Tom Moungovan Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Russ489 Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > That was what I heard about the Tahoe Trout
> Creek
> > & Pacific #5, the little 2-4-2 that belonged to
> > Bob Kellar. It was on the property for years
> > while Scenic Rys was the operator of the C&TS.
> > The story was that he forgot to mark the
> drivers
> > when he tore it apart for the rebuild. After
> > puzzling over it for some time he concluded
> that
> > it didn't make any difference which way they
> went,
> > except that it did. It too, reportedly, ran
> > backwards from the direction that the reverse
> > lever was in, badly.
> >
> > I always wondered if that story was really
> true.
>
> I believe that it is Russ. I was up there only
> one time, in August or so of 1970
> and remember remarking to my friend that the
> reverese lever was to the rear as they went ahead.
It was reported they tried to swap the eccentric arms to make it go forward. It did, but the valve timing events were so far off it could hardly move itself.
I had a similar problem when I was working at Roaring Camp in 1979. We were putting the Dixianna back together with its new boiler. We assembled the engine unit, set the valves and tried to run it on compressed air. It wouldn't budge. We moved the crank a quarter turn, and it moved a bit and stopped again. It turned out that somewhere in time the crankshaft had been broken between rod crank throw and the eccentrics for the same cylinder. The crank had been back welded together 180 degrees opposite from where it was supposed to be. The only way we could get it to run was to swap the eccentric blades. It ran, but there was way too much valve travel on that cylinder. If you ran it with the reverse in the corner, the valve would hit the ends of the steam chest.
There was a complete engine unit for a 42 ton Shay out back that we wanted to steal the crank out of to make her right, but old Norman would have none of that. He wanted that engine unit left intact so he could build his "own" Shay like the Uintah did. Of course that never happened. Some years later I was at RC and Dixie was running sounding like she should. I wandered around the back and there was the spare engine unit - minus its crankshaft.
