The T1 Trust 2022: A Year in Review

[Music] [Music] hello welcome to the 2022 year-end review for the Pennsylvania Railroad T1 trust we always look forward to bringing this to all of our supporters of our volunteers and just those following the project to let them know what we're doing uh what we've been up to for the last year and uh in previous years too so we'll give you a quick recap so that you have the ability to follow along in more detail and hopefully uh come out and check out one of our events next year and come say hello so earlier this year in January February we received our throat sheet materials from fmw solutions they worked on that out of their Chattanooga Tennessee facility and Nashville facility and delivered those to us so that uh our boiler shop can continue on the throat sheet is the the piece of the boiler that attaches the front of the Firebox up underneath to the cylindrical sections of the boiler itself so very difficult transition piece to to Crate they did a fantastic job with that and we took delivery of that sent it to our shop boiler shop Continental fabricator in St Louis Missouri who then took that and welded on to our current boiler and uh trying to get wrapped up here so we can get the exterior of the boiler complete very soon so more on that here in a minute um the big thing then uh we haven't had a open house since early 2020 so uh two weeks before a coven hit we had our open house and we haven't had one since we've had a lot of people request that and we've been wanting to do it just haven't been able to make it happen until they so we worked with the Pennsylvania Railroad Technical and Historical Society who was holding their annual convention in Harrisburg Pennsylvania in middle of may we made arrangements with them to ship our boiler nearly a thousand miles from St Louis by truck a special rig which you're seeing on screen this moment and bringing it all the way to Harrisburg but first it may stop in Ohio where we had our cab stored and that we built several years ago we mounted the cab on to the locomotive along with the the nose also known as the brow the automotive giving it streamlined look we hooked that on and then shipped it the rest with Harrisburg and then spent the weekend in Harrisburg and hundreds and a thousands came out uh spent the weekend with us looked at it listened to more than several talks that we gave the weekend explaining what we've been working on and uh what they're seeing and what their donations have done so it was a big day for a lot of people and uh we met a lot of great people a lot of our supporters that we've talked to through email or social media we've got to put a face with them that was great so we hope to do more events like this in the future and we're planning something along the same lines uh in May of this year of 2023 coming up as well so uh stay tuned we'll probably make those announcements sometime March people time frame uh give everybody plenty of time to fake arrangements for that so I'll watch the social media for that that's the best way to do that uh our web page and or our Facebook page tend to be the best places for most accurate most up-to-date information so um after we ship the uh the boil there we have sent it all the way back to St Louis so that final preparations can be done uh waiting on What's called the hip sheet so the hip sheet it was a very difficult piece to manufacture is the piece that transitions the top of the boiler the Firebox to the cylindrical part of the boiler so this piece is one inch thick have multiple complex Curves in it which makes it very difficult to manufacture you can't just heat up the one inch potato steel and Hammer around a guy like many of you seen before we've done other facets of the locomotive obstruction it's just too big too thick too complicated piece so we had to spend we spent about forty thousand dollars manufacturing dies specialized eyes male female dies that will make this so that took quite a bit of time this year to to what the supply chain issues getting those manufactured but they are manufactured and then they're actually out in a shop in Kansas where they'll be pressed at a a Boeing facility sometime here very shortly uh the plates one inch thick plates will be heated up to 1800 to 2000 degrees and then pressed in the dies and uh to correct the fork so we're looking forward to that uh here more shortly and we'll be there to document that what happens and share all that with everyone about watching this video and watching the project as we go so um one of the other exciting things we did uh in June is we had the Western Maryland Scenic Railroad Cumberland Maryland invited us to down and we brought the Whistle the voice of the T1 and uh put that on there 2662 locomotive uh number 1309 for the weekend uh we had many supporters come out uh uh sold trains out all weekend long and scored the T1 trust we're very thankful for everyone that did come out um said hello stop by we appreciate that uh immensely so uh again it's about getting out there and letting people know what we're doing how we're doing it and show them results through far late so um we also uh around that same time took on the frame engineering this has been the single biggest thing that most people ask us about but now the boiler is uh uh probably better than halfway complete on that it's still the internal to do on it the frame is the next biggest it is the biggest most complex component that we have to manufacturer on the T1 itself so the beauty of that is we hired fmw Solutions and they have their engineering team has taken the challenge and broken down every piece of it so we're fortunate that Jack Toole out of New Jersey used their engineering team to recreate the original frame in CAD then we were able to take that model and then break it down into sections where we could actually manufacture the frame using modern techniques welding cutting forming with uh laser controls and CNC equipment so it gives us an advantage that they did not have the 1940s that we currently have and then to stress relief the entire thing once completed will be a huge improvement over the original so we are manufacturing a look like the original in a way within two percent plus or minus of the original frame be just as strong but not too strong because rigidity is a problem we need some flexibility in the frame as it's built we don't want to be too rigid or it will break so uh we are engineers at fmw have done a spectacular job of doing all that engineering and making sure that it's going to be perfect for us so we're excited about uh we're calling 2023 the year of the frame so that's a big Focus focal point of the upcoming year uh to get the engineering wrapped up getting approved and uh get our contractors working on that that's it I'll be watching that uh we'll be documenting that every step of the way through that whole process and letting you know and we even hope they even have it on display at some point uh to make them out look at progress on the frame with integrated cylinders uh so pretty exciting time on that so that started around the July time frame that continues on we're at the detail into that process uh currently and hope to have something for everybody's first part of 2023. um we did take uh possession of two more main driving wheels from our Foundry Heber Valley alloy out of Monaca Pennsylvania we took those uh sometimes September time frame brought them back with the other ones and then we have several the final drivers are on order and hope to have them in the near future as they process that through their Founders so pretty complicated uh the drivers are 72 inches in diameter once the tires from they'll be 80 inches when complete they are completely Hollow on the inside so the patterns are very difficult to to handle and to make on that so that took us quite a bit of time we did that earlier this year as well modifying the patterns because the other drivers that we had to create and uh so now we're excited about that by summertime we hope to have all eight drivers in our possession and we can start on the Machining process of that so we wanted to get all eight of them cast and then we'll take them to machine shop and have all eight of them machined at the same time that we could order tires and get tires throwing them so they're one step closer to having axles and crank fence installed it so we're moving uh that process along the frames moving along the boilers moving along the tender still safe sitting up near Buffalo New York we don't have any near-term plans on the tender itself but we will it's safe where it's at it's not going anywhere it's not carry any further so it's in pretty good shape so well we're just going to let that one focus on the frame and the other massive components but once those get done then it's a bunch of small stuff that will turn Focus so including the fender so once we've identified the location where the whole engine will be assembled uh we have we're down to two different locations for that currently that we're going through the final vetting process of that and once we know that then we'll end up moving the tender to that location to get everything all the major components so we look look forward to that uh uh we're not in a major hurry to make that announcement uh but we will have to be make that pretty soon as it's the uh the frame is uh structure will begin we've also taken the opportunity to start sourcing a lot of missing parts well the local weather is never around so I've been gone since 1956 so there was pretty much everything that's missing so we threw auction sites and then many of our friends out there knowing what we're looking for we've been able to locate many of the gauges that go in the cab we even found a speedometer that would have been original to a locomotive near the identical this pedometer will have modern guts in it so that we can tie it into PPS train Control Systems computer systems that the class one railers will require us to have on the locomotive to operate on the main line so it's very important we want to keep the outside aesthetic of the speedometer but yet we want to have the modern interior components of it so that we can operate on the main line in railroads won't have any issues with that so we make modern adjustments like that but try to hide them so that they look right out of the 1940s so that's an important piece of it for us using the modern techniques but also using uh modern components where we can whether it's in a radio electrical systems whatever the case may be this so so we're happy with that so moving forward like I said we have a lot going on try and wrap up the exterior of the boiler I'll be doing my interior boiler components uh you probably see some Stables I start to go in yet this year 2023 that is coming up on it uh the frame construction going on so this is again where we always need your help so this thing gets built at the speed of which donations come in that hasn't changed we're moving along we are fully transparent so anybody can see exactly where their dollars are being spent we well 100 volunteer there's no paid staff so every dollar donated goes right towards the locomotive in the steel so that's very important for us very important for the donors and uh everybody else so we want to thank you if you've made donations in the past uh ask you to potentially make another donation in the future or become a reoccurring donation the small uh 25.50 a month donations we get that are reoccurring our month help us budget upcoming machine shop visits what we can do there we can really start to really narrow down what we're able to do each year so thank you for all the ones that have done the reoccurring and those that have not you may want to consider that that helps us keep things along here and get this thing done sooner the better any questions along this feel free to go to our social media or Facebook or our website email us or post uh questions on there where we monitor those and are more than happy to answer any questions you may have and uh watch for our announcement sometime early spring for another open house so we look forward to meeting everyone so thank you [Music] thank you [Music]

Channel: The T1 Trust

Views: 74,162

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Id: hUfXP7GtHik

Length: 14min 50sec (890 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 31 2022