Re: RGS 20 progress

In 1943 the locomotive rolled over and evidently hit a particularly unforgiving piece of landscape. The second course and the front of the third course was pretty badly flattened. The boiler still worked, but the barrel sheets flexed significantly. RGS ran her that way until November of 1951, but it would not be good to continue this way. We measured the flex on her hydro and it was close to 1/4" in 12".

This area will get new steel. There will be two longitudinal welds and the longitudinal rivet seam will be eliminated. The course essentially will be seamless since the welds, once xrayed, will be 100% efficient. The circumferential seams will be riveted just as they are now.

The door sheet, rear flue sheet, lower 6" of the front flue sheet, 1st course patch at the bottom of the front flue sheet, firebox side sheets. All of this is pretty standard stuff. The flattened 2nd course is a bit unusual. The calculations have shown once again that ALCO (and predecessors) built better boilers than Baldwin. This is a very well designed and constructed boiler (so far) with relatively low brace stresses. I can't say that every ALCO is better, but in all I have calculated, the stresses were lower than with Baldwin. It seems that it was a matter of cutting costs rather than capability. Just my opinion.