Illinois Railway Museum Blog

The morning started with Dan Currens and myself taking a short road trip up to Avalon for the final inspection on the Zephyr.  After 1 year and 11 months, its finally about ready to come back to Union.  We spent a little time going through the electrical and mechanical systems, making sure everything operated as it should be.  Once we finished we headed out to the museum, arriving there around 5:30pm.

Dan headed over to the IT 1605 to take another look into the aux gen and voltage regulator.  When we last used it a few months ago, the VR would not regulate the aux gen, it would put out all it could, which was only a couple volts high at idle, but way too much at any other throttle positions.  We had already tried known good regulators, with no luck.  Dan looked at the aux gen itself and the armature and fields all checked out ok.  For such a simple system, it is being incredibly difficult.

Meanwhile I worked on the 504, cleaned up a couple runs on the main res pipes from last weeks coat of paint.  I wiped everything down, including the main res tanks this time.  Mixed up more paint and sprayed the tanks, then went over to the pipes and did another coat on the bottom sides of them. After cleaning the gun I spent a little bit of time cleaning up a couple areas of the shop.

We both left about 8:00pm.  Tomorrow I hope to get the last coat of paint on the tanks, pipes and first set of shutters.