loco-tender

Locomotive to Tender, Detensioning & Uncoupling

Due to lack of space we need to uncouple the tender from the locomotive and move it backwards in order to remove the locomotive cab for major repairs. And it is possible that for the big move we will move the tender and locomotive separately, even though we will be towing them on track and ties.

Tensioning and Coupling Devices

The locomotive in on the left; the tender on the right. In the bottom 1/3 of the photo is the drawbar. It comes out of the locomotive horizontal, bends upwards, and horizontally enters the tender.

The upper 2/3 thirds of the photo is the tensioning device. It consists of a bumper which contacts a pad on the locomotive. The bumper is pushed towards the locomotive by a wedge. This wedge is kept pushed in by a spring loaded rod mounted to the leading edge of the tender.

From the fireman's side, a little lower perspective.

Looking at the drawbar and tensioning device from the engineer's side. Note the wedge is only about 1/2 inch thick on this side.

Another shot from the fireman's side but a little lower prespective.

Our locomotive is coupled to its tender with a drawbar. This drawbar is very important. Every car being pulled by the locomotive is being pulled with that drawbar.

That drawbar fits into a pocket in both the tender and the locomotive. Each end is then held in place with a large vertical pin. One end of the draw bar is pinned to the locomotive and the other end to the tender. Safety retaining straps go through the bottom of pins. This stops them from working up and the tender becoming uncoupled.

To keep the tender to locomotive distance constant, a tensioning device is used. Most are spring loaded bumpers. To uncouple the tender, one needs to push the tender forward, compress the tensioning device, remove the safety retaining pins from one of the big vertical pins, move the big vertical pin upwards which will release one end of the drawbar. When the forward pressure is release from the rear of the tender, it will move backwards and the two will be uncoupled.

If life were only that simple!

Our tensioning device is not a spring loaded bumper. Our bumper is pushed forward in by a spring loaded wedge. It might have moved freely at one time in its life. Today it is rusted in place, probably micro welded by high amounts of friction, and grooves formed in each the pieces that should be moving.

We had tried to hammer the wedge out, using both the faithful ol' sledge and an electric.

And of course there was lots of penetrating oil.

We tried a puller that we had made along with more hammering and penetrating oil.

Mark Haire tries to loosen the wedge with a sledge.

Mike Stuckert prepares an electric hammer.

       Finally, on our May 7th work session the tender was detensioned from the locomotive. We tackled the problem from four directions.
       1. We jacked up the bumper. It appeared to be canted downwards. We thought this would break some rust free and possibly relieve pressure between the bumper and the wedge. At least it would change the interfacing surface positions relative to each other.
       2. We pushed on the wedge. We obtained a porta-power, basically a long hydraulic sleeve with versatile fittings and extensions. We jacked against the 1/2 inch facing of the wedge using the tender frame as a base.
       3. We obtained a heavier sledge hammer with a longer handle.

       Jacking up the bumper was a good idea. The small jack we brought was still too big so we diverted the porta-power to this task. That worked well. We had to jack the bumper up on one side, stuff metal tool handles under that side and jack up the other side to get both sides up at once. We couldn't jack the middle of it because the drawbar was there.
       We tried pushing on the wedge using the porta-power. That wasn't successful........ until.........

       We noticed the wedge had about 3/4 inch of room to move upwards. So we obtained a 30 Ton hydraulic jack from our local rental supply (who, by the way, lets us use the equipment for free on this project - Thank you, Great Plains Rentals!) We alternately jacked up the wide end and then the narrow end of the wedge and knocked them back down with the sledge. After removing loosened rust we repeated the process until we could knock the end of the wedge up and down using a small hand sledge.
       After that the porta-power began to move the wedge. When we ran out of throw on the porta-power we used the sledge. Finally after several work sessions with no luck, the wedge was sitting on the ground. That is one solid, heavy piece of metal.

The porta-power pushing on the narrow edge of the wedge.

The 'wedge' finally removed.

The gap between the bumper and the locomotive.

Uncoupled - March 21, 2009

On March 21, we uncoupled the tender from the locomotive.

All I want to say to anyone getting ready to work on an old rusted steam locomotive without the benefit of a well equipped shop: Try anything and everything until you get it done. When you begin any effort, you'll never know exactly what all the conditions are with which you will be working. When you complete your effort, it will be pretty obvious what you really should have done. Until you get to that point, prioritize the suggestions, but don't discard completely any suggestion. Of course, SAFETY has to be the number one priority in everything that is attempted.

Here is a prime example: We were sure the drawbar pins were in a bind and we hadn't been able to move the tender forward with the 'car mover'. We decided that this might be caused by the tender being empty and riding higher on it's springs that normal - thus the drawbar might be cocked.
While we would have liked to add weight by using water bladders or bricks, all we had at our disposal right then were people. We only had five people (including the photo taker) who weren't needed below and had the ability to climb into the tender. And of those five, three don't add up to much weight wise.
We didn't really think this would change anything. It only cost us 10 or 15 minutes. And yes, we did try jumping up and down all at the same time. (it didn't help at all)

Our plan was to move the tender forward with this Power King car mover supplied to this project by Advance Carmover Company. Even though we had cleaned and lubed the tender axles, they are friction bearings and didn't move that easily. Actually the wheels were raising off the rail instead of the car moving. The Carmover has a lot of mechanical advantage.
After a couple hours one of our workers got the tender to rock forwards about 3/4 inch.

Once we realized the tender and drawbar were moving back and forth as one with respect to the tender, we began working on the tender pin. We jammed a rail spike under the back of one of the tender wheels and hammered it in as the tender was being rocked. By this manner we gained an inch. At this point, the jack began moving the pin upwards. Within minutes it was able to be extracted by hand.

Above: Our newest member, John McDevitt, removes the loosened pin by hand. It's a pretty cramped space under the locomotive cab.

Right: the pin with its keeper. It is 21.5 inches long and 3.5 inches in diameter. The bottom 2 7/8 inches is 2.5 inches in diameter. It probably weighs 50 pounds.