Old Machine Press Article
We want to thank our friends at the Age of Steam Roundhouse as well as Steam Services of America. Our boiler backhead needed a 11 degree bend in the bottom and the best machine for that is a McCabe Flanger. The Age of Steam Roundhouse had one such machine and allowed the PRR T1 Trust to use it. Tim Sposato, CMO of Age of Steam and Robert Franzen, President of Steam Services of American took time out of their busy schedules and bent this plate for us. They made it look easy.
We feel the best part of the PRR T1 Trust is the amount of groups willing to help make the T1 a reality. We are always amazed how gracious everyone is. Our donors are also a huge reason we have been so successful. Building a mainline steam locomotive in today's world is truly a team effort.
If you are in Ohio and want to see one of the largest and most unique collections of steam locomotives in one place, stop by www.ageofsteamroundhouse.com
If you are in need of work on a steam locomotive or need some parts made, check out www.steamservicesofamerica.com
More huge parts done. The smokebox extention is now done and ready to be mated to the smokebox. This is the streamlined piece that gives the T1 its iconic look. Thank you for the donations to make this happen.
We will make a deal with you, if you keep making donations, we will keep building the #5550 at current pace. We have been blown away by your support. Thank you!
We wanted to share a recent delivery your donations helped support. These are some of the dozens of washout plugs located all over the boiler. These allow the crew every 30 days of operation to access the boiler with large hoses and clean out the sediment and scale left in the boiler after operation. This has been common practice for 100 plus years.
We want to thank Diversified Rail for providing these CNC machined plugs. They turned out beautiful.
The center one is larger and has a longer end on it, that would be a "belly" plug and would be located on the bottom of boiler. The other ones will be located all over the boiler and will have access ports in the sheet metal streamlining to remove to clean the boiler.
If you feel we are doing well with contributions, please consider helping us with a donation. We have continued to gain momentum and want to keep our foot on the gas to get this locomotive done. (Or hand on throttle 🙂 )
The Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) T1 Steam Locomotive Trust recently held an open house for the 5550 project at Gemini Industrial Machine Group. Enjoy a private tour of the exhibits around the shop for the locomotive before the shop opened to the public here on The Steam Channel.
Open House Presenation by General manager Jason Johnson
Great turn out for the open house today! We will post more pictures of the displays later. Here are some photos hand flanging the backhead boiler sheet. A huge thank you to all that volunteered to come out from all over the country today. It really meant a lot to the T1 Trust. The goal was to get the top formed and we did just that. It took 6 hours of hammering to complete the task and everyone had smiles on their faces when done. Great job team!
If you were at today's Open House, post some of your pictures in the comments for all to see.
Please consider making a donation to make more days like this possible!
Your dollars = progress