gary johnson right!!! Love seeing this.

Mike Roberti well sure. That’s what you do! Oh! Look out for this! Crash....

I 2nd that response! It is inspirational to see others passion for history and these old relics being brought back to life. What a sight!

VW Insanity and their skills.

bill timmons hi. Yup. Quite a crew there. Hard hard work! But rewarding.

mark lundgren and this is a great one! Like new!

Bryson Grondin John also has a huge shop where they rebuild full sized freight cars! That’s the real money. But I don’t think he goes there often. He’s a few hundred miles from there rebuilding steam locomotives.

It will be a gas! Er.. coal!!!

@@ToyManTelevision true to her firebox 1978 I fired/maintained a converted to diesel/steam she DEMANDED someone pay attention! Love/hate relationship esp.rodding her in a wyo.wind ya..been blk.b4 Burnt,scolded but boy I had her whistle down!

Back there Sunday morning

KenFromOC hard hard work but fun and rewarding

leslie dickinson I think you have more operating steam locomotives there than we have. In spite of being so much smaller. No matter. We really want to come across the pond and see that.

@@ToyManTelevision I can promise you wont be let down by what you find over here and you dont have to travel far from one railway to another I also didnt add in the first message what a really enjoyable channel this is and your both such fun people.

Open Roader just looked over your channel and subbed immediately! Thanks. Cool bike.

@@ToyManTelevision Thank you very much. I do have one train related video on my channel of the Italian National Train Museum in Naples. Extensive steam works, locos and much more kzfaq.info/get/bejne/f86ejbB0mta4l2g.html My video was absolutely inspired by your channel.

William Bryant hi Wil! Well that’s a great story. That’s great that you were rebuilding that 4-4-0! That’s my favorite style of locomotive of all time. Yeah it’s sort of interesting the weird paths our lives take when we were young. Some people end up rebuilding the steam locomotives and some people end up being lawyers, and it might just be because of something that happened one afternoon. Anyway it’s really great that you had that experience!

Matt Gaming soon. We are heading back out there as they’re going to have a little sendoff ceremony for number 40 and they will have 81 fired up and factory will have all three locomotives fired up but I doubt 81 will be in any condition to be moved just under steam

Hi and I’m sure they have facilities all around there for camping. The number one business in Ely is people hunting and fishing and mostly taking their ATVs Out on the trails

S lam Great luck on our part that we were there

Hi! This was so lucky. And no idea John was doing it. And there he was, and they were lighting the fire! Wow!!!! We just explored salt lakes newest park. Sort of. It will be at some point. A guy built a home and private zoo on a stream. Which over the years became an upscale neighborhood. Anyway he died. Then his wife died. Then the city closed it down in about 1970. And there it sat until a few months ago when the city bought it to restore and use as a park. Really cool 😎

@@ToyManTelevision W I just can not wait to see what that new park looks like. I will be waiting to see what you will be showing us.

Charles McClure it would be a good one to model for sure! Shortlines make the best model railroads I think

Honorary steam locomotive is a Alco!

They have several of them too. Bought I think 3 more a few years ago. All RS but not all 3s.

I saw that too. I love the RS body styles.

It’s fired again today. Tender on. Side rods on. No pistons. Whistle spoke fir the first time in 63 years.

Caffeinestealer right! Great day!!

It’s a really cool museum in St. George Utah. The dinosaur tracks at Johnson farm

R&R Electric so lucky!!!!!

Traveler 1980 I’ll bet I er 100,000 of them. 2,000 survive and perhaps 250 operate. And more all the time. And a few, perhaps 10, new builds of old locomotives. One happening right now.

@@ToyManTelevision you going to do an episode about the Lyon Replica going on in Carson City?

... He just did.

Aaron Peavler/Geomodelrailroader Railroad Photography a great operation out there. Still one little mine switcher to restore. Someday....

George Rawe I have seen the hydro done that way. In fact saw the hydro for 4014! But while “simple” I think this was safe. On day one they filled the boiler to totally full with water and connected to air pressure at about 160 psi. While there was no real air space in the steam dome it still compressed the water to 160. The next morning they lit the fire. Still no real air space in the steam dome but soon steam did fill that space. But perhaps one square foot? Very small space. The pressure soon hit 225 psi and John drained off a bit of water. You saw how much. Still very very little. I’m betting when the pressure dipped to 180 the steam dome was still about half full. So while there is some danger of a failure of the steam dome there is really no risk of failure of the boiler shell. Not as safe as a hydro pump, there is still some air/steam in the dome. But little.

@@ToyManTelevision: George Rawe's concerns make sense to me. If the pressure in the boiler is being created by steam caused by the heating of the fire then at a pressure of 180 PSIG the temperature of the water needs to be about 380 degrees F. This stores a LOT of thermal energy in the water. If the boiler does spring a leak anywhere (remember, this situation is static and the pressure is essentially the same everywhere in a pressure vessel, not just the steam dome) then water at 380 degrees F will be ejected into the open atmosphere. At 380 degrees F. it will flash to steam immediately! (This is essentially what happens during a boiler blow down.) A rupture in the boiler of any significant size will eject a lot of water and this will lower the pressure in the boiler causing some of the water remaining in the boiler to flash to steam. You really want to be somewhere else if much of this happens as it can happen so quickly that the pressure in the boiler can no longer be considered "static". You can have large dynamic over-pressure spikes that can have really bad consequences. It is kind of similar to the water hammer effect. The expanding steam can throw slugs of water around at high velocity and if a slug of water hits something immovable the impact forces can be very high. While I have never met John I am 100% sure he knows all of this stuff and would appreciate how dangerous it would be to conduct such a test if he had any doubt as to the integrity of the boiler. I suspect that the test he was actually conducting here was something a bit different. Notice that the water he is draining off is NOT flashing into steam? It isn't giving off any visible water vapour at all. This tells me that the temperature is significantly below its boiling point, which in Ely at 6,375 feet above sea level is about 200 degrees Fahrenheit. So if there is no steam, where is the pressure coming from? The answer is the thermal expansion of the liquid water as it is heated. Water is a funny substance. As its temperature changes it has its maximum density (minimum volume for a given mass of water) at 39.2 degrees F. Colder than that it expands. (And then expands more as it turns to ice!) Warmer than 39.2 F it also expands. If we make the assumption that the temperature of the water in the boiler was 60 F. (outside air temperature) at the start of the test and increased to 150 F. (well below the boiling point at atmospheric pressure, even in Ely) due to having the fire lit then the volume expansion of the water will be about 1.73%. If we make a scientific wild ass guess that a full boiler is about 4000 gallons of water (based on a diameter of 7 feet and a flue length of 14 feet and that the volume displaced by the flue pipes is about equal to the volume surrounding the firebox) then this expansion will cause the water volume to increase by about 69 gallons. If the boiler is sealed this expansion will cause a pressure increase. The less air space in the boiler the greater the pressure increase this expansion will cause. In the NNRY #81 test they went a little over the pressure they wanted so they drained off a bit of the water to allow the air bubble at the top of the steam dome to expand a bit and lower the pressure. Doing the hydro-static test this way is a bit of a trick to test the boiler at a pressure higher than the pressure of shop compressed air that is available but without needing a hydro pump to pressurise the boiler. Done this way the water is never near the boiling temperature at atmospheric pressure and the test is safe as there will be no water flashing to steam even if the boiler splits completely into two parts. You might drown though... The bottom line is that fire in the firebox and pressure in the boiler do not necessarily mean steam in the boiler. Toy Man: If you know John, next time you see/contact him would you please show him this comment to see if I have correctly analysed what he is doing. I would be most interested to see if I got it correct. After all, I am an electronics engineer, not a steam engineer!

Heading back in a couple of days. They’re firing it up again

davie maclean hi. Indeed. Just lucky 🍀. Wow that was cool.

Beast 1624 thanks for watching! Fun time being there.

Tom Klock by 1959 they were mostly all gone. Except for narrow gauge and that passed in 1968. Steam locomotives are now just novelties. Yet about 2,000 survive in the US. And more are getting rebuilt all the time!

Larry Archer I can see!!!! Wow 🤩. A few odd things still but mostly great. In one eye. Three more to go!! My right and both of Karyn’s.

Well I guess I'm lucky I just have my right eye that drives me nuts other than old age aches I guess it's not bad my dad actually had 20 20 when they fixed his said he forgot what good site was glad it turned out well for you too bad they can't do them all at once :-)

Ken Shores hi Ken. Here is a good one! Fisher Beer (cat piss) was brewed in Salt Lake City for years. The Fisher mansion still stands. Oddly right where the brewery was. Huge industrial complex but at the west edge on the Jorden River Fisher built his huge home. I digress. Anyway Coors bought out fisher and for perhaps 10 years Coors was also brewed in the Fisher brewery. And the Manson stood empty. Well they needed more steam. No idea why. But a guy I know had a bunch of steam locomotives. Several were on the Heber Creeper. Well a 0-6-0 was stored in the Salt Lake and Garfield RR right next to the brewery so they moved it to a siding in the complex and used it for a static boiler for a time. Weird. Anyway they took that boiler to 225 for a while. I started filming as the we’re backing off to 185. Not sure what the plans are for operation.

Toy Man Television Have you watched South Park? They poke fun at people who drink PBR. Same category as the beer you mentioned. Didn’t realize the Moron Church would allow a brewery in the state.

Ronnie Davis hi. The locomotives at the Nevada State Museum in Carson City were all painted by hand, using big brushes and lead based paint just as the original ones were! They look amazing. But gold leaf lettering, Russia iron boiler jackets, brush paint all used. Wow! Depends on the locomotive. I’ve seen several people spend about 3 million to build one! But to buy one.. none for sale but it just depends. 10,000 to 10,000,000 I guess.

Johnny James oh I gotta look for that! He was rebuilding it again when we were there looking at Klondike Kate two years ago.

We need to come ride your highrailer

@@ToyManTelevision I definitely recommend the Hi-rail it’s a one of a kind experience and my step mom actually does the tours of it

Na. I’ll bet he’s rebuilt about oh... 1000 1500? It depends on what you count too. He fixes peoples 7.5 inch gauge locomotives all the time. Cagney locos all the time. In all sizes. Most were built for amusement parks. But there were like 10 of them in his shop!! One was huge. I’ll bet 24” gauge. So geeeezzz. Lots of cool locomotives. And like 5 guys working there. Oh.. and that’s the small shop. The big shop is where they rebuild full sized freight cars!! We are going to tour that shop.

Yep that’s Mark and he’s been on that show a couple of times! And a whole bunch of other shows most recently that ghost hunters show.

Did that!! kzfaq.info/get/bejne/mM6TpJuUrpzSeJc.html

jeff robinson great luck!! Back out there soon. We want to follow the rebuild as best as we can from 300 miles away.

SierraRailway hi. And they have a forth! Well sort of. A little 0-4-0 mine switcher from a nearby mine. Cute. They started a rebuild but it’s side tracked while the big locomotives getvall the work. But it’s “stinken cute”! I buy all of my music from my library called smart sound. Not really sure what any of it is called. I find it by genre on my computer, re-edit it into something that will work with the show, and often remix it to also make it fit better. Much of the music is recorded instrument by instrument so I can really dial in some big changes.

Love to. But this damn bug. We are making day trips. We can kind of stick to our car and stay safe that way. But it’s a real concern

James hum... no clue! So similar to 93 I’ll bet close to the same. But gee.. no idea.

If you look at my comment above regarding the hydro-static test method John was using I calculated the full volume of the boiler to be about 4000 US gallons. Under normal operating conditions there will be less water in the boiler to allow room for steam, but the water level MUST always be high enough to cover the "crown sheet" which is the top of the firebox regardless of the slope the locomotive is on or severe damage/explosion will occur. The tender capacity is 7500 gallons of water.

DETROITREDNECK DETROITREDNECK hi. KZfaq just doesn’t do that I guess. Community tab has stuff. I post photos there but don’t think subscribers can. But if you have your own channel you can post photos there!

@@ToyManTelevision I'm not around too much railroad equipment anymore I am driving truck for a nationwide Carrier I will have to look through some of my old photos to see what I can come up with Hope your vision is doing well I will see your next video on Tuesday lol🤣🤣

Stephen Rick Starbucks new #81 rusty water cappuccino.

I'll see if ours has it.

This one is a gem. Well not a 40, but still super!!!

Tickled Funny Bone yes polling pockets. I’d like to try that! But on the 1/20 scale railroad so I don’t get killed!!

@@ToyManTelevision is this a do not try this at home warning? lol i searched the internet a bit for the name of the pockets and couldn't find it. Polling pockets they are called. interesting.

Hi. Take a look at this kzfaq.info/get/bejne/mM6TpJuUrpzSeJc.html

Alexander Wood yes at 250 psi is mostly the same volume.

@@ToyManTelevision Yes, that's a relatively low pressure. It was also interesting to see them steam it up, I thought it was all done cold. Great video!

Michael Arnold is that the little mine switcher? They tore into it a few years ago and I figured it would get done before 81. Little locomotives are much simpler to rebuild. Anyway no progress for years. In the RIP building. Now #40 will be on the front burner but they will get back to it sometime

Toy Man Television yes sir, that’s the one love lil locomotives. I know she will get done eventually they are one the best run railroad museums in this country! Can’t wait for you both’s next post. Thank You for what you do!

Dallen9 well 3 ready, but perhaps 3 or four times a year all 3 running and the crane.

David Dryden you’ve just hit on one of the most interesting debates going on in steam locomotive circles. They run the big boy on soft water. The car immediately behind the two auxiliary water cars contains a giant water softener. They’re the only people I know of that are doing that sort of thing, however in the age of steam a lot of the railroads were treating their water, not just to remove the minerals but also to adjust the pH. As I say only union pacific is doing that now as far as I know. And I don’t think Nevada Northern was doing that at all. Now the tubes themselves in 81 were not in good shape. But the boiler vessel itself is like new. And this is probably because the locomotive never saw all that much use. Both 93 and 81 we’re still fairly modern engines when they were pulled out of service in the late 1930s, and sidetracked just in case they needed them, and because they were in such excellent condition never scrapped out. So it’s mostly just fortunate that these engines were mostly new when they were retired. And 40 had just been completely rebuilt perhaps a year before it was ordered to be scrapped out. So the manager of the railroad opted to simply keep it in reserve in case they needed a passenger locomotive as it was like new.

For what it is worth, I raise the ph of boiler water of my 2 1/2" scale ng mogul. No problems yet after 12 years operation. I only run a few times a year and make sure the boiler is stored DRY.

I think I can answer your question David. The boiler fire tubes and superheater tubes in locomotive 81 are not "original". I first went to the Nevada Northern for the first 2 weeks of September in 2017 for their "railroad reality week" and as a volunteer spent a good deal of time inside the firebox of #81 working on the job of replacing the boiler tubes with new ones. The two ends of the boiler are thick steel sheets (tube sheets) with a pattern of holes in them. The tubes, which are just a bit longer than the outside to outside distance between the tube sheets slide into these holes. The tubes are then swaged (expanded) from the inside to make a tight fit in the holes and then the ends of the tubes are peened over (a very noisy job!) with an air hammer with a shaped bit to lock them in place sort of like a hollow rivet head. The perimeter of each tube is then welded to the tube sheet to guarantee a complete seal. To the best of my knowledge the NNRY uses water from the Ely municipal water system and does not do any additional treatment to adjust PH or remove minerals. They do regular boiler blow downs during operation to get some of the scale out and periodically completely drain the boilers, remove all the washout plugs, and then flush them out with fresh water. On one of my trips to Ely I did this job on #40 (which takes the better part of a day if you are figuring out how to do it for the first time) and was quite surprised at how much junk came out. I've been back to the NNRY as a volunteer 3 more times since my first trip and have worked on a wide variety of stuff. Last time I was there was first 2 weeks of March in 2020 and I spent some time inside the barrel of the boiler of #93 removing the throttle linkage as part of the restoration effort. (Not a job you want to do if you are claustrophobic!) It was very interesting to see how the boiler was constructed, particularly around the area of the firebox. I have been quite amazed at how open and available everything is at the NNRY. Visitors can wander around just about anywhere and if you volunteer, once they figure out that you can work safely, they will aim you at a job and tell you to go to it! As an electrical / electronics / computer engineer it has been lots of fun to dig into some big mechanical stuff for a change!

John Rematch. Wasatch rail contractors of Cheyenne Wyoming

Johnny James hi. Yes I met him. Several times. Great guy. They had no money back then. Really hard to get things done. The money to build the wye at Keystone was a breakthrough. And bit by bit they have gotten this up and going strong.

Sort of is today! All three locos fired up. Except 81 has no Pistons. But fired. Tender in place. And 40 and 93 double heading.

Yes, #81 is coal fired. It was delivered from the Baldwin works as a hand fired locomotive in 1917. Due to the fact that it was used on long runs a mechanical stoker was installed in 1939 to keep the fireman from getting too tired. The stoker required a different size of coal (smaller pieces) than any other NNRY locomotive and this is why you see 2 sections in the NNRY coaling tower. The wood section of the tower was for stoker coal for #81. As part of the restoration the locomotive is being returned to hand firing because it will be used only on short runs, restoring the stoker would be difficult, and obtaining the proper size of coal would be very difficult.

Well they certainly won’t run them terribly far simply because of water problems. The water tank at Cherry Creek is now mostly a pile of lumber. That would have to be rebuilt in order for them to go north up the mainline. No I think for the most part they’re planning to operate between McGill and Ely. And Ely and Keystone Junction. What I’d really like to see is them operating in the main line To McGill and the train station that’s being restored there. Right now they’re operating on the old Highline that went up to the mill. But the main line to the train station is fully operational if they put the road crossings back in. And I’ll bet they do at some point. In the meantime I’ll bet they run diesels north well up the valley possibly for50 or 60 miles.

@@ToyManTelevision I've tried looking at Google Earth and it looks like all the tracks just peter out a few miles out of town. Maybe I'm missing one?

Yup. Sunny and Sky. Sunny is very vocal but more loving. But she also bites. Birds...

S RR burp.

All three hot right this minute. 81 still can’t move, no valves or pistons. But tender on. Side rods. Injectors. Whistle spoke this morning for the first time in 63,years!!

Cool