More from Sunday

Frank writes...

As mentioned in the previous post, I was out at the museum on Sunday helping my father out with work on the 451. When I first arrived, I saw Mark and the crane crew getting ready to lift the Ingersoll-Rand boxcab:

It's hard to believe that this engine has spent more than 40% of its 93-year existence on those Rock Island shop trucks, but as of yesterday it's back on its own trucks, complete with newly rebuilt wheels. The crane guys did a great job of fitting the "new to us" crane boom acquired last year onto the CGW/C&NW wrecker so that it could be used to lift the boxcab for this truck swap.

I spent the day working on a few different projects, most of them fairly quick jobs of one sort or another. One of the first things to do was put display signs on the 453 and the 18. The former was, of course, just acquired last year and didn't have any signage, while the 18 will be on public display for the first time at IRM when we open (to members only) this coming weekend. These are just laminated paper signs and will eventually be replaced by the big metal version.

I also helped my father with routing a roof cable through the (currently) east end vestibule attic and onto the roof of the 451. Here he is up on the roof boards. Fortunately it wasn't too terribly hot, only about 80 degrees. After this we also reinstalled all of the equipment covers under the car and stowed its various extension cords so that the car can be moved.

After some a little bit of time going through spare parts, I was also able to make progress on the 451's air compressor. My father helped locate the correct access door to go on the side of the pump and then it was time to make up gaskets, both for that little door and for the larger top cover. Many thanks to Richard for locating the gasket material and helping to cut and install these gaskets. By the end of the day, both covers were in place. The pump is now ready to fill with oil and install on the car, not necessarily in that order.

I wandered up to the depot at the end of the day to see the four-car train of 4000s, though I didn't get any photos different from what my father posted. But the depot itself is looking good, with new board-and-batten siding on the east end replacing the windows that have now been removed. This certainly gives the building a very different look than it has had for its 50-odd years at IRM!

And then this unusual pair went by. I think they were wyeing the Ingersoll-Rand boxcab, on its newly-rebuilt trucks of course. Later on I ran into Dave Conrad and he mentioned some interesting facts about the locomotive. Notably, he pointed out that it was not built with the spoked wheels it has now. When it was new on the Lackawanna, it had solid wheels and only acquired spoked wheels later - quite possibly after it was sold back to Ingersoll-Rand to use as a shop switcher. He is going to be working on replacing some rusted steel along the bottom of the engine's side sheets, which fortunately is about the only body work the engine needs. He said he'd be using a saw that last saw use in cutting out rusted side sheets from the Electroliner way back in the early 1980s!