Illinois Railway Museum Blog

This weekend we started in  earnest on the over winter work program, primarily on 1630.

The biggest overall job will be painting the locomotive.  Brian and Jane worked on understanding exactly how best to apply the paint that will be used.  It is a two part type that we have not previously used and some significant planning and preparation is required.  Two of the air tanks were removed and these will be the first items to be painted to provide experience and testing of the best methods of preparation and application.

The first part for painting

Dennis was hard at work on the plate work and mesh screens for the smokebox.  These are now approaching completion.

Dennis has nearly completed the platework

We also worked thru the items that we needed to do while we can still pressurize the boiler.

·         One key item that worked out well was the tracing of a small steam leak that appeared around the handrail stanchion juts behind the sand dome.  Steam appearing from behind the lagging is always troubling as it can indicate all sorts of things, some more troubling than others.  We had suspected (and hoped) that it might be as simple as a loose connection on the lubricator steam line.  Much to our relief it was found that this was exactly what it was.  After removing a good deal of sheet metal and lagging to locate the union, soap solution revealed a very obvious leakage where the union had not been fully tightened when a new pipe was fitted.

The leak is very clear

The bubbles show the leak and we can also see the path that the steam followed thru the insulation to appear around the stanchion.  After tightening the union is leak free under 100 psi of air pressure so we are confident that this problem is located and fully corrected.

.. and equally clearly fixed

·         Matt, Jerry and others worked on the cab lighting.  3 lights in the cab were not working during the test running.  A mixture of defective bulbs and a loose connection were found and by end of day, all lights on the locomotive were fully operational when the generator was run on air.  They did also find and correct the issue of "dim" gauge lighting on the engineer's side!.  The lights sit in little dishes that direct the light toward the gauges.  The dishes have a white enameled surface to direct the light.  The years have reduced this thru rust and smoke to a nice matt black!!.  Cleaning and repainting have fixed that issue.

Jason, Cameron and Phil spent much of the day winterizing the water supply in the boxcar.  This is a tricky job involving a lot of blowing compressed air thru the system to ensure that it is water free and then taking apart the water softening system.  The weather did not help with wind and rain making the job more unpleasant than usual.  Good job guys!.

So it was a successful day working toward having 1630 in top condition for 2014 operations.

Nigel