Illinois Railway Museum Blog

It was a very successful weekend in the steam shop.  Although strictly not many of us were “in the steam shop” for very long on Saturday!.

Dennis and his son Keith, assisted by Jerry, Rick and others as required, occupied the shop to do the long awaited spray painting of #1630.  The rest of us kept well away while this was going on.

The results are impressive.  It took a little while to set up and test the new sprayer and the epoxy medium. 

Early stages

However, once this was done, progress was remarkable rapid. 

Rapid progress on the boiler

By mid-afternoon everything was done.  All the loose parts, tanks, dome cover and the banding strips were done.  We are spraying only the back of the tender.

Nearing the end

She really looks good.  A great job by Dennis and Keith.

Unfortunately it is very clear that a plain shiny black locomotive does not photograph nearly as well in an enclosed shop as does one with all sorts of different colored patches!. 

What a transformation

On Sunday, Jim and a small team removed all the masking so she is now looking much more like a finished locomotive.

Now we wait to confirm how long it will take for the epoxy medium to get thoroughly hard so that we can fit the plugs and valves into the top of the boiler to do the hydro test.

The rest of the team concentrated on getting a supply of water and proving the pool heater ready for the hydro test.  The water car was switched to the front of barn #9 and filled using a very long run of pipe.  (It cannot be located to the steam lead as the switch is being repaired and that area of track is out of service).  However, this worked well and by afternoon the water car was full and back in front of the shop ready for use.

A temporary arrangement was set up to run water from the car thru the heater and back to the car to test the heater.  Clearly Jerry did a great job last year!.  The heater has traditionally been a bear to start up after the Winter.  This time we simply started the water flow, switched it on and 30 seconds later it fired up and ran smoothly.

So we are all ready to put water into the boiler and heat it up for the testing as soon as we are confident that the paint is hard enough to allow us to access the boiler and make the connections.

We can now begin a whole lot of activities needed to refit all the small items removed to allow painting and make her ready for operation.  It will be a busy couple of weeks!.

Nigel