Re: C&S #30, a C-16 conversion

Posted by Jim Courtney on Dec 02, 2020; 6:07am
URL: http://c-sng-discussion-forum.254.s1.nabble.com/C-S-30-a-C-16-conversion-tp15055p16095.html

Exquisite work, as always, John.

Good to see you back to work and posting.

 I've looked at many photos and don't see any sign of a valve or other control on the sand flow.  How did these work?

Before the pneumatic sanders were installed (about 1912?), the sand flow to the pipes to the rails was controlled mechanically by a lever that ran horizontally thru the entire base of the dome and protruded just a bit from the engineer's side of the dome, just above the sand pipe connecting fitting. The lever was connected via a small diameter rod running back to the cab, to allow the engineer to pull on the rod, to start the flow of sand to the rails. Nothing visible on the fireman's side -- the fireman only got to fill the dome with sand, only the engineer got to empty it!!

Problem is, the sand lever and control rod were just about the same height off the rails as the hand rails, and usually are hiding behind the engineer's side hand rail in photos.

You can see the lever and rod on this enlargement of rebuilt Cooke number 8 circa 1906:



and on number 9 circa 1909:




The rings on the early Baldwin and Cooke domes further obscure the little lever/rod.

As to the smoke box front door retaining dogs, they look to me like the Euro currency sign.
This drawing was posted earlier (by Rick Steele?) and shows the design of the extended smoke box front:



This enlargement of number 9 gives a reasonable look at one of the dogs from the side:



The upper and lower ends of the Euro sign touch the smoke box front and the edge of the door on the extension; the middle lines of the Euro sign is the retaining bolt, running in an angle into the smoke box front extension (does this make sense??)


BTW, I'm going to follow your example, albeit in a larger scale.  I've rounded up  a bunch of Sn3 stuff my friend Dale has use for, and later this week I'll be trading for an old PFM Sn3 C-16. Instead of number 30, I'm shooting for Cooke number 47.