Illinois Railway Museum Blog

We celebrated May Day working outdoors on the Chicago Great Western X 38 snowplow.  At 82 F it was the warmest day we have seen in SEVEN months!

Prep Work

Victor Humphreys sands and cleans up new interior lining wood while Dave Rogan primes them as soon as they are ready.  Dave also primed the two new interior framing timbers made last weekend.  Several of these short pieces were installed inside the plow next to the south doorway, even as the paint continued to dry.

Cupola Roof

Jim Leonard is a champion - he volunteered at once to continue body cleanup and repairs outdoors on the plow body.  The first area to be attacked was the cupola, as completion here will allow for installation of new windows made in the shop over the winter.  In this pic he is wrestling with a pneumatic air scaler to remove old paint and rust from the roof.

Priming

With the weather holding favorable into the afternoon, Jim wire brushed an area clean and began applying fresh primer to the roof.

Meanwhile

I could ill afford to let such nice weather be wasted.  So we began the complicated task of hand painting the famous CORN BELT ROUTE herald on the north side of the plow.  Paul Cronin assists in lining up the pattern and tracing the artwork.

Prep Work

John Faulhaber helped me out while planning which part could be done in the time remaining and masking areas that lent themselves to the task.  Just like the old game show - BEAT THE CLOCK.

On to Painting

The first word we painted was of course CHICAGO.  If you are not familiar with this iconic herald stay tuned.  Weather permitting more will appear each week.

Stripes

Below the CHICAGO there are four horizontal stripes, which could largely be masked off for painting.

End of Day

The stripes were completed as the sun sank ever lower.  I suppose this looks disconnected and puzzling.  I guess it is - I know where we are going, yet it is hard to visualize.

I stayed on task while the other members of the crew worked on installation of more interior lining and applying steel capping to the doorway weatherstrips.