Sunday Report

Frank writes…

Sunday was a productive day working on a couple of smaller projects.

One project was fixing the thermostat for the 18, which Steven removed last weekend. As seen above, Richard tackled the project immediately - as I always tell him, the hazard of knowing what he's doing is that bozos like me will keep roping him into helping with stuff like this! This thermostat is a Consolidated Car Heating bimetal design. I should have taken more photos - the intricacies of the device were pretty interesting - but alas, I did not. It turned out that the contacts were quite dirty and were not making good electrical contact, so after disassembly and cleaning, it was back in operation. Testing was accomplished by putting the thermostat in the refrigerator and then taking it out and warming it gently with a heat gun on low. We ended up taking it over to the 18, wiring it back in, and turning the heat switch on. As intended, the heat did not actually turn on, given that it was about 80 degrees. Success! Thank you, Richard!

Another project for me was helping Steve, who is hard at work on the Kansas City PCC, by tracing the lettering off the car. This meant tracing the "swoops" at both ends of the "spitballs" as well as tracing the car numbers. I also sprayed primer on the hardware for the 460's third rail beams - next time I'll cover that with gloss black - and helped with a couple other small things.

The siding replacement on Barn 7 means that we're temporarily afforded the best view in probably 40 years of the north side of CSL F-305 and E-223.

And I needed to go over to the Steam Shop for an errand, so why not see what they're up to over there? Above is Illinois Central Mogul 3719, which is undergoing a cosmetic restoration.

You'll notice that the engine has jacketing applied to it, which looks terrific! That will really make a big difference in its appearance. Kudos to the Steam Team for their work on this locomotive.

And here's the 428, which has been the subject of recent tender restoration work as well as machining on newly fabricated driving boxes.