28 June 2006
Royal Hudson Back on Tracks
Contractor Randy Lucas tightens down valve caps in preparation for the Royal
Hudson's hydrostatic test that will allow the almost 70-year-old steam locomotive to go back in service.
Squamish British Columbia - "I think she's just as
beautiful with her clothes off," Singh Biln says.
The former BC Rail executive and confessed train buff is talking about the Royal Hudson, the 1940 steam engine that ran for 25 years
between Vancouver and Squamish. Now stripped to her bare essentials at a West Coast Railway Association maintenance shed in Squamish,
the locomotive has been undergoing a $500,000 renovation for the past year.
Singh, now the association's major projects manager, said the Royal Hudson could be steaming from North Vancouver to Squamish or
Whistler six-ten times per year starting September.
But at the moment a team of a dozen volunteers and paid contractors are working seven days a week to rebuild the engine's boiler in
preparation for a hydrostatic test and provincial certification that will allow the engine to go back in service.
On one of the hottest days this year boilermaker Randy Guzz is inside the 10-foot wide firebox, welding in the last of 260
custom milled 20-ft. long boiler tubings. The son of a boilermaker, Biln said Guzz is one of the few boilermakers left in
Canada who understands steam locomotives. Built to flex and adjust to train movement, steam locomotives with their many moving parts are
more prone to leaking than conventional diesel locomotives that replaced them in the mid-1950s.
Built in Montreal, the Royal Hudson 2860 was a sister locomotive to the 2850 that carried their royal highnesses, King George VI and his
wife, Queen Elizabeth on their 1939 cross-Canada royal tour. With a 14-wheel configuration that includes eight
pony wheels (Editor: More like 4 pony wheels. I don't think you can call trailing wheels pony wheels.) and six 75-inch
driving wheels, the Royal Hudson 2860 had a top speed of 120 miles per hour on the run she was originally designed for, from Vancouver
to Revelstoke. In service for 16 years before her first retirement, the locomotive was rescued in the 1960s and put back into service in
1974 by the Royal Hudson Steam Society. Facing a $2.5 million boiler replacement in 1999 she was again retired. But now with $400,000 in
grants from provincial and federal governments and numerous private donations the locomotive is undergoing a boiler upgrade, which means
she can not run on a daily basis but will be able to make several excursions a year.
"Not too far from home," said Biln, an electrical engineer who worked on the 1999 report that detailed the locomotive's
upgrading requirements. By limiting the amount of runs she makes Biln is hoping the boiler upgrades rather than replacements will keep
the Royal Hudson running another 10-15 years.
The year-long project, led and documented by steam fitter Trevor Mills, has been complicated, requiring custom milling of
parts from as far as Pittsburgh and hand placing 800 stay-bolts, 835 flex caps, and 260 tubes and flues. Volunteers have
removed rust and re-painted the engine with high temperature immersion black paint. Stripped of running boards, insulation,
coverings, and front nose, the Hudson is still an impressive locomotive as casing caps are torqued down in preparation for hydrostatic
testing. A shiny dynamo on top of the engine that generates electricity to light the coach cars it pulled attests to its
forward-thinking original design. Brass-buttoned original leather arm rests outside the engineer windows are
dusty but uncracked.
Although Biln has worked around trains since he graduated from the University of British Columbia in 1976, the former BC Rail chief
mechanical officer said he has never worked this closely on a project. "It was done by people in my department and I knew about
projects but I've never worked this hands-on before."
A man who admits he still has toy trains he played with as a child, he is careful to thank each worker as they pack up tools at end of
day. Biln said if the locomotive springs leaks in any of the thousands of possible places during the hydrostatic test he is confident
staff will quickly put it right.
"I don't think we'll run into anything major because we have people who know what they're doing."
He anticipates it will take all of July to fully "clothe" the Hudson before firing her up in August for an anticipated first
run in September. Noting the park had 50,000 visitors last summer with more than 600 paying to take one demonstration train 1,500 feet,
he thinks space on the Royal Hudson, which may run with Rocky Mountaineer Vacation's Whistler Mountaineer or with its own coaches,
should prove to be a hot commodity.
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