ARR Locomotive #557 - Engine 557 Restoration Company Progress Report 1/15/14

Each day is getting longer by about 3.5 minutes and even with gray overcast skies it is reassuring that spring is just around the corner. Soon we will be able to move some of our operations outside the 557 Engine House. Meanwhile the North bound train to Fairbanks blasts by our door in the mid-morning gloom at 9:30 am on a recent Saturday. By noon the sun is up at a low angle and the 557 sign draws volunteers and visitors to the cause.

It takes a huge team to overhaul a locomotive, and we have one. Every month the size of that team grows as does our gratitude for what the members bring to the restoration, whether it is labor, special skills, materials, or money. Please help us to thank our volunteers and other supporters as we make “Dream Steam” a reality.

Many thanks to the 79 individuals and organizations that purchased $100 tickets for the Museum of Alaska Transportation and Industry sponsored 557 raffle. All 150 tickets were sold and MATI donated $12,750 to the Alaska Community Foundation Engine 557 Fund. Thanks to MATI’s Sherry Jackson for her help and for spending a cold New Years’ Eve at the 557 Engine House to pick the winners and leave behind a most welcome check. The MATI donation will be matched by the generous $350,000 Rasmuson Foundation matching grant. A thank you also goes to the Alaska Railroad for their donation of the prizes for MATI to use in the raffle.

Ticket 7 - 1st place. Day trip for the winner and 15 friends on the Alaska Railroad’s Denali private car, Jennifer Morris of Anchorage.
Ticket 77 - 2nd place. Round trip rail tickets for 6 to Fairbanks with overnight accommodations, Solor helicopters of Wasilla.
Ticket 87 - 3rd place. 2014 ARRC art print, Gloria McAlister of Valdez

Welcome to new members of the 557 Mechanical Department. Shawn Miller, Nathan Elmore, Richard Giancoli, Michael Giancoli, Jerry Christiensen and Brad Porter have come on board with a wide range of skills and experiences.

A new south door has been installed so Engine 557 can leave the building in a dignified manner. We thank Mike Pollack of Roger Hickel Construction for leading the effort on doing the demolition and installing the new door as an in-kind donation. Sampson Steel provided the steel and the certified welder, also an in-kind donation. This is a job well done under some extreme winter weather conditions. A thank you also goes to the Alaska Railroad for approving the building modification and providing the new door.

Roger Porter, Fred Tigner and Pat Durand fit rails to connect 557 to the outside service track. Soon after the rails were joined to the engine house tracks, preparations began for moving 557 out the door for some frame alignment work.

557 Chief Mechanical Officer Jeff DeBroeck posts the priorities that we all work toward. The lower priority items 4, 5, 6 and 7 take less technical skill and are nearly completed as fall back jobs for the crew.

George Fellers, here installing a new gasket behind the lens cover of the Ashton double faced pressure gauge, continues to rebuild all the valve assemblies. Now he is working on the Nathan injectors, cleaning the valve stems and seats. The interior cones look clean and are being left in place until they can be tested for operation under steam.

It has become our standard practice to remove dirt, grease, and old paint and scale manually and with a wire wheel before parts are batched to go to sand blasting and primer. By pre-treating, the sand blast media is more efficient and lasts longer, the finish is more consistent, and machined areas can be protected. Gail Clinch is preparing the left rear piston valve head and crosshead support, removing 70 years of accumulated steam cylinder oil and dirt.

Jerry Christiensen, recently retired from the Anchorage ARR shops, is working with us two days a week and is a great new addition to the volunteer Mechanical Department. He is masking off the power reverse crosshead guide in preparation for primer and finish paint with Rodda Barrier III products donated by Rodda Paint in Wasilla.

Needle scalers have become the tools of choice for certain jobs such as this, with Dean Sawyer removing scale and old oil deposits from the interior of a rear cylinder head. We found heavy deposits in the rear steam passages in the cylinder block.

Lynn Willis, is cleaning the valve spools in preparation for their reassembly. He bundled up because even with a space heater in the 5000 sq. ft. building the floor stays at about 39°. Three large ceiling fans have been installed by Ken Elmore to push the heat down. Ken has installed additional lighting in the machine shop area at the back of the Engine house as well.

No. 1 priority at the moment is removing the fire box stay bolts securing the interior crown and side sheets. Jeff has been assisted by Jerry Cunnington, Michael and Richard Giancoli, and Scott Sterling in getting the stay bolts removed from the crown.

A dramatic view results from a time lapse of stay bolt cutting by Jerry. Stay bolt removal is a lot of repetitive, careful work and is the necessary preparation for replacing the interior sheets of the fire box.

Robert Franzen, Steam Services of America reports, "I inspected the 557 drivers at TVRM (Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum) and picked up the air pump on Thursday (January 9, 2014). Everything arrived in good shape. You guys did a great job with the shipping and crating, etc." The drivers are in Chattanooga so the machinists there can do their magic on the TVRM wheel turning lathe. There are no facilities in Alaska to do the bearing work on the drivers. A big thank you goes to Scott Hicks and Alaska West Express for the loan of a soft side trailer and for arranging the trip south so the drivers and pump could receive a spa treatment and makeover in the warmer latitudes this winter.

The 557 Engine House received a visit from the Happy Hooker when owner, Wade Behm donated his services to transport our "new" 70 year old Lodge & Shipley 12" Lathe. The slide back truck made the move efficient and safe.

No job is finished until the paperwork is done and every corporation requires it to comply with the law. Thanks to David Lawson and the law firm Davis, Wright, Tremaine for pro-bono support to ensure our corporate legal documents were solid and for working towards finalizing our non-profit tax exemption with the IRS.

Dick Morris has spent several hundred hours towards reconstituting a full set of engineering drawings for 557. Thanks are extended to a number of people who have assisted in this effort, including Kurt Bell and the Baldwin Collection volunteers at the Pennsylvania State Archives, Charles Bates of the Allen County (Ohio) Museum, Cara Randall at the California State Railroad Museum, and Robert Franzen. We also thank John Kerr of Survbase in Anchorage, who donated plotting of a number of these oversized drawings.

Engine 557 Restoration Company currently has $200,128.91 in our fund with about $60.000 of that encumbered for ongoing contracts. We expect to process about $60,000 in a matching request to the Rasmuson Foundation shortly. This will leave approximately $120,000,00 remaining for match by the Rasmuson Foundation Grant. The current grant agreement expires in July 2014. Engine 557 Restoration Company needs to raise $21,000 each of the next 6 months to close out the grant match.

This is a new year, if it’s been a while since you made a donation, please consider making another at this time and become a sustaining supporter of 557. If you want your donation acknowledged publicly we would love to do so.

If you have been setting on the sidelines, waiting for confirmation that the project was not a flash in the pan, there should now be no doubts that 557 will steam again. The all-volunteer management team and mechanical department have proven what can be done when a dream and a lot of hard work come together. If you have been holding off on making your donation, please make a positive decision now and send your donation of $25, $100, $1,000 or more to:

The Alaska Community Foundation 557 Fund 3201 C St., Suite 110 Anchorage, Alaska 99503

Dick Morris offers up this short video clip as an example of how 557 will sound. Make sure the sound is turned up! This is recently overhauled S-160 USATC 5820 "Big Jim" undergoing testing in England. When 557 comes back to life she will be the third operating survivor to represent the 2120 G.I. S-160 Consolidation locomotives that went to war.