Illinois Railway Museum Blog

About three weeks ago we brought the Nebraska Zephyr into the Diesel Shop to begin a very long process of cleaning, buffing and polishing her stainless steel siding.  Many, many years of road grime, a lot of cast iron brake shoe dust, and dust from sitting idle in Barn 9 have really collected and just won't come off with a simple washing with a pressure washer. The first few days were spent finding the right materials, wheels, rouge and the best methods for cutting and polishing the current sandpaper feel of the stainless.

We did find a pretty good method that will hopefully fit our timeframe, which is basically 5 weeks for 5 cars and a locomotive, a total of about 415 feet of train. On the fluted areas, we start with a scotch bright pad, gray or red as others were too harsh, and go a couple passes to break into the dirt pretty good, but not get into the stainless. Then on to the stainless wool, to take off pretty much all of the remaining dirt and debris. The first two steps here are all by hand. Then on to the power tools, a few Milwaukee variable speed buffers with a couple 8 inch, 60 ply cotton muslin sewn wheels and some rouge specifically for stainless from a company called Zephyr Products, that was quite ironic. This stuff does a great job of cutting and polishing. The final step is using a similar type of wheel, but smaller diameter, with no rouge and just going over the same area quicker to clean up any residue and it gives a nice smooth, almost mirror like finish to the fluted sides.

The flat panels are a bit different. There is no way we'll have time to get the finish we would like with the machines, so we start with stainless wool, clean the surface with side to side movements only, and then finish off with P21S polishing soap. Again, all of it is by hand.

The curves from the letter board up the roof were a little more difficult at first as the corrugation is pretty narrow. On top of that, there is a lot more dirt caked in them from there being a lot more horizontal surface area. The quickest way through the dirt was folded up scotch bright pads and more stainless wool. The same method is being used on the area curving down to the belly pans.

So far the Venus, Vesta, and most of Minerva are completed, Juno has been started. Sometime in the next day or two the train will be wyed since it doesn't fit in the shop, let alone the building, and the last two cars will hopefully be completed by the middle to end of next week. Riley, Chris, Pete, Colton, Charlie, Eric, Kevin, the other Kevin, and Jeron have all been pretty busy moving this along quickly. Thank you all for the hard work.

We'll post another update in a week or so, along with progress  updates of other projects in the shop.