I see that they have installed the foot board/switching pilot. Was the road pilot damaged or was this just an opportunity to change things up? Amazing to see the engine back in steam so quickly. My only critique might be that those weld lines stick out like a sore thumb. I'm all about displaying battle scars but right now it looks like she has a cracked egg for a face.

I had the associate who was the first of a dozen to forward me the video of the incident ask me right off the bat, "How long would that take to fix?"

I spent two minutes ruling out CGI video fakery, thought about it and said, "How quickly do they need it? Cheap, fast, or good, pick two at most..."

"Isn't 90's flue time almost up? Like, end of year?

"Dunno, but............. say that's true. This is an operating loco, not a museum piece. And this is Strasburg. Assume nothing's been shattered behind the smokebox. If they WANT to badly enough, two weeks--a week if they can replace cast iron with steel and swap in another headlight for now. Only question is, do they need it that fast? How are 89 and 31?"

"The Santa trips are coming up. Bigger trains?"

"Still got 90, if what you're saying is true. If they can fabricate a spare door and front sheet out of stock, because you can't weld cast iron, they'll do it in a week just to flip the bird at the naysayers online and show off....."

Well, I'm old, it seems. Turns out you CAN (sorta) weld cast iron now...............

I can't remember a time that you couldn't braze cast iron.

The fact that armchair restorationists on Facebook are claiming that cast iron can't be welded is such a joke. It can be arc welded, braze welded, etc...

...And the fact that folks say braze can't be painted over, is a joke. With proper prep, it absolutely can. I suspect that they determined that the time to prep their brazes for finishing vs the urgency to get the engine back in service, tipped the scales in favor of function over form (finish).

There is no such thing as "braze welding". Brazing is brazing, whether done with high-strength material or not.

There are reasons cast iron isn't normally welded by typical means, including how the carbon content 'behaves'. They could have used metalstitching, but I suspect the brazing was less expensive and faster, and might 'grind out' to look better.

Not knowing the specs or assuming it is applicable in this particular situation, I've had good luck welding cast iron by arc with Eutectic and Nickel rod........ just sayin' it can be done.

I’d guess they’re referring to brazing using a TIG torch as opposed to an oxy-acetylene rig. Like you say though, it’s still brazing. You’re melting the filler material, not the base metal.

.

What I learned in metal shop class was the superficial "you can't weld cast iron by conventional means [meaning the basic stuff we had in the shop], and if you weld it through unconventional means [i.e. brazing], you end up with a piece whose integrity is compromised." The mentality we got was that something could be repaired cosmetically but not structurally, and you could put it together for a pattern to cast a replacement.

Certainly, Strasburg and others are advanced enough to prove that not 100% correct. Whether through "braze welding," exotic metallurgy, or J-B Weld, there exist ways to stick cast iron pieces back together that are not "welding" as most know it.

The analogy that comes to mind is middle school teachers saying "you can't divide by zero/have a number to the power of zero" when, in fact you can--but it requires more advanced understanding of conceptual mathematics past ordinary algebra than students are ready to understand, and an understanding that the results are conceptual rather than practical.

If anyone's curious about Brazing: https://www.youtube.com/c/KeithRuckerVi ... ry=brazing

Personally, I like this:



https://www.trains.com/trn/news-reviews ... ne-no-475/

Now, who's gonna start calling her Scarface?

Can you show an actual middle-school teacher who ever said anything other than 'any number to the power of zero is 1'?

All your questions are answered here: https://www.trains.com/trn/news-reviews ... ne-no-475/

My seventh-grade teacher, Thomas Johnson, when explaining the fundamentals of powers to my class, said "Any number to the power of zero is one. DON'T ASK ME TO EXPLAIN IT, it would take me an hour, and most of you still wouldn't understand it, just accept it for now even though we're probably never going to encounter it here again......"

This was also the teacher whose very first lesson to our class the first day was to pound into our heads the difference between a "number" (a mathematical construct) and a "numeral" (the written/printed representation of that number).

.

You will have to take this up with the American Welding Society. Perhaps they would like to hear your thoughts on removing "Braze Welding" from the AWS Brazing Handbook. It's chapter 19 in the circa 2004 edition that I have.

AWS defines braze welding as:

"Braze welding is joining process that uses a brazing filler metal having a liquidous above 840 deg. F and below the solidous temperature of the base metal. The base metal is not melted. Braze welding differs from brazing in that the brazing filler metal is distributed by deposition rather than by capillary action."