Locomotive 493: Conversion from Coal-Fired to Oil-Burning Update

The process of converting Locomotive 493 from coal-fired to oil-burning continues. Excellent progress is being made with a great deal of work beginning to come together. Highlights include finishing up portions of the valve motion, rebuilding the rear tender end beam, laying out of the shoe and wedge, finishing UT numbers on the boiler, doing flush patchwork on the firebox, machining driver boxes, and finishing up the spring rigging and reinstallation of various other parts. Cab steelwork is now complete as is the front tender end beam.

Moving forward, the actual assembly of some components such as wheels and running boards may be reinstalled on the locomotive as early as January 2019.

Below are recent highlights of the conversion work:

Installation of Spring Rigging:

In the photo below, roundhouse crew member Will White is working on installing spring rigging.

Completion of Valve Motion Work:

All the parts are off of the engine. Roundhouse crew members have reground the links, made new link blocks, changed out the bushings and the pins, and reset the lever distances. In the photo below, Steve Carr is shown machining valve rings and Joe Dailey is machining valve motion parts.

And below is a photo of the partially rebuilt valve motion.

Completion of Machining of the Driver Boxes:

Below is a photo of 7 of the 8 driver boxes after machining.

And below is a photo of roundhouse crew member, John Walden machining grease grooves in driver box #8.

Completion of UT testing on the boiler:

The UT (ultrasonic testing) is nondestructive testing that measures the thickness of the boiler across many different points. Testing of this kind is done every 15 years. Once completed, these measurements are used to calculate the overall integrity of the boiler. In the photo below you can see the actual measurements of steel thickness at different points written directly on the boiler.