Illinois Railway Museum Blog

It was a rather limited turnout last weekend but some key work was achieved.

#1630 was not scheduled to run as it was the diesel parade weekend.  It is now planned that she will run next weekend (7/26-27) and the one day of Vintage Transport (Sunday August 3^rd).  Subsequent dates in August are being finalized based upon availability of our small pool of qualified crew.  However, the tentative dates would have her out of service the weekend of August 9^th and running during the Thomas weekends (16^th and 23^rd).  These dates are not yet firm.

Some odd jobs were done but one critical task will ensure that photographs before and after July 19^th will be very easy to distinguish. 

Big change in appearance

After a break, Dennis returned and worked with Jerry to letter the cab.  She now has the Frisco lettering back on the cab sides.

This involved the careful application of the stencils that Dennis had sourced. 

First apply the stencil

After these were carefully placed and flattened, the covering sheet was removed.

Make sure it is absolutely flat

Strip off the backing

Some of us thought that the black on yellow lettering was rather attractive and suggested running for a while with this!!. 

This would be distinctive!

However, the purists prevailed and, after careful masking of the cab side vents, the lettering was sprayed. 

Tom at the throttle

Masked ready to paint

Dennis applies the paint

So we are now back to a more complete appearance with the cab correctly lettered.  Note that she will always look different in this running period as it has been determined that the “IRYM” identification, that she carried previously, is not required and will not be re-applied this time.

The other job was to remove and repair a bracket under the tender, that supports part of the brake linkage.  This had shown signs of looseness and movement so it was removed, corrected and re-fitted.

In what is becoming a regular Wednesday activity, a full load of coal was lifted into the tender.  Thanks again to Anthony from B&G for operating the skidder to fill the tipping bucket for raising on the forklift.  We used the shop forklift this week as the big B&G one was in use.  I will not be doing that again in a hurry!!.  It does the job just fine.  However, due to its smaller size, you are much more up close and personal with the coal tipper.  So each time Anthony fills the tipper you enjoy a nice cloud of coal dust and his amusement as he watches you disappear in the black cloud!.  You also have to be really careful to watch out for any loose lumps of coal that may fall when lifting the bucket into the tender.

A full load of coal

The other hard and messy job that is done most Wednesdays is to fully clean out the grates and ash pan then inspect the firebox.  Phil and JD have regularly been doing this and the results of their efforts are a good starting point for the Saturday crew.

Result of much hard labor

Not a good photograph but it gives some idea of the area previously covered by clinker and cinders that the guys have to clean out each week.

Work has progressed in several areas on #938

Ben did a great job on cleaning off the pipework under the cab (and incidentally finding and removing some old bird’s nests that lay above and behind them).

I spent much of the day wire brushing and needle chipping the firebox crown.  It is a pretty filthy job but rewarding when you actually get it to the stage where it can be primed.

The long and tedious job of needle chipping the tender frames continued.  One side done and the other well under way.

More hard work on the tender frames

Phil cleaned off much of the boiler barrel and also moved forward with needle chipping the tender.  We had considered trying to uncover and measure the logos and identification on the tender as a basis for making stencils.  However, it is far from clear how much the side logos were original or part of work done in Texas.  We therefore decided that it will be more effective to work from photographs.  The paint was carefully removed to see if anything unusual showed up.  And it certainly did!.

Phil had carefully removed paint on the back of the tender and determined that the pattern agreed closely with photographs with the capacity at top and the locomotive number below.  He had also picked out the outline of the three large numerals 938.  However, as he worked into the body of the numerals we got a surprise.  What we had assumed was an 8 clearly had no central bar and is very definitely not an 8 but a 0.  So our tender was not originally from 938 but 930.

Not what we expected

Tom is checking the boiler number against ALCO records to confirm that the loco is 938 but stampings on various motion parts seem to indicate that it is.  So it looks as if the tender was swapped late in life.  The good photograph that we have of the locomotive clearly shows a distinctive pattern of repairs and a large bulge in the side identifying what we now know to be the #930 tender.  However, this is a very late photograph.  So now we have an interesting research project on what happened to 930 and when.  Was this just a last minute swap when 938 was tidied up for the end of steam display or did she run with this tender in later years?

So another week of steady progress. 

Nigel