Re: NNG-Why did 1744's stint in service end so abruptly?

1744 arrived in Alamosa with some hidden firebox issues that surfaced as soon as we began to run it. Its service in New Orleans was on a flat railroad and the engine did no work at all. We made our first test run over La Veta on a Thursday. It was a light train of 2 passenger cars. We were going to make another trip on Friday with the entire train before starting revenue trips on Saturday. We showed up Friday morning to find a puddle of water under 1744's firebox.

Water was leaking around many staybolt heads as well as the left rear corner of the firebox. We managed to dam up the leaky stays and do some seal welding to the corner seam in time for us to go out on Saturday, but we got no more test runs, the next time 1744 went out was Saturday with a full tonnage train. It was the real deal.

We got the boiler firebox to stay pretty dry, but investigation showed the leaking stays were caused by star-shaped cracks radiating out of the staybolt holes. As there were a dozen or so on each side, the fix was to be new side sheets that winter.

After the season was over we contracted Bob Yuilli to do the boiler work. He showed up in Alamosa and went to work. With the firebrick removed we found the lower front flue sheet was very crudely pad welded up. How anyone got a UT test on it is beyond me. The left rear corner had a whole bunch of welds piled one on top of another in attempts to seal it up. When the side sheets were cut out, it was discovered that in order to avoid replacing the outer wrapper sheet the SP had installed thimbles in the staybolt holes to reduce their size. When the staybolt was burned out of the wrapper, the thimble came out too. So, newew partial wrapper sheets were coming too. Eventually further investigation showed the firebox had star cracks throughout all the sheets. The flue sheet had lots of out of round holes. We had one superheater flue that had sprung a leak at the rear tube sheet and we re-rolled it a couple of times, but you could see the hole in the sheet was out of round, and it never was going to be right.

The final blow was when Bob discovered that 3 of the 4 corners of the mudring were cracked all the way through. The mudring is cast iron, and an attempted repair by brazing the crack was evident.

At this point Bob suggested we pull the boiler off the frame and send it to his shop in Alabama. Trying to fit up a new mudring with the boiler right side up would be very difficult. Alamosa did not have a shop, all the work was being done outside - in winter. So, the 1744 was dismantled and the boiler sent to Bob's shop in Birmingham. Worked progressed for a while, then IPH went through its many periods of poor cash flow, followed by another re-financing of the Company. Bob would get some money and he'd go to work, then the money would dry up, and he'd stop. I honestly don't know how far he got on the boiler. Eventually, Bob had to close his shop due to health reasons, and 1744's unfinished boiler had to be relocated. At that time IPH was running the Texas State Railroad, so I had 1744's boiler sent there. I had hopes of getting the rest of 1744 shipped to Rusk as it had proven too small to run on La Veta any more, it was the perfect size for the Texas State. Soon after that I left IPH.

The boiler sat in Rusk until IPH was removed as operator of the TSR, whereupon it was shipped back to Alamosa where it sat until sold with the rest of the engine to the PLA.