"Yeah, we had some problems with the 800. No, it was not an explosion. It was a tube failure. Tube failures happened on railroads time and time again in the days. One of the tubes, or two of them sheared off right inside the flue sheet. It opened up the boiler to the firebox, so the steam and water came in. Lynn [Nystrom] was on his way out of the cab. He killed the fire, he was dropping the safety oil pin in the tender when the steam got to him, and he got burned a little bit, like a mild sunburn. We weren't dead, we weren't laying in the Sacramento River. Unfortunately,that's something that happens.
What we've done since then - and we're working closely with
the FRA, because we want them to know, too - we want to know
what's wrong so we canfix it so we can be back out there running
again. And wewant them to know, too, so everybody else will know,
just in case. It comes down to the fact that we ordered tubes,we
got them in, we put them in the engine. We ordered them to the
specifications on the UP diagrams and drawings. As a matter of
fact, Steve [Lee] had ordered them 2 mils thicker in wall
thickness. So we took some segments from the broken tubes off,
and made some sections off of them, and we made some sections
from one of the tubes we took off the 3985 when we re-tubed it.
We also pulled one of the small tubes and one of the large flues
out of the 3985 as soon as we got home to see what kind of shape
it was in. The large flues are fine, but the small tubes are in
thesame shape, or are getting close to the same shape as 844's.
That's why we decided not to run the Denver Post [excursion].
That's one thing I told Steve - there's no good time for
something like this to happen, and everybody feels bad. But if
you look at the situation, the only thing that could have been
better is if it had happened in front of our shop door in
Cheyenne. Because there was nobody seriously injured. The people
weren't on the steps - it was before the show opened up - nobody
was on the steps standing next to the cab. Yeah, we towed it
home, but that's fine. We'll fix it. We'll get it going again.
There's nothing to feel bad about.
So anyway, this is where we are. We found out that the tubes we
took out, based on the lab samples, had 15% more nickel, 12% more
copper, and 4% more molly [molybdenum] in them. And we haven't
seen any paperwork to support why they put those in the engines
or anything, but that's what was in there. So now we're in the
process of searching for a different quality of tubing that will
match closer to that. On the same token, we can go with the other
type of tubing because it meets boiler specs, it's regular boiler
tubing, and we can go with that. What happened was, we had the
roller guns set to roll the tubes like we always did. Well, we
rolled the tubes like we always did, but they were a little
softer. So, we had accidentally over-rolled the tubes. So, if we
go back to using the tubes we had to take out because of the
failure, what we will do is every fourth tube we do, we'll take
the roller out and we'll test-roll it in a piece of flue sheet on
the floor, and make sure we're not over-rolling again.
Second of all, in California, there's an awful lot of
oxygen in the water, more than anywhere. It's coming off
the mountains. They warned us about this, and we went and
got some special Nalco treatment for oxygenation, to
scavenge it off so we don't have oxidation on the tubes.
And Nalco was kind enough to supply us with the information
that this was "a store-stock item for UP and to go ahead
and order it through your supply department." We did, we
got seven barrels of the stuff, and when we'd left town,
nobody had heard from Nalco to see how much to use. So we were
playing it kind of by ear. What we've done now to solve
that problem is we've now been trained on test kits for
water treatment. We have a whole new water treatment
system [...] It should be a whole lot better. We did do
some reading in advance, and we found this water treatment
type stuff, if overtreated, can cause a problem, so we're
going to undertreat a little bit. This should work and
make everything last a long time.
Don't worry, we're around. The plan right now is, since we
still need to do a lot of tests on the 844, because we
don't know what the residual damage was yet. We're going
to take the tubes out and see. Matt Austin [sp?] a friend
of ours, a boiler inspecter from Hawaii with lots of
credentials making him very well qualified, indicated to us
that he thought he could see that a small blister had
formed on the crown sheet. We may have to do a patch on
the crown sheet, or more if we have to. He also expressed
the possibility of some grooving on one of the knuckles on
the tube sheet, so we may have to fix that.
What we're looking at right now is probably two to three
years on the 800. Especially the reason being that it's
going to take a long time anyway because the 800 has 198 of
the small 2.25 inch tubes that were failing, whereas the
3985 has forty-five. On 3985 we pulled a big flue, it
looks fine. We're going to take another look. We think
the big flues in the 844 are fine, but that doesn't help
[because] there are only 52 of them. We have 122 of the
small tubes we're going to have to change. So that'll take
a while. Our plan is to re-tube the small tubes in the
3985 this winter, and Steve [Lee] has already announced
that we are going to drop a couple of drivers off and have
them turned so that we'll have another four or five years
on them. Then later on, we'll send all the drivers off and
have new tires put on. That's the plan. Before we even
left Railfair, two days after the incident happened, [Dick]
Davidson's office [UP CEO] called up Steve's boss, and
Steve's boss called him and said, "I don't think you have
to worry, because Davidson wants you in L.A. next year."
So, we'll be in LA with 3985. I'm sure of that. If
Davidson says we'll be there, we'll be there. They're on
our side. You don't have to worry about the program going
away. Down the road, we'll have the 800 running again.
We're still going to continue to work on the 3985, and the
work that needs to be done on it. ("Hey, Bob, what's going
on in LA?") Los Angeles - did some of you guys hear?
What's going on in August? ("The Democratic National
Convention?") Bullseye. The Democratic Convention. We've
also had requests for several other things, we're
considering some stuff. One of the things we did do, I
did, with [Jim] Eherberger as part of the [UP Historical]
Society is to request for a steam trip on the second
weekend of July. That's the reason we selected that
weekend in July [for the UPHS 2000 convention] because
there's a request for the Greeley Stampede the weekend
before, and the Denver Post the weekend after. So, if we
can get three weekends in Cheyenne with passenger
equipment, we can get our deadhead costs down and reduce
the cost of the train to you guys a little bit, and still
have a good time. That's the reason why we're having the
convention then in Cheyenne. If it doesn't take place,
we'll find something else to do. We're hoping that will go
through.
[END QUOTE FROM BOB KRIEGER]