Re: 340s tender

The first boiler course is a mess. During the last days of the Ouray operation the spring hangers were rubbing on the course. This resulted in the physical wearing of four places on the boiler. The thickness was reduced to around 1/8 of an inch in the four places.The museum volunteers in the 70s had these places welded up as was the state and insurance boiler inspectors recommendations. If you take a peek above the spring hangers at the first driver, you can see the welds.

The cause of the spring rigging digging into the first boiler course was that the spring rigging, somewhere along the line found a leaf spring bundle that was an inch and a half shorter than the other seven. Once replaced, we had equalization.

The Rio Grande beat this poor thing into the ground. I really doubt that there could have been many more trips in her.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/20/2016 12:24AM by Dirk Ramsey.