Railtown machinist Robert William’s off-season work on Sierra #28 comes to a dramatic conclusion, as our steam workhorse is returned to operation. This Part III story picks up after most of the bearing refinement has been made, and deals with the complexity of every surprise that Robert discovered along the way, in putting the bearings back in.
While the larger crew was busy with rods in the roundhouse, Jim Hamilton) and Robert Williams were busy in the shop with smaller but important chores so the main rod will go together later that week.
Next in Robert’s tasks was to manufacture a new locking key for the eccentric crank arm. A short rectangular piece of metal about 3 inches long with two different widths, the key is custom-fit to the two slightly different width keyways.
The time had arrived to cool the bushing for the expansion link and press it into a happy new home. Scott made a special trip to secure some dry ice which worked as expected. The bore of the hole was coated with some anti-seize lubricant to insure all went well as the diameter of the bore was not perfectly round.
In an ever-present drive to make things easier and more reliable, Robert decided to apply a new approach to ensure the location of the retainer pin holes in the rod bushings. In the past, this was a real challenge and often times what appeared to be a good alignment of the hole with the pin location in the rod did not align as expected. The decision was made to mark a small groove in perfect alignment with the pin hole.
With the considerable amount of side play in the eccentric rod yokes, it was decided to upgrade the parts with Teflon shims to see what improvements might happen along with the newly installed bronze bushing.
In order to manufacture all of the shims to identical dimensions, Robert secured the three Teflon sheets to a piece of maple with screws, and a piece of birch plywood on top.
After the parts on the left side were reassembled, the locomotive was now ready for service. By the end of the year, Covid had released its grip on Railtown, and trains were once again allowed to run. Following a few test runs, Sierra #28 was released from the shop, and allowed to once again thrill visitors on board the Sierra Railway.
Although Robert Williams worked as the lead for this project, it is important to note the many other individuals that contributed to these efforts. Volunteers Frank Cottle, Jr. and Jim Hamilton provided many, many hours of valuable hours in machining. Restoration Specialist Scott Botfield oversaw much of the work in placing the parts back into the locomotive, although he also had the help of many others, including Railroad Restoration Specialist Matt Sagaser, volunteers Sean Berry-Kelly, Paul Huston, and many others!