They held a meeting this past spring (2013).

Perhaps your source didn't attend.

Well Sir

If you know more and would like to share it would be appreciated. If you do not want to share the information that you apparently have that is your choice. I feel that this committee might have an impact on our organizations, particularly small ones that have to depend upon local resources. Trying to see any potential changes as far into the future as one can eliminate a lot of headache for them.

Respectfully,

Robby Peartree

I think there may be some confusion about what is happening here.

There was indeed a meeting of the RSAC June 13th. But this did not have any content regarding the Tourist, Excursion, Scenic and Historic Service, as you can see from the agenda. That task, 96-4, is in 'ongoing' status, but does not appear (from what I see on the Internet) to have generated any RSAC work product in 2013.

According to the Federal Register (v.77, n.184 [Fri Sep 21 2012] p.58614), task 96-5, "Reviewing and recommending revisions to Steam Locomotive Inspection Standards (49 CFR part 230)" has been COMPLETED. That, to me, means no further meetings of the ESC on that topic, so I am not surprised that we aren't seeing any recent reports...

This report came from a member of the ASME group that this discussion started as its topic. A list of members can be found on page 10 of this post.

Robby Peartree

The ASME Locomotive Boiler Subgroup did not meet those times for the simple reason that there were no items on the overall ASME meeting agenda pertaining to locomotive boilers.

The Engineering Standards Committee and the NBIC Subgroup on Locomotive Boilers met in early April. The minutes of that meeting are and have been posted on the www.NationalBoard.org site.

These meetings are not secret. All meetings are announced ahead of time and are open to the public.

Easier link to the content is here. Scroll down to 'locomotives'. ('Historic boilers' immediately follows.) You will see the blue clickable 'minutes' link to the right.

Probably better to download the linked file (it is a .pdf) than to open it in the browser.

Here are the date and places for ASME Boiler code week.

February 10-14, 2014
Code Week - San Diego, CA
Sheraton San Diego Hotel & Marina

May 12-16, 2014
Code Week - Bellevue, WA
Hyatt Regency Bellevue

August 18-22, 2014
Code Week - Washington DC
Hyatt Regency Washington

November 17-21, 2014
Code Week - Orlando, FL
Orlando World Center Marriott


And here is the link to the national board agenda for Marck 18 and 19, 2014

https://www.nationalboard.org/SiteDocum ... Agenda.pdf

Sincerely

Robby Peartree

Does anyone know the agenda for the meeting in February 2016 in Henderson,NV?

Robby Peartree

Locomotive Boiler Subgroup is scheduled for Monday morning, Feb. 15. Have not seen an agenda for their particular meeting yet.

The subgroup's previous work made it into the 2015 edition of the ASME code.

Hi All

For the record the work on fillet welds has been done prior to when this conversation started.
See
http://weldingdesign.com/archive/weld-o ... nsequences

and this report from 1935
http://192.168.1.1:8181/http://preserve ... ab-reports

Some may state that the loading is not in a boiler environment. The way the load is applied to the weld is important to its abilities. See

https://canteach.candu.org/Content%20Li ... 053437.pdf

While the push for these dangerous weld design for pressure vessels continues, it is obvious to this author that the complexity and special knowledge required for the maintenance and operation of a steam locomotive has been in a steady decline for years. The greatest clue to me is looking at historic records from the past and looking at the topics of why locomotives were both designed the way they were and the modifications imputed as technology evolved. Another issue is workers doing similar tasks day in and out could get very proficient at certain details that become lost as those task were not regularly accomplished. Furthermore, ignorance and inference to the reasoning of the past creates a sometimes dangerous environment where past lessons are ignored and therefore must be relearned.

Railroading is a complex business tied to the abilities with different skills. Consider the number of colleges and departments within those colleges railroads would have hire from today. Engineering and Business are the obvious ones. But law schools, todays hospitality, marketing and many others are needed. The trades taught then would come out of your junior colleges and trade schools of today. Today history and archeology are apart of the preservation world in addition to the historical railroad past. We must work hard to include the wisdom of the past in how we preserve the past.

Robby Peartree

This was a fascinating thread, I had not seen it before. I read carefully through all 14 pages and learned a lot, though as someone green about steam I have a lot of questions, so many that I won't ask any so as not to seem to be trolling the board.

The only thing to be careful about, when asking technical questions, is to be objective about the information you want to know.

If you don't ask questions, how do you expect any of the experts here to give you the information you want to know? More selfishly, I may learn something from some of the answers that will be given.

Ask, and ye shall receive. In detail.

Note the poor Australian guy whose questions were not even acknowledged. I don't mean that as a criticism, I mean that actually many of us with a basic to intermediate level of knowledge can actually learn more from eavesdropping on those discussing at the top level even if it is sometimes impenetrable.

I wouldn't characterize all fillet welds as dangerous either - this set of documents demonstrates pitfalls in designing them, but certainly a properly designed and installed fillet weld should perform according to its specifications.

This link actually answered a very basic question: a fillet weld is just a normal weld using an arc welder to join two pieces of metal by melting them and forming a v-shaped bead. That is what we all did in shop class. If I am to understand the debate, some are arguing that this weld is inadequate for securing staybolts because if you don't use a deeper weld (which most of us are not able to perform) the staybolts tend to corrode in the gap between the staybolt and the metal of the boiler shell. Am I correct?