Illinois Railway Museum Blog

However, when the storm had passed it became a beautiful day and we were able to carry out the shunt to move the Shay truck out of the shop for steam cleaning.  This was rather a "rush job" as no one had expected conditions to be good enough for this so soon.

All the equipment started well after the winter so it proved possible to get everything shunted by 1:30.

This is March ??

So several hours of steam cleaning were done, removing probably 30 lbs of caked grease and muck.

Steam cleaning in progress

This area of the truck frame was previously completely filled with hardened grease and muck.

Cleaning progress

This had to be done using the old steam department machine as the more powerful car shop one was not yet serviced.  Hopefully we can borrow that next time the weather is favorable.  Now that all the equipment is set up it should be much quicker to shunt the truck outside next time.

Nothing is ever as easy as you hope.  The roof of the wheel drop is a bear to remove and replace, requiring use of the Bay City crane.  As darkness falls, Phil and Cameron demonstrate the gentle art of removing the lifting hook that became wedged in the hoisting eye of the roof !!

Just release the hook and we are done !!

Also on the Shay, Dennis completed welding the crack on the front surface of the cross beam so that repair should now be complete. 

Unfortunately the weather was much less kind to work on 1630.

The target was to complete the interior sand blasting.  Eric and others managed to completely clear the blast medium from the boiler and work was started on cleaning the belly section.  However the humidity after the storm proved disastrous.  Moisture in the compressed air caused the equipment to clog repeatedly and only about a third of the work was done before the equipment became completely useless.  The rest of the day was spent removing the buildup of damp medium from the equipment and adding additional moisture collection points to the air feed.  With these in place it should be possible to complete next weekend even if we do have similar conditions.

Bob and Paul prepared the cab for sand blasting the back head.  To allow this, we needed to seal all open pipes and valves.  This sandblasting should be a quick job once we can pull the locomotive into the open.  There is no way of containing the medium when we do this so it must be done outside the shop.  At the same time we will plan to lift out the throttle body for inspection.

Glenn and others finished painting the remaining super heater flues so they are now all ready for safe ending.

Work continued on machining various parts of 428 including the axle box plates, connecting rod ends and bushes.

Mike hones the end of a connecting rod

Nigel