Steam Engine Repair
I’m still detailing out CNor #2791 4-6-2 for the layout. I’ve been looking at everything from Pyle generators (dynamos) to Worthington feedwater systems. Which brought me to today’s topic – locomotive shop photos. It always strikes me on how many large shop machines were needed at each loco facility for the roughly monthly maintenance of the steam locomotives. Heavy equipment was required at almost all roundhouses, and most smaller engine houses to open the boilers and clean out the lime and sediment. Additionally, wheels/tires and valve gear had to be repaired and replaced. Machines such as lathes and milling machines had to be large enough to work on wheels and valve gear. Overhead cranes had to be capable of lifting 50 to 100 tons to get the boilers off the chassis.
Replacing driver tires makes for great photo. This is Beech Grove Shops of the New York Central in Indiana in 1953, a main drive wheel for locomotive No. 6844 gets a new tire
This is at Baldwin Locomotive works – so probably a new wheel – where a driver is being milled for the driving pin
This is at Baldwin again – Eddystone, PA, 1937, where part of a driver’s drive shaft is being milled
This pic is for Mark – They’re removing a tire from Cass Scenic Railroad’s Shay #11, CSRR shops, Cass, WV, 2012. Part of the notes read, “The tire is heated, expanding the tire and then it is beat off of the wheel with a sledge hammer.”
Same year, 2012, out in Portland, OR, at the Oregon Rail Heritage Center, they remove a damaged driver tire for Spokane, Portland & Seattle #700, a 4-8-4
This photo is titled “Work Crew Repairing Locomotive 705, Texas & Pacific Railway Company”, shot in 1946
Southern Railway’s #1408, a Ps4 4-6-2, undergoes Class 3 (heavy) repairs at South Shop (later renamed Pegram), Atlanta GA, 1938
L&N #418, 4-8-2, is being repaired at Corbin Shops, Corbin KY, 1946
At Topeka, Kansas, they lift an engine with the eighty-ton cranes at the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad locomotive shops. This locomotive will be carried to another part of the shop to be wheeled, 1943
This is December 1942. “Chicago, Illinois. In the Chicago & North Western locomotive repair shops.” Every 31 days, the locos were brought in, fires extinguished, and the boilers drained and cleaned
December 1942. Chicago, Illinois. “Working on a giant locomotive, one of the ‘400s,’ in the Chicago & North Western Railroad shops”
This is the Oregon Rail Heritage Center again, 2013
Miller shops – Saint Augustine, Florida, Florida East Coast Railway
This was the world’s largest railroad maintenance facility, the PRR Altoona Works
This is the AT&SF shops in San Bernardino CA, 1943
Overhead cranes lift a steam locomotive in the machine shop at the Santa Fe Railway locomotive repair facility in Albuquerque in 1943
