Illinois Railway Museum Blog

This will teach me to send in information!.  Think I drowned Bob in input for a couple of weeks so now I have to do it myself.  Probably very fair and thank you Bob for loading my last two efforts.

I don't think I have the ability to load pictures yet so this one will be text only.

Lots of activity today though much of it was not directly on 1630 but rather taking advantage of the great weather to get set up for productive work when the weather is not so favorable.

On 1630 itself:

• Jason and Collin continued the removal of the tube ends.  All the small plugs are out at the front and Collin started flame cutting the firebox end plugs to a length at which they can be hammered out more easily.  This end is a bit more difficult as the tubes had to be flame cut (you can only use a rotating cutter at one end) and, when doing this, the key objective is to ensure that you do not cut too close to the firebox and cause damage.  Now any excess must be removed if we are not to have an excessive amount of metal to hammer out.
• We also set up to remove the super heater flue ends.  These are a real pain as the metal is thicker and cannot simply be hammered to collapse out of the tuibe sheet.  They will have to be carefully weakened with and angle grinder before they can be hammered out.
• Bob did a great job cleaning up the back head for testing.  This is a filthy job as the excess insulation and rust must be wire brushed in the confined space of the cab.  A solid days work and one more day should see that done.
• Ralph worked on removing the rivets to enable the firebox patch.  One more out, two to go.

Major activities during the winter will be cleaning and testing the superheater elements and swaging the new tubes (heating and compressing the ends of the tube so that it can be fitted into the tubeplate) to prepare for this:

• Jeff, with occasional assistance for a few others, set up storage racks in the box car so that we now have the tubes and superheaters easily accessible so that we can take a few of either into the shop as required and still have a lot of space to store other materials.
• A number of us did a major reorganization of the South end of the shop to allow the swager and furnace to be set up.

In other areas:

• Stu and Brian disconnected the front truck drive shaft on Shay #5.  This is essential to allow the truck to be removed to fit new springs.
• Dennis, our skilled welder, returned.  He was able to complete the bar we have been making for the Lackawanna car.  We were able to set up the welding area with an A frame so that he can set up to rebuild the axle boxes for UP#428.
• A number of us managed to move the planer to a position where it can be set up to run.  Bob removed the motor for cleaning / checking.  If we can get this machine into service it will be a big time saver on jobs such as axle boxes.

So a lot of progress in a number of areas.

No update from me next week as I have to go to the UK on business.