My step dad worked for AT&SF for a while and was an engineer, he had nothing kind to say about steam. He said in the summer time you couldn't breathe because it was so hot in the cab and in the winter you froze at times. I can see where he was comming from, Santa Fe didn't have all weather cabs on their steamers that I have ever seen any pic of anyway. In any case since this is a MODEL forum, we who love steam don't hafta worry about the business end of things. We don't have to give a crap about the stock holders, all we need to do is ENJOY those beautiful machines with all the machinery exposed. :-)
That would be the EASY way, but there are darn few of the BIG overhead cranes left in RR shops anymore. Rather few RR SHOPS for that matter, most have been torn down.
Such cranes exist in some other industries, like shipyards and steel fabricators, but such space is hard to come by for tourist RR repairs that may take a substantial period of time (meaning money).
I remember touring the Lima Loco works some years after it's demise. All the smaller machinery had been removed, but all that was left were three HUGE planers and the BIG overhead cranes. They'd been trying to sell them for years, but nobody wanted them (or could afford to move them).
I suppose a REALLY big mobile crane could do it today, but they're not cheap to come by either. I recall it took two good sized ones to lift our local D&RGW K-27, and that's only 68 tons, not the roughly 500 tons of a really big steamer.
In steam days such work was routine. The shops were outfitted accordingly, and in various ways. Today, little of this equipment remains.
Certainly we have heavy lift apparatus capable of lifting the required weight, but it's not optimized for the job anymore. Obtaining the use of it, when and where needed, and arranging the rigging necessary for the lift, requires money, skill, and coordination. Also the space to leave the blocked-up steamer for the many hours (likely months or years) needed to rework whatever ails the driving wheels could be costly. It's do-able, and has been done recently, but it's not as easy a task today as it was 75 years ago.
In most cases a drop pit is the way to go, if you have one, or can find and use one. And, making one is not all that hard, compared to a crane of the needed capacity.
The local Huckleberry railroad has an overhead crane, but not one of sufficent capacity to lift even our smaller loco, a 38 ton 4-6-0. Fortunately, they do have a drop pit for wheel work. The crane can then take the driver set to the lathe for turning, or new tires, or whatever. If the whole loco frame needs to be lifted, it's a jack and block operation, and that takes considerable time.
Sure I simplified it a bit, and I like steam my wife caught the bug too when we paced 261 at speed in the driving rain during the GNRHS trip a couple of years ago. (A trip I think you were on).
OTOH I also liked watching (and feeling) three CP SD40-2s trying to get 85 cars of grain going west out of Swift Current Saskatchewan at
02:00 and -30F while waiting on the platform for the W/B Canadian. Talk about 'wall of sound', it felt like someone was hitting my chest with a rug beater,.
As the folks at Strasburg discovered a couple of years ago.
"What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist "
-Salman Rushdie
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." -Martin Luther King
"A gentleman is a man who can disagree without being disagreeable." Anon
"Revolution in Politics is an abrupt change in the form of misgovernment." Ambrose Bierce
"I don't make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts"
a few years ago, caused by poor (really bad, actually) maintenance and improper (almost no) inspections. It was a classic crown sheet failure from allowing the water to get too low. The loco was a Canadian 4-6-2 with a rather advanced boiler design, that failed progressively (instead of catastrophically) as it was designed to do, preventing a full scale explosion. What resulted could best be described as a MASSIVE steam leak. Several people were injured.
I'm not aware of any substantial problem at Strasburg RR, which is not terribly far from Gettysburg. I've been to Strasburg many times.
And, Yes, I was on the MILW 261 plus GN 400 "Hustle Muscle" fan trip at the GNRHS convention. It made for a long but quite grand day, and fortunately the rain didn't last all day!
And a few more I found while looking for the quote:
He who knows nothing, knows nothing. But he who knows he knows nothing knows something. And he who knows someone whose friend's wife's brother knows nothing, he knows something. Or something like that. Asimov
The utmost extent of man's knowledge, is to know that he knows nothing. Joseph Addison, "Essay on Pride" (1794)
It is the tragedy of the world that no one knows what he doesn't know
- and the less a man knows, the more sure he is that he knows everything. Joyce Cary Inexplicably, ignorance frequently does not produce the expected condition of humility; but rather a towering arrogance, in which state the uninformed clings to the justification of unknowledge like a doomed soul sinking in quicksand clutches a rotted vine. Harlan Ellison, An Edge in My Voice (1985)
Far more crucial than what we know or do not know is what we do not want to know. One often obtains a clue to a person's nature by discovering the reasons for his or her imperviousness to certain impressions. Eric Hoffer, The Passionate State of Mind (1954)
The man who has everything figured out is probably a fool. College examinations notwithstanding, it takes a very smart fella to say, "I don't know the answer!" Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee, Inherit the Wind (play, 1955)
Ignorance of one's ignorance is the greatest ignorance. Laurence Johnston Peter It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance. Thomas Sowell He that knows not and knows that he knows not is a child, teach him. He that knows not and knows not that he knows not is a fool, shun him. He that knows and knows not that he knows is asleep, wake him. He that knows and knows that he knows is a teacher, follow him.
Socrates was a great deep thinker. One day while thinking deeply he realized he didn't know anything. This was because he drank heavily but he mistook it for wisdom. He annoyed so many people telling them about things he didn't know they had to kill him. And then there was the Greek know it all Aristotle.
Aristotle was famous for knowing everything. He taught that the brain exists merely to cool the blood and is not involved in the process of thinking. This is true only of certain persons." Will Cuppy
Could be, but I don't know what truth is. Everyone has a different version. Bruce
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