Need recommendations on installing a tire

Trains Magazine Steam & Preservation
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Hi, I’m new here. I hope I get this figured out.

Does anyone know where I could go to get a tire put on a locomotive? There must be people/shops that still do it, but who? And where?

We have a 1877 Porter Locomotive at our museum in Walla Walla, WA, and it’s missing a tire.

Local volunteers have been restoring it visually, the next step is put a tire on so we can get to work on the connecting rods. I’m just starting my search but so far I have nothing.

The engine will never run again so a precision fit is not necessary, but I also don’t want to make it a sloppy slide-on fit. We could make it loose and put it on ourselves but I want to explore the options first.

We have a few pictures but I’ve been told most information from the old Porter Bell & Co. was lost in a fire long ago. If anyone has information to share on the old Porter locomotives it would be very helpful. The undercarriage is going to need work.

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I don’t have the answer myself, but I’d suggest that you get ahold of museums that have their own repair shops and operate steam locomotives. Some that might help are the Strasburg Railroad and Steamtown in Pennsylvania, the Maryland Scenic in Maryland, Tennessee Valley in Chattanooga and Age of Steam in Ohio.

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Those illuminated above are shops that deal with locomotive wheels and tires. In Montana there is wheelright https://engelscoachshop.com/ that repairs and builds wooden wagon wheels upon which both rubber tires or steel tires are mounted by the traditional heat and shrink method of mounting. There is large video catalog of his work on YouTube.

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Thanks. Fortunately there are a lot of museums around.

It’s hard to find any informatioon about replacing a tire. How long would a tire usually last?

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At the top of the shortlist for ‘outsourcing’ is Strasburg; their shop has specific distinctive competence in driver-pair rebuilding. If you send it there, you might as well have them check quarter, grind the pins properly, etc. as most of the ‘job cost’ would be in the transportation.

It’s a simple thing in principle to machine a tire. If you’re doing a purely cosmetic restoration, you could even machine a “tire” out of glued-up wood sections, or composite material, that would be a press-fit over a cleaned-up driver-center rim. You might have to profile this on something like a horizontal mill as the swing required for a wheel lathe even at this small diameter is comparatively large.

If you want a steel tire, take the control dimensions off one of the existing tires, including using one of those profile gages to get the right shape for the tread. Clean up the driver center by repeated turning so it has a smooth and unpitted surface (this may require fairly extensive cutting) and then use this as the ‘control’ dimension for turning the new tire.

The tire is held on by an interference fit. You will not accomplish this easily with a typical wheel press, so you’ll use a combination of heat and chilling to get the tire on. Cut the ID of the new tire undersize by a few thousandths – there are plenty of formulae that tell you how much for your particular driver size – and then arrange to heat it (many locomotive shops had a special ring of gasjets, a literal ‘ring of fire’, to do this job easily) while you chill the wheel down with dry ice or liquid nitrogen. Probably the ‘easiest’ way to do this is the same arrangement in the Engels Coach Shop videos, with the wheel horizontal and blocks under the periphery so the tire can’t be driven on too far or crooked. But leave the driver pair otherwise intact (do NOT take the driver center off the axle!!) as you want to preserve qu

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.A tire would last until ‘worn out’ – the definition varied by railroad.

What happens with most steam locomotives is that the tire wear isn’t nice and concentric the way it tends to be with diesel-electric or ‘constant-torque’ prupulsion: the propensity to microslip varies with angle and instantaneous piston thrust resultant, so the tire acquires progressively more and more little burns and frets around its periphery as the weeks of service go on. And the little ‘angle’ you roll around from a burn mark or flat to another part of the tread limits the adhesion patch as the driver rotates it past the railhead.

The first result of this is that drivers need to be periodically turned to dress them. Livio Dante Porta devised a tread profile he called the HAWP (for 'high adhesion wheel profile) and proposed to do relatively frequent Lidgerwooding with special cutters attached to the independent brake rigging to establish this profile without actually shopping the locomotive or dropping driver pairs to run on a wheel lathe or dressing grinder.

Meanwhile: some railroads purposely made the tires oversize, by sometimes as much as three inches thickness, and would cut the treads true down to some determined wear limit… at which point the locomotive would be shopped, all the driver pairs pulled, and the old tires torched or cut off and new ones made and installed. You will note that the engine ride height and starting TE would vary as the drivers wore smaller…

A lighter locomotive like a Porter might be expected to have relatively long functional tire life, as those engines didn’t tend to run a large number of absolute miles. However, crappy track, perhaps-indifferent operating, and frequent opportunity for spins and slides while operating might take their toll – in logging service. In typical ‘museum’ or short excursion service, I’d expect properly-made tires to last at least up to a 1472-day inspection… pe

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Thanks for that information. It would be ironic if I had to ship the wheel back to PA, as that’s where it came from.

I’m still running down these leads.

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I found a shop in Coeur d’Alene ID that can replace my tire.

Thanks for your comments.

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From Walla Walla, you’re not likely to find anything closer than Cd’A, that was a Lucky find.

For future references, the Oregon Rail Heritage Foundation (ORHF) in Portland, home of the Daylight 4449, and the SP&S 700, could offer some advice

The Oregon Coast Scenic Railroad, in Garibaldi, Oregon has a light 2-8-2 that they restored themselves, as well as doing the restoration work on the the Logging articulated 2-4-4-2 “Skookum”.

The Mount Rainier Scenic Railroad in Elbe, WA could also be another Excellent source of guidance and advice. There is also a Rail Museum in Davenpor, WA that could also be another excellent resource for you in the future.

Good Luck with your project, the first Steam Locomotive that I got to “Pull Throttle” on was a privately owned H.K. Porter 0-4-0T, that was owned by Clyde Schurman, in Woodland, WA. My Mother and Clyde’s Daughter are Long Time Friends, Sadly the only time my schedule allowed me to be there for a steam up, was the Final Steam Up, in Clyde’s Honor, after his passing. I did get to meet him, late in his life, a very interesting Man, w I Wish I had gotten to know much earlier. Clyde was a Machinist by trade, and owned a Machine shop, he had a Love of old machinery, and what amounted to an impressive private museum.

The Porter was a center piece of a collection that included several steam donkeys, steam farm traction, antique automobiles, including a Beautifully restored Stanley Steamer, and the Original Fairbanks Morse two cylinder diesel, dynamo and electrical panel, that powered the chairlift at Timberline Lodge, on Mt Hood in Oregon.

Doug

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My dad used to occasionally tag along and help Granddad, a railroad machinist, during his high school years. The tire was at the center of a ring of piping that had burners all around its inside. They ran on gas and the tire would be heated until red hot. At that point, the machinist and his helpers would lift the tire - which had expanded due to heat - using tongs and fit it around the wheel. As it cooled off, it would shrink and grip the wheel tightly.

Pretty much a lost art today as little rolling stock runs on tired wheels - once worn the wheels and axle are scrapped and replaced. You are unlikely to access to anyone with the experience and competence as well as the equipment to do the job safely. There are some restoration projects on steam and tourist lines that may be able to help you - for a price.

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