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The Heisler
Locomotive Project At this time (December 2009) the Heisler project has been underway for over 5 years and the end is in sight. Early in the project I decided to use investment castings for much of the locomotive. Unfortunately, the mold maker I teamed with lost his eyesight and was unable to complete the project so I had to retrench. I connected with a pattern maker who successfully used some of the patterns I made for investment castings in sand casting patterns. Crankcase castings have been produced and incorporated into a working engine. Four different truck casting types have also been produced. A total of 18 of these castings have been combined with the wheels and gear systems fabricated several years ago into three operating trucks. These castings are available from the pattering maker --- see Castings page. The boiler is complete and all purchased parts are now available. The locomotive should be operating on steam by late next spring and finished by the end of 2010. Detailed information on the design and construction is available via the links in the table below. The data are organized is a layered structure hopefully to both ease access to the data as well as keep this page clean. The links lead to the reference, design and construction information for the indicated areas. Note that there are no links for the Tanks ,Cab and Electrical subsystems as those areas haven't been documented yet. Much of the design information, especially that for the engine and trucks was incorrect because many of the parts were fabricated from stock rather than from castings as initially designed. The engine sections have been updated except for the drawing files. The update of the truck section is now underway Current Status: The following photo shows the first run of the Heisler on compressed air at Mill Creek Central on December 12, 2009. It was about 25 degrees F at the time this photo was taken. That is a gasoline powered compressor on the flat car behind the Heisler. The diesel is following in case the Heisler broke down. The Heisler ran great, Unfortunately, the belt started slipping on the compressor so the diesel had to drag us back.
The following photos show more detail of the engine and trucks.
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