Illinois Railway Museum Blog

On Saturday March 19th, our plan for the day was to remove the radiator hatch from IT 1605 and replace a bad core. Our day started a little after 9:00am with Jeron G getting the CE 15 running as I started clearing a work area on the North aisle of the shop by the door and clearing some material stored by the pallet with the new core. We were joined by Mark S, Lee E, Don P, and later in the day Matt O joined in. We moved the string of locos out of the shop working with the track department who was also using the Forklift and prepping machines for their days work.

Photo by Mark Sanborn: Ready to pull the hatch.

Photo by Mark Sanborn: Jeron guiding the lift and removal.

Sometimes, like this, it is nice having a big Cat forklift that can lift a lot and has forks that can go some 20 feet high. Although it can be too large for some uses, this wasn't one of them. We had the hatch off in a few minutes and Mark and Jeron began taking some steel plates the edges of the radiator cores. We had the right bank of cores out within a half hour after that. After we moved them to the work area in the shop, it took a little under two hours to unbolt the cores, chase the threads and clean all the bolts, make a slight modification to the headers on the new core, and bolt it all together with new gaskets. We took a break for lunch before placing the cores back into the loco.

Photo: The Cat foklift and hatch set aside.

Photo: Ready to lift the bank of radiators out.

After lunch, we moved the new bank back to the west end of the shop outside and lifted them back into the locomotive. Just a few slight adjustments were needed to line up everything. The air deflectors were screwed back into place, modifying a couple of them where the new core was sitting. The hatch was placed back on and bolted down. Lee and Don even had time to start inspecting the main and aux gens, and fuel pump motor. We cleaned up tools and supplies, put the locos away, and were done by 6:00pm.

Our next job over the next week or two will be to bolt all the water pipes back on, finish the inspection, and fill here with water and test everything out.

Photo by Mark Sanborn: the right bank of cores removed.

Photo by Mark Sanborn: the new double core bolted with the old single.

Photo by Mark Sanborn: the new bank installed in the locomotive.

Photo by Mark Sanborn: the hatch being placed back onto the locomotive.