Hi,
The revised cladding stretcher "kinda" works, I found it took a lot more force to deform the cladding than I thought. I had to make a heavier "hook" or "cladding puller" to go on the inside of the cladding and with those changes, the bulges for the piping were made bigger, but still on the small side.
I'm still working on the top feed piping, but progress is slow. I tried to silver solder a piece of properly bent stainless steel tube to the short fittings I'd made (with captive nuts) but the fitting was too short and the silver solder ran and soldered the nut too. I'm remaking the fittings and nuts and I've successfully silver soldered one. Success comes a bit at a time.
In the mean time, I thought I'd show a few more pictures of Gerhardt showing his progress with Big Boy. These were taken by Mike Greene at one of the Blue Water club meetings near Sarnia. The first one shows the smokebox mounted on the front chassis with the smokebox door open.
- Smokebox-1a.jpg (108.37 KiB) Viewed 1551 times
Note the petticoat piping detail as well as all the steam supply piping swivel joints that were necessary to allow the front chassis to swing back and forth. At this stage, it hasn't been made yet, but you can see the connections where the exhaust swivel joint piping will attach to both the cylinders and the front exhaust connection to the smokebox. By the way, this connection also requires a telescoping sleeve to accommodate the length changes as the front chassis moves back and forth.
- Smokebox-2a.jpg (106.88 KiB) Viewed 1551 times
As you can see, Gerhardt made this model as an exact copy of the real thing wherever possible, only deviating when necessary to make a model that would work properly. As I work on it, more and more I feel that Don & I were very lucky to acquire this model and to be able to continue adding to it.
The next pictures show the model at a later stage in its construction when Gerhardt displayed it at an exhibition of hobby work of all kinds somewhere in the Sarnia area.
- Model Exhibition in Sarnia-1
- Gerhard's Big Boy-1a.jpg (87.9 KiB) Viewed 1551 times
The first picture shows someone looking at the Big Boy model.
- Sarnia model exhibition of Gerhardt's Big Boy
- Gerhard's Big Boy-2a.jpg (71.86 KiB) Viewed 1551 times
The next shows the Big Boy model itself. Even at this stage, look at all the detail that Gerhardt has put into it with lots more still to be added.
- Gerhardt at the Sarnia model exhibition
- Gerhardt-2a.jpg (60.58 KiB) Viewed 1551 times
This final picture shows Gerhardt relaxing at the exhibition. In this picture he seems older than he looked in the Blue Water meeting pictures.
Because of the long distances Union Pacific trains had to cover, Big Boys were designed to have a top speed of ninety miles an hour which is high for freight service, especially in the 40's & 50's when they were running.
I've always been interested in steam Locomotives, probably because Dad worked on Canadian National Railways as a brakeman on passenger service between Toronto and Montreal. They used Northerns (4-8-4) on that service and when I was going to university, I rode between Toronto and Belleville where my parents lived. Around Oshawa, there is a stretch where the track parallels 401 (a 4 lane, divided highway like all the 400 series highways in Ontario) and you knew that the traffic on 401 was doing between 70 & 80 miles an hour. Even at that traffic speed, the train was easily walking away from the traffic which meant that it had to be travelling at least 90 miles an hour. The Northerns were easily able to do this speed and would hit a hundred when going through the valleys.
At that time they were using the big, heavy steel coaches with 6 wheel trucks. These coaches rode very smoothly, but you could always tell when you were close to 100 miles an hour because the coach would start to bounce up and down a bit. Its nice to remember those days. Now the passenger trains go even faster on that run.
Hope people find this interesting.
Richard Trounce.