It appears Wiscasset, Waterville & Farmington 9 is getting some serious work. Who can elaborate on what's being done?

http://photos.nerail.org/show/?bydate:12

I can elaborate.

As you can see, we at the WW&F have started the rebuild process on #9. For now, the last Saturday of every month is scheduled as a #9 workday. I don't know how far along the new boiler is (it's being constructed at Boothbay Railway Museum) but the hope is that the new boiler won't have to sit around long before getting mounted on the frame.

This is actually the third workday. The first was entirely picture taking. On the second we removed the stack and headlight and smoke box front. A few days ago we removed cab, tank, hand rails, deck, and domes.

Probably in another 2 or so months the boiler will be off the engine. #9 was constructed in such a way that the boiler was part of the frame of the engine - there's no connection between the frame in the front (where the drive wheels are) and the frame in the back over which the tank sits (and which pulls the train). Portland Company did this with 9 of the 10 two-foot gauge locomotives they built. They must have had great faith in their boilers.

As you can imagine, the FRA has no such faith in boilers today.

James,

So you have to make changes in the frame of the engine.

Would the frame on #10 make a good model for the needed changes?

Ted Miles

We are using the last locomotive Portland Company ever built, B&SR #5, as a model for what we need, which had a frame around the boiler like most locomotives. I haven't seen PCo drawings on this so I don't know exactly how it will work.

No.9 after cab and tender/tank removal. The tender is not levitating in the photo, it's sitting on a small work flat behind the locomotive.

From your angle, Steve, it looks like #9's tank is part of #10 behind it. Or rather, it looks like #9's tank is now overwhelming the cab of #10.

Well #10 needs a new tank anyway. Too bad we had to sacrifice the cab for it. ;-)

Portland wasn't the only one to use the firebox of the boiler as part of the frame, Baldwin did this on many of the smaller Forneys they built (especially for plantation service), and even some small four and six coupled switch engines had the engine frame stop at the front of the firebox and the rear drawbar assembly was afixed to the lower backhead sheet. It was a cost saving measure-it eleminated extra framing while eliminating any need for expansion joints at the firebox.

And Porter also.