Restoration Journal - April 19, 2008

After eight years of teeth pulling, the restoration of 6167 has finally begun. At the moment, we are preparing the engine for the contractors that will perform the asbestos abatement and other heavy work. After 41 years of sub standard care, there is no shortage of work to be done on that locomotive. Some of our goals for this work session are as follows:

To our delight, the smokebox is in quite good shape. The heavy stack cap that was installed when the engine was put on display successfully prevented any water from entering through the stack. It still has a thick layer of cinders (from her last excursion) at the bottom of the smokebox. Examining the smokebox front suggests that very little erosion of the material due to it being bombarded by cinders over the course of its life. 6218 had this problem which was exasperated by all the water leaking inside. See my photos of 6218's heavily damaged smokebox for a comparison to 6167's.

We then set about removing the Number Plate (a replica), the sole surviving Northern Type Plate (also a replica) and the Superheater Repair Plate. To get the Number Plate off, we torched the nuts that held it on until they melted off. The Superheater Repair Plate was removed by grinding the screw heads off. The Northern Type Plate was pried off the cylinder jacket with a claw hammer. It had been applied by the previous group of volunteer's 40 years ago, and they only used wood screws to hold it down, which is absolutely not how these things were secured when she was running. The screw holding the Superheater Repair Plate now need to be drilled out. The plate was badly corroded, bent from all the scale, cracked in one place, and some of it got ground off it the process. I will make a new plate for the engine, while the old one will stay in the museum's collection. I will also sandblast the other two plates and may look into having something much better made.

The classification lights and glass numberboards we also removed. CN had spot welded the class lights in their bracket when she was retired. We used the torch to melt the welds and then ground off the burrs with an angle grinder and brackets came right out. We didn't have a big enopugh ladder, so I had to lie on the feedwater heater to remove the screws that hold the numberboards in their housing. The numberboards (which weren't original) had were completely spent, and we will pursue having new ones made. The housing seems to be in good shape albeit very dirt inside. I will rebuild the class lights by disassembling them, sand blasting them and fitting them with new lenses and coupling rings. The plastic green inserts which allow you to change the aspect of the lamps from clear to green had all melted and will also need to be replaced. I intended to remove both headlights and the numberboard housing to give them the same treatment. Also, a lens on one lamp had been broken and it formerly had quite a large wasp colony going inside.

Our next task was getting the fireman's side door to open as it has been stuck ajar for many years (possibly decades). The door it mounted on a large tube which rotates on two pins. The tube had completely seized in place. To free it, we heated it with a torch, and went at it with various sizes of sledgehammer. At one point, we drilled a small hole into the tube so we could spray some WD-40 into the bottom pin which wouldn't move at all. It took a great deal of hammering and cursing, but we eventually got it moving. Unfortunately, the door has been taken a great deal of damage over the years will may have to be replaced.

The engineer's and fireman's seats were removed from the cab last year, and today we took the opportunity to remove the two jump seats on the back wall of the cab. Upon removal we discovered that the wood on the back of one seat had been charred. We had long suspected that someone had tried to start a fire in the cab.

The firebox doors wouldn't open due to a lack of lubrication, but we doused the mechanism in WD-40 and within a short time, it opened and closed to our satisfaction. With the doors open, I took the opportunity to jump into the firebox. It took a few attempts, but my technique is to climb in head first on my stomach. I tried to get in feet first on my back, holding onto the oil can rack, but I didn't really care for method. Conversely to get out, I exited head first on my back, this time grabbing on to the oil can rack. The firebox was quite dirty, with a lot of cinders left over from service, as well as lots of garbage. Hopefully the city will be able to vacuum it all out when they do the smokebox (and the stoker trough as well) otherwise another trick would be to shake the grates and dump everything into the ash pan, and then on to the ground. Of course the grates and ash pan are all seized so, to loosen the grates you need to loosen the ash pan hopper doors as the only way to get to the moving parts of the grates is through the ash pan hopper doors.

The main focus of our efforts was cleaning out the stoker. It is currently filled with debris from the roof, coal, garbage, water, and some dead guy funk. The inspection plate in the cab came out easily enough, but the big job is opening the rear bowl of the stoker elevating pipe. It consist of two halves which are mounted on hinges and bolted to the front of the tender. In service when they wanted to separate the engine and tender, they would loosen the bolts and swing the two halves out, towards the locomotive, but we removed the bolts that act as hinges anyway. We managed to remove four of the other six bolts with torches, hammers and wrenches, but we ran out of time. We hope to get it open on our next work session. To our delight, the bolts we did mange to get loose were enough to allow the bowl to open just enough to let water start to drain out. Once we get the stoker all cleaned up and put the bowl back on, we will leave it loose to allow any water that enters in the future to drain out.

I opened up the stoker compartment and had a look at the stoker engine. I checked the crankcase dipstick, and it was bone dry, so eventually we will have to open the cover (as well as the cylinder and valve chest heads) and see what sort of condition they are in, and fill the crankcase with oil to protect the machinery. We may one day, try and get it running. Stokers engines are designed to run in forward and reverse to allow the crew to clear out any blockages should the stoker screw get jammed. Of course it would be real nice if we could get it running and use the screw to clear out all the crud, but that's not going to happen anytime soon.

The wooden roof over the coal bunker came down quite easily. It had completely rotted out and had already collapsed to an extent. To get it out, all we did was glower at it and bombard it negative thoughts. (Okay and a sledgehammer...) The coal bunker has badly deteriorated. That crappy roof (which was just 2 x 4's and plywood) allowed all sorts of water to enter, while preventing the area from drying out, and all the debris that had fallen from the roof collected all kinds of moisture which has badly rotted out the stoker trough. See my photos from last year. The coal gated had seized into place but we managed to get two (of the four) moving, while a third was so badly deteriorated it was just hanging on by its bottom hinge, and the fourth is still seized in place. This whole area is going to require very heavy repairs.

We also opened up the tender tool boxes and had a look inside. The re-railing frogs which were normally carried in the large toolbox (6167 had a second smaller tool box installed after she was delivered) are gone. Who would make of with two giant chunks of steel is a mystery to me. The tool boxes are also heavily deteriorated and new ones will have to be made. Unfortunately, these tool boxes weren't designed for park engine duty, and even 6213's box is a wreck.

As well, we opened up the water hatches and took a peak inside the water tank. In spite of tons of scale and rust, it looks to be in reasonable shape given the circumstances. Fortunately, the bottom plate of the water tank is 1 thick (it also acts as the tender's frame), and it, as well as all the structural members appear to be in sound condition. The wooden planking on the deck is completely worn out and needs to be replaced, as are the running boards. The filing hatches (which are just thin sheet metal) have decayed somewhat. Oh, and we didn't find any bodies this time...

Lastly, we went and oiled about. We had a grease gun for the soft grease fittings on hand so we took care of as many of those fittings as possible, however, we will have to grease the much larger hard grease fittings (usually handled by the Prime-Alemite pneumatic grease gun) another time.

All in all, a splendid time was had by all, and I very much look forward to out next work session. I even managed to get a good dose of "Vitamin A" (Asbestos is a mineral you know) as well as some of the Vitamin D that I missed out on this past winter. Best of all, (almost) NO BEES! One lesson I learned today is that having the strength and flexibility of Hercules and Gumby is a definite requirement for this job!

For our next session, we hope to get the rear bowl of the stoker trough open and begin cleaning out the screw, as well as removing more small parts. We will then begin tagging items that the contractor needs to remove when take off the boiler jacket, which is basically everything. I'll try and get the rest of the light fixtures so I can rebuild them. And a whole host of other jobs.

Yours truly opening the smokebox front for the first time in almost five decades.

The Smokebox door has finally been opened.

Peering inside the smokebox. Note all the cinders from her last trip and rust.

Grant Kingsland pounding away at the netting.

The netting after it was removed.

The blast pipe and the steam pipes to the cylinders.

The diffuser at the end of the exhaust nozzle. The pipe on the right is the steam supply to the blower.

The steam supply to the blower. It branches off the whistle (which in turn is feed from the superheater header) on the side of the smokebox, to the operating valve and then into the smokebox. The shaft for the valve runs all the way along the running boards and into the fireman's side of the cab.

The duct in the centre of the photo carries exhaust steam from the cylinders to the feed water heater. When the engine had the C.V.2 Oil Skimmer installed, the steam pipes had to be moved further into the smokebox and the extension is clearly visible. In the top right corner, you can see the shelf for the feed water heater.

A glance at the front tube sheet and the superheater units.