Working on a full size portable steam engine

[Kaleb]

As you would expect, its quite exciting to work on something big.



This engine is not mine, but I am involved in the restoration, and will be doing quite a bit of work on it. The engine is a Ransomes, Sims and Jefferies portable which we believe dates from around 1903. We don't know much of its history, what is known is that it was displayed in a park at the town of Boggabilla, north of Moree on the Queensland border, then removed and stored in a council works depot until it was brought to the local TAFE college were we are working on it. Most of the major parts are there, though the elements have clearly taken their toll.



As you can see the bottom of the smokebox is pretty well rusted out. It may not be visible here, but part of the smokebox tube plate (the area marked with chalk) is shot, so we'll be replacing that section, if not the whole plate.



The fire tubes look a lot better than I was expecting, though we'll still be re-tubing the boiler to be sure. Better safe than sorry with any kind of boiler, especially one this size.



Doesn't look too bad inside the firebox either, those things on the grate are some of the mudhole covers that some other students removed before I went in to work on it yesterday. Interestingly, the foundation ring of the firebox is not made from solid bar, but is bent from plate. I'm told that several manufacturers did this.



Just a close up of the builders plate on the valve chest cover. A more accurate date from the works number would be appreciated.



Hmm... that rod going to the feed pump is rusted pretty badly, looks like it'll be needing some new parts here.



The first job of the day was to get as much of the scale and dirt out of the water jacket around the firebox. That's where almost all of it builds up, since it's the lowest point of the boiler. The other fellas at TAFE reckon it hadn't been cleaned out in 100 years!



So we quickly welded a piece of plate to a length of angle iron and we were ready to go.



Yep, that's me doing the dirty work. It was hard yakka getting the stuff out, you should've seen the piles that came out when we were done for the day, would've been enough to fill a large flowerpot or two at least. There were even some ants that had made a nest in this stuff!



The other job of the day was to strip the lagging, or what was left of it. As you can see it was pretty rotten.

I'll be doing some more work on it tomorrow, looks like I'll be having a long day there, 8am to 3pm. The site I use to host my photos will be down for maintenance, so I may not be able to post any updates till Friday.

 

[Philjoe5]

Nice work Kaleb. I'm sure you'll learn a lot. I did in the first restoration I did on a water motor made around 1900. You may discover any threaded parts were made using pitches and diameters long out of use. Good luck on this project

Cheers,
Phil

 

[Jasonb]

Should be an interesting project, looks like you have a fairly clean boiler unlike this similar RS&J.

Bit more than a flowerpot full!!

I take it you or someone at the college is a member of Traction Talk forum and will have seen the similar one restored by Bartlett Eng?

 

[lennardhme]

Very worthwhile project.....Good luck

 

[robcas631]

Amazing machine! Glad you are bringing it back to life!

 

[Kaleb]

Progress was a bit slow for a while due to stubborn nuts and bolts, but has picked up again lately. This work was done in a few sessions since I last posted.



After scraping out the stuff we could reach, we moved the engine outside and hosed out most of the scale still in the boiler. We had quite a few people taking a look on that day. That's the head teacher of my section doing it in the photo, but I did quite a bit of it after I took this.



We also got the steam chest cover off that day. This could well be the first time the slide valve and the inside of the steam chest have seen the light of day in over a century. The gasket material was still sticking very firmly to both surfaces.



We also got the rear end cap off the cylinder. This could require a re-bore, but it's possible that a good bit of honing will do the trick.





The other people working on the engine got the slide valve and the eccentric rod off.




We also got the top off the regulator casing.



The others also removed the fire tubes since those were going to be replaced from the start.



There's still a bit of stuff to clean out, though quite a bit of what you see here is the slag produced by the gas axe they used to cut through the fire tubes.



We've also got the chimney off, and you can see that the smokebox is rusted pretty badly around where the base of the chimney goes.



The feed pump eccentric may be good to go with only a little bit of cleaning up.



In another session we got the conrod and crosshead ways off. The crosshead design reminds me of that on a Stuart S50 or a PM Research mill engine.



Here's what the crosshead itself looks like.



It seems the crank throw was well protected from the elements by the big end, since it doesn't seem rusty, just dirty.



Now here's something that might be of interest to you scratch builders out there. This shot shows the journal assembly of one end of the conrod. The brass bushing is in two halves, which are surrounded by a U-shaped holder. That thing below the lowest of the two holding bolts is a steel wedge which is used to hold the two halves of the bushing tight against the pin. It can be adjusted to take up any slop that may occur due to wear.



A few weeks later, we are getting close to having the engine fully stripped down. Here we see the flywheel, crankshaft and one of the main bearing blocks.



We had quite a bit of trouble getting the crankshaft off, even with a forklift to help us, and you can see why.





The governing valve is quite unlike what I was expecting. A poppet valve, with two seats on top of that. Anyone seen a valve like this before on a steam engine?



Here's the piston and the forward end cap.



Here you can see the underside of the slide valve, which is typical of this kind of engine.



This is the safety valve, which goes on top of the regulator casing.



Here's the cylinder removed from the top of the firebox. A little like an oversized Stuart Turner cylinder in many ways. That thing sticking out from the top is a support for a hinged chimney extension.





These bushings look to be in pretty good nick in my opinion, they're just all grubby from what I can tell.



Here's a general shot of the engine before the cylinder and bearing blocks were removed.



This is about where we're at now. Next thing on the to do list is get the shot tube plate out. Once we've got it fully stripped down, the plan is to get everything sandblasted and get the boiler assessed.

 

[Sshire]

Fascinating project. Looks to be a tremendous amount of work, but well worth it. Can't wait to see more of this restoration

Best,
Stan