The Durango and Silverton narrow gauge railroad has an amazing roundhouse where they rebuild their fleet of steam locomotives.
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We also take a look at how the wheel trucks are rebuilt in the machine shop and car shop. The wheel trucks under the cars are heavy and huge and require constant maintenance.
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The roundhouse was rebuilt after it burned down in 1987, and the
"new" roundhouse is a state of the art locomotive repair shop where the railroads fleet of over 10 locomotives, half of which are operating and used daily, are maintained and rebuilt.
Their current project is rebuilding locomotive #476, a K-28 type locomotive that has been sidetracked for 20 years.
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From the web:
The three locos which remained with the D&RGW, numbers 473, 476 and 478 were assigned to the Durango - Silverton tourist trains from the 1950s onwards. The Durango & Silverton inherited these when it took over the Silverton Branch in 1981.Numbers 473 and 478 are operational, while 476 currently being restored to operating condition.
Due to their smaller size, these engines are often used by the Durango & Silverton for shorter trains, usually the first or last on the schedule, and also for helper service or sectioned trains. Despite being slightly smaller, a little older and less powerful than the K-36s, the engine crews tend to favor a trip on these engines because the design ALCO used was superior in balance and servicing. Firing can be tricky when the engine is working hard, as the clamshell-style firedoors tend to pull into the backhead of the boiler due to the draft, and if any flues in the boiler are leaking, the loss of draft on the fire is much harder to work around than on the K-36 locomotives. Firing while the engine is working hard is done with a large "heel" pattern, generally with as little coal on the flue sheet as possible, and gradually sloping the fire bed towards the door sheet to the height or higher than the firedoors. This results in the draft being forced through the fire bed in the thinner areas towards the flue sheet, which usually is hindered by the lack of draft between the grates and the arch brick. New firemen sometimes have a hard time learning this because there are fewer training hours available on the K-28 class locomotives compared to the railroad's usual K-36 workhorses which have a larger firebox and are more forgiving of poor technique.
These locomotives are popular subjects for model railroaders, and high quality scale models in HOn3 and On3 scales have been produced by several manufacturers since the 1950s.