Illinois Railway Museum Blog

Another good day of progress. 

Walking thru the shop, you would not see much change in 1630 but internally progress was good. 

Eric and Collin cut and hammered another 40+ tube ends from the firebox tube sheet.  Hopefully this can be completed in another couple of weeks and then we can progress to cleaning, by wire brush and sand blasting, of all the internal surfaces.  This will enable the inspection, which is the key objective of the whole exercise.  

Mike and Bob continued with the firebox patch by starting the removal of one of the patch screws securing the outside wrapper in this area.  It is hoped that this is the only one damaged to the point at which it will have to be replaced.  Other tasks on 1630 itself are largely on hold until the tube ends are out.  It is pretty difficult to work on the locomotive when someone is using an air hammer in the boiler which acts as a big sounding board!

Away from the locomotive, a lot of progress was made on clearing material out of the shop to the boxcar.  Two large air tanks and other parts of #26 were successfully transfered to the boxcar and we now have a work space on the East side where we can work on large parts during the winter.

Space to work

We now have the area for the swaging operation clear and can hopefully start the set up next week. 

Ready to set up swaging

On the Shay Dennis, with help from the "removals crew", made good progress on setting up stands to ensure that the locomotive is completely stable so that he can start welding the new smoke box plates into place.  Funny, he seems to have a strong desire to see the thing completely supported.  It may be to do with the fact that he will be working under there for days on end!!.

Preparing for smokebox rebuild

Good progress was made on cleaning the bolster from the truck.  It makes an interesting comparison with the "before" picture of the bolster last week when first removed from the truck. 

Result of a lot of hard work

However, a great deal more remains to be done when you look at the area where the springs sit in the truck.  The steam shop is never short of big cleaning opportunities!!.

But lots more to do

On 428 several jobs were progressed:

We got input from an external advisor on the repair of the riveting furnace that we need to complete the cab riveting.  When this repair is done, we can rivet the cab which will have a double benefit.  428 will look a great deal better with its cab back on and a large area at the South end will become available for fabrication when the cab is off the floor.

Another group worked on the air compressor.  A lot of carefully measurement was required to identify exactly what size of piston rings we need.  With this done, we can now order them and move forward to reassembly once we have them.

Air pump core

Air pump piston

Cameron was working with Tom on machining bushes for 428.

Machining a bush

In other areas, Rick continued the covering of the lathe and Glenn worked on the radiator fitting on the Bay City crane.  We are holding our breath on this one!.  Weather permitting, it may be that next weekend the cooling will be in place and crane will have a working traction motor for the first time in 20+ years.

So another productive day.

Nigel