Warning: TMI! (Too Much Information)

Your faithful servant has beeen working the past few weeks on D&S #7's sister engine, #4, at the Colorado Railroad Museum (see photo, below). Dead batteries were the initial complaint (lack of use more than anythign else). I have been changing fuel filters (and oil and oil filters soon) and diagnosing and fixing a hard start problem on engine #1. Phil Johnson from the Loop has dropped in and worked on balancing the air throttles so the gensets load more or less equally. Someone else (name?) is installing a "train air" brake system in the locomotvie; #4 came to us equppied only with "straight air" brakes for the locomotive only. #4 will become the mainstay for the new monthly "Riding the Rails" operating days third Saturdays, but only when steam isn't scheduled.

#4 and #7 are rather interesting n.g. locomotives, designed for use by the steel mill industry to haul "bottle" cars about the mill grounds, transporting molten steel to various parts of the plants to be made into different products; alternately, they would haul slag cars from the furnaces out to the dumps.

These locomotives were more or less standard 44-tonners ballasted up to 50 tons with steel deck plates that are close to 3" thick. Each truck extends out from under the front/rear of the locomotive to house a larger-than-normal traction motor geared to the outer axle; the inner axles are chain driven from the outer axles. Yours truly is a little surprised at how fast the D&S's #7 was moving down the track, because these locomotives are sloggers, not racers.

Drop by the CRRM on any third Saturday which does not have a steam special event scheduled, and you will likely find #4 on the point of the train.

PS. Guys around the museum have taken to calling #4 "the bus." Why? Because #4 is equipped with two Detroit Diesel in-line 6-71 engines. Those of us of a certain age will remember when the 6-71 was almost ubiquitous in city transit and interstate buses, and a lot of commercial trucks too. And indeed, when the #4 revs up, by golly, it sounds just like a bus! The 6-71 is a two-cycle engine, with exhaust beats coming with every cycle of the piston, not every other cycle. So they always sound like they are churning at a furious rate, when in fact they do not turn any faster than any other type of mediun-duty truck diesel engine.

Mike





Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/18/2012 09:55PM by mikerowe.