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Here is a Empire No.62 fresh from eBay, I just won it two days ago! This little guy wasn't in the best shape, the wheel was off its shaft and the piston rod was missing its ring to connect it to the wheel pin. Not going to win any beauty contest either but I have seen much worse.
I haven't seen a lot of these No.62's with the badge over the power connector, to me its more like a B-43. I think I have seen one, maybe two of them. I know Al has one and his started off with missing parts, so at least I technically had all its bits and bobs.
The wheel was pretty easy to fix, I cleaned the shaft and wheel hole, pushed it together with red Loctite.
I took a spare Empire piston rod with a "crimp ring" and transplanted to the No.62's piston rod. For good measure I used some red Loctite on it too.
New seals all around and tried to clean up the nickel. Sadly I had to make a new sight glass because the original one was frozen into the lower fitting and snapped off.
The whistle shaft leaks real bad and the topper I am not sure is actually original. Whistle basically blows and not in a good way either ;-)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=05NUZ5SV_5Y
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After sleeping on about changing the whistle base on the No.62 I decided to swap it out with a earlier "round" whistle base. It helped a lot that in Donald Stilson's book the example photo of a No.62 Long Boiler in fact had this older type of whistle base. So no more leaking massive amounts of steam, which would burn the heck out of my fingers when working the regulator and the whistle sound is now awesome. Though now I need to find a better whistle top, so it is the proper style.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLuEMhaFlwY
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Rich:
Congratulations on bringing back another Empire from the grave.
Nice work.
Charlie -
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I saw that one on eBay, and I thought maybe Rich got it -- and I was right! It certainly found a good home...
Paula -
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I saw that one on eBay, and I thought maybe Rich got it -- and I was right! It certainly found a good home...
Paula
The Empire Doctor is ready for Prime Time.
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Thanks, I do love getting one going again that is for sure.
So I have three No.62's. I got one from @txlabman not long ago, its a long boiler but with the cylinder piston that runs in both directions. Then I have the short boiler that also has the cylinder piston that runs in both directions. The one I got from Charlie had the same exact whistle base / topper as my lastest - so I am sure the one that was on the one I repaired would have been original. Sadly, it was a "Monday" whistle because the one from Charlie has a real nice & strong "toot" whistling sound.
Here are my No.62's all together.
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