirm that there are no defects with the materials used in the manufacture of the boiler, nor is there any long-term issue around the management of the boiler....

As a railfan I am saddened that such a powerful and beautiful locomotive has been sidelined, albeit for a brief period of time.

What I found puzzling were the comments on apparrent overhaul requirements on the boiler and the low usage. It is my understanding that boilers in the US are allow 1400 days of operation between inspections/overhauls. According to this, the A1 engines in service were overhauled at less than a 60 cycle/200 day interval. From the postings on this thread, it appears that Wasatch Railroad crew have extensive hands on experience with European boilers design and practices. I would like to hear your comments. What are the typical standards for overhaul and maintenance versus the US?

My recent hands on experience is limited to 7.5 gauge, so I don't have a lot of experience with large boilers. I am guessing in a large boiler, there are a lot of stays. I understand that parts fail and that one typical cause of failure is fatique, but is that common on a relatively new boiler with 60 pressure cycles to have 14 stays replaced is such a short period of time? Does Wasatch see this on the European boilers they work on?

Is there any relationship between problems the A1 Trust is having and the design standards being discussed in this thread or do the design standards deal with an entirely disconnected aspect of boiler design?

I wonder if it is the cycles (cold, hot, cold), rather than the days in service. One of our volunteers was a maintenance manager with United Airlines...

He identified a maintenance issue with one older jet, (DC 8 or DC 9) which started having accelerated APU failure per flight hour... They discovered that it wasn't an accelerated failure, but rather, it was a false measurement... The planes had previously been flying from Los Angeles and San Francisco to Hawaii... 5 plus hours per take off/landing cycle... and had been re-assinged to Los Angeles to San Francisco, 1 hour per take off/landing cycle... The units were failing at the same number of cycles... but at 20% of the hours.

It would be interesting to look at some of our preserved locomotives which see a weekend of use at a time... when in the past they likely were kept "hot" for a week or more at a time.

I just saw this from a post by John Rimmasch.

Matt Janssen a frequent poster here on RYPN has commented before that the Germans have a specific life span for a boiler. During controlled inspection periods, if the boiler material fails to meet specific testing requirements, the boiler is de-commissioned and disposed of. Matt, myself and a number of others believe that we will see a day, here in the US, where the same or similar standards will be upheld.

John,
I think the A1 boiler is German. What is it's lifespan? Does the lifespan rule apply to the A1? At what point does the failure or stays cause a decomissioning?

.

BarryD.

I will explain my understanding of the systems on the "other" side of the pond the best I can. I welcome corrections and better explanations from any poster on the board!

As part of the EU pact most European countries will accept boilers built by other countries to the EU code even though the boiler will not operate in the builders jurisdiction. The A1 boiler is an example of this. The Germans built the new boiler for the A1 (pictures can be seen in another thread). The boiler operates in the UK, no where close to Germany. The Germans designed and built the boiler as per drawings supplied by the UK Engineers applying the UK codes of construction for such a unit. Also taken into account was the fact that the boiler would operate under the jurisdiction of the UK Government policies and inspection practices.

The UK customer worked hand in hand with the Germans in building the boiler. The boiler is accepted for operation in the UK as the German shop is an EU certified builder/repair facility.

Another example; Wasatch is doing work on the 141R 568 in Switzerland. The prevailing code is the SVIT (Swiss Safety Code). Wasatch is neither SVIT nor EU qualified. However, the inspector, by legal provision was able to accept our ASME/NBIC credential as the EU standard will accept the ASME as a code of construction and the NBIC as a standard for repair. In effect, the Swiss Inspector is allowing Wasatch to execute all repairs under the provisions of the EU standard.

The EU standard works much the way the ASME/NBIC work in the US. Though the ASME is an "accepted national standard" and though the states are "free" to adopt the code as a method of enforcing new construction, the states are still free to enforce their own rules. The EU is much the same. Though Switzerland, Germany, France and the UK accept the EU standard, each country enforces their own rules where they feel they need to.....much like states enforce rules of their own, case in point the Swanton Locomotive project where the State of CA enforced a higher margin of safety, where by within the code there is no "formal" provision to do so (correct me if I am wrong).

Barry, you ask what the life span of the A1 Boiler is....as far as I have been told 20-30 years, much like the expected life span of the original boiler of like construction. The de-commissioning is not so much a "set standard" as it is a failure for the material to pass physical examination. It is noted; even here in the US, an improperly maintained boiler can have a life span of only a few years. We did a repair on a school boiler in March where by the boiler is almost ruined for lack of care and it is only 5 years old. Our repairs can do nothing to save this boiler! I quote a comment made at ESC this last spring by our beloved ASME/NBIC Rep.....

"I could care less if the boiler ever makes pound of steam one! For that matter, I could care less if the boiler is ruined after the first use. I only care about the fact that the boiler was "originally" built to the code....after that...who cares?" (paraphrased from memory).

The code is a code of "construction" not "operation".

Back to Switzerland,

Personal opinion; The Swiss Inspector has been very good to us as foreigners on an American locomotive in a foreign land. It has been an education to learn the Swiss Code and the parallels between it, the EU and the ASME/NBIC. In discussion with the Swiss Inspector on the tube sheet replacement we are installing, he sat in the office with me to discuss.....Halt Punk.....Hold Points! There really is a common language spoken by boiler makers......at least as far as I can see!

Oh.....our Swiss inspector wants to know from us Americans why we can not install fillet welded stay bolts (?!) I am yet to provide him a viable answer that he can understand. (help)

John E. Rimmasch
Wasatch Railroad Contractors

http://www.wrrc.us

Kelly,

It must have very painful for the A1 Trust to post those announcements given the very public nature of the Engine's funding and ownership. The engine has now been out of several weeks and the replacement engines have been announce for all operations through July 26th. I doubt they would have downed the engine for a month done a metallurgical analysis, called in the boiler inspectors and endured the painful publicity for a routine problem that you say can usally be fixed in a couple of hours.

The make a point of saying the materials in the engine are good , and that the boiler is working within its design parameters and is being well maintained. What are the other factors that can contribute to recurring fatique failures on a new boiler with pressure cycles?

Barry

.

Anybody from Puffing Billy got their ears on?

During my unforgettable and too short visit several years ago, I was told the boilers on the class Na Baldwin clones were replaced every decade. I'm thinking about 25-30 years ago the new replacement boilers were welded rather than riveted.........and (if I'm remembering correctly) it was found that the welded boiler shells could be reused by replacing the fireboxes, unlike the old riveted shells. So, the oldest welded shells ought to be on their third useful life by now, or close to it, unless they proved to fail after one recycling.

This is big time tourist railroading and those little Nas work hard. I'd be interested in knowing how their results compare with what we are learning about EU practice and German boilers.

dave

John;
Tell your Swiss inspector that the reason we don't use fillet welded stays in Section I Boilers is that we go 1472 days between overhauls, not 200.

Regards, Nathan