Chicago, Burlington & Quincy 504

504 radiator compartment

The work for the weekend actually started on Friday night. Nathaniel and I started by cleaning up the engineers side radiator compartment, which had only half of it painted. Nathaniel finished the prep and wiped it down with lacquer thinner to get it ready for painting while I started shaking and mixing some gray centari paint. We also setup the longest main reservoir pipe, cleaned and wiped it down. I sprayed a couple coats on the main res pipe, and three coats on the inside area of the radiator intake area. We also prep'ed the four footboard supports for the front pilot. Two were sandblasted and the other two needlechipped and sanded.

Saturdays goal was to get the two main reservoirs that had been painted the week before off the stands and put the last two on the stands and prep them for paint. They weigh close to 500lbs each, so it took every bit of effort from Warren, Roger, Stephanie, Kyle, Scott and myself to get them moved and up on a pipe to start working on them. Roger worked on priming the ends of the tanks since that had not been done as they were primed standing upright and the ends were not accessible. We stored the winterization hatch and setup the last three main res pipes to prep and paint, along with two radiator shutters. We all grabbed some scotch brite pads and went to work cleaning and scuffing all the surfaces on all of the components. The shutters were the most time consuming, but with that many of us, it did go pretty quick. Everything is set for wiping with lacquer thinner and painting during the coming week.

There are a couple of pictures added to the photo gallery, those can be viewed at this link: http://www.irm.org/gallery/cbq504restoration-2008