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Report on Joint Meeting of NJBA
and NJ Museum of Transportation
Allaire State Park, Wall, NJ
November 13th, 2004
Prepared by David Macauley
The New Jersey Blacksmith Association held a joint meeting with the New Jersey Museum of Transportation (NJMT) on Saturday November 13th, 2004. The meeting took place at facilities of NJMT also know as the Pine Creek Railroad on the grounds of Allaire State Park. The purpose of the meeting was to introduce the two organizations to one another and to provide a
demonstration of industrial riveting. NJMT has established a forge in their repair shop with the help of Bill Kerr and David Macauley. The purpose of the forge is to use repair and fabricate parts for the various engines and cars in the NJMT inventory.
The current major project at the NJMT is the repair of the Porter Mogel 46 steam locomotive. The boiler for the locomotive is riveted with ¾” rivets. This author and several of the other volunteers at the shop have been practicing riveting test plates together to relearn the art of riveting. The demonstration of the 13th was to rivet two 6” x 6” x ¼” plate together with 2 ¾” soft steel rivets. The demonstration with performed by Jim Lubrant, the chief mechanical officer for the shop, David Macauley and other volunteers.
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Jim did most of the riveting with an air hammer fed from a ¾” air hose. The other three demonstrators tried to hold the plates with a rivet in them steady on top of a rivet backing hardy tool in the main anvil. This was the toughest part of the demonstration. If the plates angled away from flat horizontal, the rivet would not line up after being headed. This problem should be mitigated when we rivet on the boiler itself which stationary. Many of the test rivets were vertically askew, but they appear to have filled the holes and the heads formed pretty well. The NJMT did decide that new heading tools are required for the pneumatic hammers. The existing heading tools are not sealing the rivet heads to the plates thoroughly enough. The museum shop is strongly soliciting any ideas for improving our riveting process. If anyone has information please contact David Macauley at drmacauley@att.net , 732-206-1568.
Jim Lubrant also conducted a tour of the shop and all of the engines and locomotives that the NJMT owns. He also explained the plans of the museum to build a larger blacksmithing area at the back of the current shop. The goal for the new shop is to provide not only support for restoration, but also sufficient resources to conduction group classes on Blacksmithing. NJMT continues to have a very strong apprentice program. This author already has at least 3 young apprentices. A specific project for the apprentices will be to fabricate a pump car as shown in figure 1. This project will require machinists and blacksmithing skill – a demanding but a rewarding project.
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