Re: What OM Needs

Back in 1987-88 we hatched a plan to operate OM for it's 100 birthday (1989). We pulled some flues out of the bottom of the boiler for replacement. The flues were fine but the D&RGW had never capped OM's stack and probably had never cleaned out the smokebox (probably because the front wall was in the way of opening the smokebox door). As a result cinders and soot had buried tha bottom row of flues, the moisture coming in through the stack had created acid which had eaten away the ends of the flues to the point where the ends of the flues were now inside the outer edge of the flue sheet. It had been like this for a while, and had never shown any signs of leaking, but we thought it would be a good plan to change them as we had rather grand plans (run to at least Cumbres with it). The boiler is very good shape. From the lack of tool marks on the rear flue sheet, I'm betting the original flues are still in the boiler. We had the CO boiler inspector come look at it. He said "well I'd be willing to let you put 180 lbs in her, nothing more..." "well, OK, we'll go along with that. But she is only originally rated for 160.." The boiler looks like it came off a 4-4-0 - wagon top, crown bars, lap seam, the works. For what its worth, the OM ,like the OY are not locomotives and therefore do not come under FRA justidiction. It that time the body was still in fair shape, but we did need to do some running gear work.
Unfortunately, Kyle Ry's didn't have the $$ to sink into the project then and the whole thing fell apart.