Strasburg Railroad 475 Collides With Excavator

Andy Nold · **Joined:** Tue Dec 14, 2004 5:45 pm **Posts:** 297

Kelly Anderson wrote:

G. W. Laepple wrote:

Back in the day, I knew a guy who would weld things together with a torch and a wire coat hanger!

I've done that. Gas welding steel with bare steel filler rod is pretty easy. SRC #31 still had/has firebox side sheet patches from who knows when that were gas welded in. That kind of gas welding doesn't make the highest quality welds mind you, but it does stick things together.

I started welding with a torch and coat hangers when I was 9 or 10 years old. Took me a few more years before I would use the arc welder. I was scared of it. But.... I never did it on a regular basis.

I know how to weld, but it's not pretty and I never weld anything where failure would cause problems. I welded up a trailer many years ago to move streetcar bodies but I also put brackets and bolts on the joints to reinforce my welds. Belt and suspenders.

jayrod · **Posted:** Thu Nov 10, 2022 7:43 pm

Andy Nold wrote:

Kelly Anderson wrote:

G. W. Laepple wrote:

Back in the day, I knew a guy who would weld things together with a torch and a wire coat hanger!

I've done that. Gas welding steel with bare steel filler rod is pretty easy. SRC #31 still had/has firebox side sheet patches from who knows when that were gas welded in. That kind of gas welding doesn't make the highest quality welds mind you, but it does stick things together.

I started welding with a torch and coat hangers when I was 9 or 10 years old. Took me a few more years before I would use the arc welder. I was scared of it. But.... I never did it on a regular basis.

I know how to weld, but it's not pretty and I never weld anything where failure would cause problems. I welded up a trailer many years ago to move streetcar bodies but I also put brackets and bolts on the joints to reinforce my welds. Belt and suspenders.

Ha! Exactly the same here - torch and coat hanger on sheet metal no less. I’ve brazed cast iron but nothing that required any kind of structural integrity. Mostly stuff like plugging unused holes and the like. Though I got fairly decent at arc welding, if it’s mission critical, nope - go get the pro to do it.

mmi16 · **Joined:** Thu Oct 24, 2019 11:05 pm **Posts:** 198

Andy Nold wrote:

Kelly Anderson wrote:

G. W. Laepple wrote:

Back in the day, I knew a guy who would weld things together with a torch and a wire coat hanger!

I've done that. Gas welding steel with bare steel filler rod is pretty easy. SRC #31 still had/has firebox side sheet patches from who knows when that were gas welded in. That kind of gas welding doesn't make the highest quality welds mind you, but it does stick things together.

I started welding with a torch and coat hangers when I was 9 or 10 years old. Took me a few more years before I would use the arc welder. I was scared of it. But.... I never did it on a regular basis.

I know how to weld, but it's not pretty and I never weld anything where failure would cause problems. I welded up a trailer many years ago to move streetcar bodies but I also put brackets and bolts on the joints to reinforce my welds. Belt and suspenders.

Ha! Exactly the same here - torch and coat hanger on sheet metal no less. I’ve brazed cast iron but nothing that required any kind of structural integrity. Mostly stuff like plugging unused holes and the like. Though I got fairly decent at arc welding, if it’s mission critical, nope - go get the pro to do it.

Amateurs know their limitations. That being said, if one wants to become good at it - you have to do it day in and day out. My son is a wizard with thin metal - welds up Tracker boat decks for his day job.

ironeagle2006 · **Joined:** Tue Aug 22, 2017 11:27 am **Posts:** 142

If you want to see artists in welding in the extreme find an older Damage control tech from the navy. Those guys do the impossible sometimes to keep their ship floating. My late grandfather told me of one guy he served with. He transferred to his transport after the Canal. He had been on the New Orleans and was there when her bow got blown off. He decided that transports were safer. Why they carried enough boats to escape every single sailor if needed especially the landing ships which my grandfather served on.

Bob Hall · **Joined:** Thu Jul 12, 2007 3:37 am **Posts:** 152

Getting back to welding cast iron, a few years ago I dropped a Pullman berth pulley and it broke in several places. I have a friend who has a welding business and the first thing he asked me was "how old is it"?
When I said it was circa 1900, he was OK and did an excellent job of welding this piece of cast iron.
What I did find interesting is that he'd had bad experiences trying to weld parts from British cars from the 1950s and that was because after the war, there was so much scrap metal about that a lot of different cast irons had been melted down and they had different properties that made the "new" product impossible to weld, even by an expert.

Kelly Anderson · **Joined:** Tue Sep 14, 2004 7:52 am **Posts:** 2477

Faller? · **Joined:** Fri Dec 27, 2019 5:57 pm **Posts:** 106

Kelly Anderson wrote:

Along those lines locomotive builders were notorious for their poor quality cast iron, some of it next to impossible to arc weld, hence the wide use of brazing repairs. SRC #90 once pulled a cone of iron surrounding a head stud out of her cylinder block. Linn sent it to Eutectic for analysis and advice, and it came back as "cast slag" and "unweldable".

On the other hand, the cast iron used in machine tools of the same period was a breeze to weld with one of the electric rods for cast iron.

Are you referring to "Ni Rod" ? a nickel (Ni) based rod; the base material then needs to be pre-heated then welded; usually yields good results.

Older cast iron is usually high in Phos and Sulphur where high quality is not a "deal Breaker"; most cylinders had liners of higher quality.

Brazing/Gas Welding is a much older process than arc-welding and was most probably embraced longer by industry.