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THE COUPLING the Official News Letter of the Johannesburg Live Steam Club Volume 1, Issue 2 MARCH1999

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THE COUPLING the Official News Letter of the Johannesburg Live Steam Club Volume 1, Issue 2 MARCH1999 THE COUPLING The Official News Letter of the Johannesburg Live Steam Club Volume 1, Issue 2 MARCH1999 From the Editor STOP PRESS…STOP PRESS Keith Bradley The weekend of the night run coincides with the Editor and Secretary annual LUISTO-LAND festival, arrangements have Autumn greetings, fellow live steamers. Yes been made for us to use the rowing boat club entrance autumn is upon us and the year is a ¼ for JLSC members to gain access to the track. complete, sigh… how time flies when you’re th having fun. Well only a short while until the REMEMBER, the family day on the 25 of April dreaded Y2K, millennium bug or what ever has been replaced by the night run and roof you wish to call it strikes, one thing is for wetting party scheduled for the evening of th sure, we who drive livesteam locomotives do 24 April not have to worry…or do we? Well at 12:01am on the 22nd of August this Where in the world is year we might have a taste of the chaos the ING. D. L. Porta? bug might bring. The Global Positioning System (GPS) used by many all over the Well I suppose that the question one really should ask world, but primarily for military, naval and is, Who on earth is ING. D. L. Porta? airborne navigation, runs out of digits to count the date and will revert back to the date when Ing. Livio Dante Porta was born in Argentina in 1922 the GPS system was first implemented, and graduated from collage in 1948. Involved in Steam Railway operations from an early age, he was Continued on page 2 a colleague and student of Chapelon and he has continued to advance steam locomotive design to the present day. INSIDE THIS ISSUE 1 He is known for his innovation of the KLYPOR and Editorial comment LEMPOR exhaust systems but is probably better 1 ING. D. L. Porta known for his development of the Gas Producer Combustion System (GPCS). 2 Forgotten Experiment (Continuation) 2 In 1948 Porta performed his first locomotive Notes from the General Meeting – Editors comment conversion on a meter gauge 4-6-2. He modified the 3 Calendar of Events locomotive to a fully streamlined 4-8-0 wheel arrangement, added compound cylinders, higher 3 Matters Engineering superheat, re-heat between the high pressure and low pressure cylinders, an early form of the GPCS, a 4 Feedback on the General meeting: Risky business Kylchap exhaust system and other advancements. 4 Gas Producer Combustion System (GPCS). Major components were fabricated using welded mild steel reducing fabrication difficulty compared to 5 Steam Facts (Titanic facts) pouring large castings. While the engine was a great 5 The GPCS Continued on page 3 THE COUPLING 1 Continued from page 1 DID YOU KNOW? January 6, 1980. What’s this got to do with livesteam and our hobby you say? Well apart The largest Beyer-Garratt ever built by the Beyer from the odd cruise missile that might have Peacock works was for Russian, a 4-8-2 + 2-8-4. lost its way and ends up chasing your loco round the track, or a plane attempting to land Tractive Effort: 89 200 lbs. on the club’s station at Wemmer Pan due to Weight: 262.2 tons failure of its GPS guidance system, absolutely Gauge:: 5 ft nothing! Just the assurance that us, with our Chimney height: 17 ft 1 7/8 in th 19 Century Technology, will not have to Length over buffers: 107 ft 9 ½ in worry about losing our way, Our means of Width o/running boards: 10 ft 6 in transport will always be on the right track. Boiler diameter: 7 ft 7 in Oops, forgot to tell you that most of the Grate area: 85.5 sq. ft. railways now use the highly accurate (+/- 1- Thickness of bar frames: 5 in millisecond) GPS clocks in their computer th, dispatching systems, also ATMs, Cellphone H.W. Garratt born June 8 1864 provisionally towers, andFORGOTTEN land surveyors EXPERIMENT use :the same patented the Garratt scheme on the 26 July 1907, system. THE V-8 STEAM LOCOMOTIVE and the complete specification was deposited at the patent office in January 1908. Continued from Feb. By James D. Hefner Beyer, PeacockNotes from produced the General some Meeting 1022 of GarrattMarch Thelocomotives majority of theduring evening the was period taken 1908-1958. up with a risk assessment exercise run by Jim Taylor of the CSIR, who kindly came at the invitation of John Bradley. The whole purpose of the analysis was not to tell the club what we must do, but to rather as to what we the members could do to make our club safer as a whole, both for the members and the public. Unfortunately some of the members seemed to take it as a direct attack on them and did nothing but voice criticism, both for the speaker and other members. However after a slow start some areas of the general track grounds where earmarked and given The Henschel V-8 steam locomotive appears to thought to what could go wrong, what would be the have been an attempt to exceed the speed limit set consequences be to public and what we as members could do to by a conventional steam locomotive. Built in reduce the risk. accordance to the plans of Richard Roosen, it was delivered to the Deutche Reichsbahn on July 7, But unfortunately time ran out and we could not complete the exercise. Given the scale of the risk assessment, it was suggested 1941. It has a Mikado wheel arrangement (2-8-2), that we as members attempt to do the risk assessment program which was used by passenger and light freight ourselves and draw our own conclusions. locomotives. (The book incorrectly states that it was a 4-6-2.) However, instead of the conventional The Editors comment. horizontal arrangement of 2-3 horizontal cylinders It is my opinion that if we let ourselves become too complacent as regards to safety at our track, we could leave ourselves open driving the wheels through driving and connecting to public liability lawsuits. If we do not try to regulate ourselves, rods, the V-8 steam locomotive used 8 cylinders we might find that government and/or municipal regulations arranged in 4 pairs. The angle between each pair of could be passed that would make it difficult, if not impossible to cylinders was 90 degrees, and they were mounted run our locomotives. (This has happened, both America and Australia have had similar problems in certain states) Continued on page 5 THE COUPLING 2 Continued from page 1 success, track conditions in Argentina were not really CALENDAR OF EVENTS suited for it and it saw limited use. However, it EVENT: CLUB MEETINGS clearly showed that Porta knew what he was doing PLACE: W. H. COETZER SCHOOL and he was soon commissioned to perform TIME: LAST TUESDAY OF THE MONTH @ 20H00 modifications to other engines. His next project in the Monthly Gathering of Members. early 1950's was the modernisation of a fleet of 2-6- 2T's used in commuter service. With relatively minor EVENT: CLUB FAMILY DAYS modifications, he increased the output of these PLACE: THE TRACK, WEMMER PAN engines dramatically. He later more-extensively TIME: LAST SUNDAY OF THE MONTH . 12H00 TO 17H00 modified one of the engines, enabling it to Fun and Family day at the track grounds. outperform far larger 4-6-2's in passenger service. Unfortunately, the diesel was already making inroads EVENT: CLUB WORKS DAY in Argentina and no further locomotives were PLACE: THE TRACK, WEMMER PAN modernised. About this time (1957), Porta was given TIME: SATURDAY AFTER THE GENERAL MEETING 10H00 the opportunity to take over the coal-hauling Rio TO 15H00 Turbio Railway as general manager. This proved to Track maintenance and construction for the 1999 and be a fertile ground for Porta's work. 2000 steam meetings. EVENT: SUNDAY PUBLIC RUNNING DAYS PLACE: THE TRACK, WEMMER PAN TIME: EVERY SUNDAY FROM 15H00 TO 17H00, WEATHER PERMITTING . Public passenger haulage also, members and friends. EVENT: NIGHT RUN, ROOF WETTING AND BRAAI PLACE: THE TRACK, WEMMER PAN TIME: SATURDAY 24 APRIL 99 These 2' 5-1/2" gauge 2-10-2s were built in the 50's ROOF WETTING PARTY FOR THE GROUND LEVEL STATION . and 1960's by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries of Japan for service on the Rio Turbio Railway in Argentina, at the southern tip of South America. The first batch LONG-RANGE PLANNING of engines, present when Porta arrived, proved highly EVENT: GAUTENG STEAM-UP, CARS IT THE PARK capable and quickly displaced older 2-8-2's. PLACE: THE STATION, WEMMER PAN However, Porta soon set about the systematic TIME: WEEKEND 5 AND 6 JUNE 1999. modification of these engines to improve their efficiency, power, and availability. So successful EVENT: HOBBIES AND CRAFTS FAIR were these modifications that when additional PLACE: TRANSPORT MUESEM , WEMMER PAN engines were ordered in the 1960's, these refinements TIME: WEEKEND, 2 AND 3 OCTOBER 1999 and others were incorporated in their construction. As a result of these developments, the Rio Turbio 2-10- 2's were one of the most efficient groups of steam EVENT: MEMBER WORKSHOP VISITS locomotives ever operated. Tests document that the PLACE: CONSENTING MEMBER ’S WORKSHOPS engines routinely achieved 12% efficiency, nearly TIME: TO BE ADVISED equalling Chapelon's famed 4-8-0's, and could attain Monthly visits to some consenting member’s workshops will up to 15% efficiency under controlled conditions.
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