Illinois Railway Museum Blog

A short blog today.  It was, as expected, a weekend with rather limited activity in the steam shop.  The need for many people to attend the rules briefing, tests and safety meeting in preparation for running this year meant that a lot of us were not available to work in the shop. Then the Museum Annual General Meeting in the evening occupied many of us later in the day.  The outcome of that meeting leaves me with a substantially greater commitment and means that I must be more circumspect in my musings in future blogs.  My thanks to those who voted for me and I hope that I can deliver on expectations.

Anyway, in the shop, we overcame a minor setback and prepared for the critical spray painting of #1630, which we now expect to get under way next weekend.

The setback was on the smokebox of #1630.  Collin and Jason worked on fitting the sheet metal and mesh that will form the spark arrestor.  This is now close to ready for welding into place after some minor adjustments.  However, last week we had resolved the issue of leaks around the smokebox front ring and believed that we had thereby avoided the need to remove the smoke box front.  Unfortunately Dennis found that it was not possible to complete the welding of the steel and mesh of the new spark arrestor with the smoke box front ring in place.  It was therefore necessary to remove this after all.

The big concern was that this has not been achieved before without use of the boom truck and consequent need to pull the loco out of the shop.  This would have been “very bad news” as she is all taped up and ready to spray.  However a method was developed, based upon fabricating a bracket that could be attached to the bolts which normally attach the bell bracket.  This allowed the ring to be lifted in the shop using the fork lift.

The team on Saturday removed the door and fabricated the bracket for lifting the ring.

A group including Phil, Christian, Jeff and myself carried out the lift of the ring on Sunday so there is now clear access for then spark arrestor to be fitted.

Preparing to lift the front ring