Short video on the break in run - topped out at 60 MPH. Thumbs up on that!
How long exactly did the restoration take start to finish?
Pulled out of service 3 years ago then with everything they found given a complete Overhaul from the frame up put back into service this week.
3 years, eh? it only took my father 18 years to paint the bathroom.
3 years is a very respectable amount of time considering how much work was done on the locomotive. Congrats to the UP Steam Team on a job well done.
Now we’ll have to wait and see how long the 4014 takes.
Two coats?
I know the old man and nope. Once coat was good enough. Just about anything he attempted stopped at good enough. His method of waxing a car was to do the roof, the hood and then stop and say he’ll get around to the rest of it “one of these fine days” and that day never came.
But seriously, 3 years is nothing. I’ve known people take 25 years or more to restore an old car like an MG. I’m very impressed that they could accomplish it in such a short time. It shows that they have the knowledge, the will and the money. Just how big is the steam staff at UP? I assume they have new hires and apprentices and such. The restorers can’t all be 90 year old men or volunteers like on a museum railroad.
12 full time employees of the railroad complete with Boilermakers Machinists welders all based in the roundhouse. They all know what they need to do and how to do it. There are some that are mad that the old crew was replaced with the new guys they claimed 844 would never run again and such. The New boss just had to get the Materials he needed the men and told them get to work and make her new again and they did.
Interesting video of the trip to Greeley on the 13th.
Note the formalized lockout/tagout procedures.
I have looked at alot of older videos of the 844. The ones that show the servicing of her at stops guess what there was no Lock out tag out process for it. Sorry but if I was going to be working on a 300 PSI 2000 degree steam pressure vessel that moves I would want someone that knows where I am at all times.
Very impressive, 844 shines like a new penny!
I’m surprised they blocked a grade crossing like that, but maybe that part of Greeley doesn’t get a lot of vehicular traffic.
I did like that they named a car after Howard Fogg, nice touch.
It’s not quite that bad – nearly 422 degrees* – but that’s plenty to ruin your day. (Especially when the moving pressure vessel has been modified to shoot the blowdown out the side at roughly person height … but I digress.)
The essential reason why this restoration has taken “three years” is intimately associated with the building of the current culture of safety and quality assurance. Whether or not you are one of the carping crew who said UP brought this upon themselves with the pool chemicals and ignorant use of the independent and so forth, it’s important to recognize all the ways in which the ‘new’ heritage team (and it’s not a euphemism to call them that, more than a crew) do things differently on a fundamental basis – this very simple but profound method of implementing tag-out almost effortlessly but effectively being a vivid, and early-recognized, example.
I’m interested to see how quickly this tag-out idea propagates to a couple of other well-organized ‘operating’ organizations: Kelly’s group with the 765 in particular.
- I am sure there will be someone who feels the urge to check this. Be aware when you do that there is a roughly 15-psi difference between psig and psia, before you feel the need to make any comment.
As noted, it’s safer to be Mr. Alemite Man while standing on level pavement. Safety First, Last, and Always!
Makes perfect sense, and obviously the locals in Greeley didn’t mind.
Alemite? Don’t the Australians put that on sandwiches? Tough people! 
The safety culture of today bears no resemblence to what was considered safe, 30, 40, 50 years or more ago. Injury statistics record the differences.
Blue flagging (the railroad form of lockout/tagout) is one of the core essential and most sacred of railroad safety rules. Even without checking, I would wager with 99.9999% certainty the 765 folks also blue flag their engine when they have to work on it.
You would be hard pressed to find any operating railroad stupid enough not to use blue flags (considering it’s part of the code of federal regulations)
Blue flag is only an indication that the engine is under service; the ‘expanded’ procedure now indicates who is responsible for functions on a blue-flagged engine, and gives quick ID at a glance ‘who’s who’. That is a more specific implementation.
It’s those individual ‘keychain’ photo-ID “tags” that I’m talking about, not the blue-flag system (which, both in common sense and for the reasons you point out, is necessary).
It occurs to me that the personal-tag system might also help, to an extent, with issues when multiple crafts put out separate flags, and then one goes home forgetting to remove ‘his’ flag and can’t be reached.
No. The Australian stuff is made with vegetables… of a sort, if your definition of vegetable extends to yeast. Alemite is made with fish. ;-}
I’m not sure, but didn’t the Californians use yosemite?
Accountability tags. Similar to firefighters. I guess it makes sense. I’ve seen our guys do that at times (but not as formal - two blue lights tossed on the control stand).
AHA,Brits use Marmite!