Topic: The Toronto Railway Heritage Centre Railway - The Steam Engine

[russ]

It has been a year since I posted anything further about our Sweet Creek at the Toronto Railway Heritage Centre.  We successfully ran the engine for our whole season last summer.  One of our volunteers (Stephen Gardiner) at the museum is a great photographer and rigged up an bar on the from beam of the Sweet Creek engine so that a video could be made of the motion work in action for one lap of our track.  This 4 minute movie would be super boring to most of the population at large but to die hard steam fanatics like myself it is "poetry in motion" especially since I have a love of outside frame steam locomotives in particular. 

If you share my passion ... enjoy!

Sweet Creek Motion Video	Small | Large

[russ]

Steaming trials on our completed track!
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We continue our coverage of the building of the Sweet Creek locomotive. Last Friday, we steamed up our Sweet Creek locomotive and took it out on the track for a first trial run on our home steel. Other than some predictable first time teething troubles the day went very well. The locomotive ran trouble-free and was reliable. The track served us well with no major problems to report. We do have an issue with excess ballast in some places and there are a couple of slow-order locations but these are minor items easily corrected.

[Tom]

This thread seems to be out of order perhaps because of the website rebuild.  In any case, it was a blast seeing this engine run at our Golden Horseshoe Live Steamers track last summer. 

Tom in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada

[russ]

For anyone who has read this thread up to this point, there is another thread where the development of the miniature railway on which this engine will be run has been documented.  It can be found here at http://www.therustybolt.com/index.php?topic=395.msg1900#new

Russ

[russ]

Running the Sweet Creek on Part of her Home Track!

In early July, we had the opportunity to operate the Sweet Creek on part of our track that had been completed to help celebrate the opening of a furniture store outlet in part of our roundhouse.  The pictures below capture that happening.

Russ

Click on each picture for a closer look!

[russ]

Very nice! I have a partly finished SR&RL #23 in 7/8th to the foot scale to run on 45 mm track.  It was a group project but I have not had the time to work on it as yet.  I love these locomotives (#23 and #24).

[tomc]

Tomc:Is Jim building you an engine? If so, is it a Lucky 7?Russ

Russ, not a lucky 7 but a SR&RL #24.

Tom C.

[Ferd]

Hi Russ
Great video - wow does that engine ever dwarf your Romulus, which I always thought of as big until now.

cheers Ferd

[russ]

Watch her run!

Futrther to my earlier post here is a video of the trial run of Sweet Creek at the Golden  Horseshoe Live Steamers track!

Russ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5ordvlBAfU
	Small | Large

[russ]

Tomc:

If and when you make the road trip, plan ahead by contacting me so that we can show you around.  If you wait until say late September or October the track should be completed and operational.  

I will start posting catchup photos of our track construction soon here on this forum.

Is Jim building you an engine? If so, is it a Lucky 7?

Russ

[tomc]

Nice Pics Russ.  Keep em comin.  Sweet Creek is sweet.  I may have to take a road trip and see it and mine at Jim's.

Tom C.

[russ]

But will she run???

At the end of June of this year, the Sweet Creek engine was ready for its frist trials.  With our miniature railroad track construction moving along quickly in Roundhouse Park the need to check out our new steam locomotive on an existing railroad with a real load became a priority. We loaded up at the museum for a visit to our friends at Golden Horseshoe Live Steamers ( http://www.ghls.ca/ ) at the Hamilton Museum of Steam and Technology. Despite a little rain early in the day we had a great afternoon and after a short period of technical adjustment we pulled trainloads of passengers for several hours. The locomotive runs very well indeed and is a credit to the team of TRHA volunteers who assembled it.

Click on each picture below for a closer look!

[russ]

The pictures shown below show the Sweet Creek engine as of May 9th, 2009.  The painting of the engine itself had pretty much been completed as of that date.  Included below are views of the backhead and inside the smokebox.  As can been seen, the tender has not been reassembled as the tender body had been sent out for powder coating.  More pictures of progress after May 9th will be posted shortly.
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Click on each picture for a closer look!

[russ]

My apologies to everyone who might have been following our progress on this miniature railway. My last posting was in April.  Since then, the railway has progressed significantly.  But I personally was diverted by the sale of my home and the subsequent chaos of downsizing to a home a third the size of my old one.  But the dust is settling on the move and the tsunami of boxes is receding so I will start posting some catchup information here to bring everyone up to date.

[russ]

That it is , Ferd .. really big!

Pressure testing the boiler!
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After piping up the steam locomotive to get it ready for the official pressure test, we were happy to report that the preliminary check to 150 psi was successful. There were no leaks or problems. We are now confident that the locomotive will pass the official test to be witnessed by a Technical Standards and Safety Authority (TSSA) inspector who must certify all boilers with greater than 10 square feet of heating area in our province (Ontario) in Canada.
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In the pictures below, we see members of our team adjusting items in the cab and the pressure gauge reading 150 pounds per square inch. We also have a great view of the backhead controls with the cab in place.

Click on each picture for a closer look!