1 : 1 scale modeling

[e-paw]

Evening all. Last Saturday was our first trip back to the museum since the government shutdown ..We didn't accomplish much work ( there was only two of us ), but, it was more of a day to get our heads straight and come up with a plan about what projects to do with the time that we still have. This last shutdown cost us five weeks of time that we normally use for heavy maintenance. Operating season starts in less then two months so we have to use our time wisely. Before the shutdown started the "B" was left outside where it is currently covered with snow. We will most likely not touch it until the other two units have started pulling excursions again.

                     664 is in generally good overall shape, the rear truck was prepped to be swapped out with one that is currently under the nickel plate geep #514. And I might add that the GP9 is nearly complete and should be pulling trains again this upcoming season.   This truck swap will get the parks department stuff and the privately owned stuff under the right equipment again. This job will be done during the week while I am at work   so I will miss all the fun.  Just before the doors were locked we started on replacing the engine room floor in 664. You can see the new sheet metal welded into place here. 
     
It will latter be covered with a layer of aluminum with the EMC or EMD logo on it. If you look back in this thread I'm sure you will find a pic or two of it. In this shot you can see a section where the floor has been cut away and not replaced yet. The fuel fill line is visible along with some of the conduit for traction motor cables.
      This job should be complete in about two weeks. We want it finished before there is another threat of a new shutdown. I will remove the governor connector next week to rebuild at home. I had talked about this earlier in this thread.
     

  663 has two big problems. The first one is that oil is getting past the rings in one or more of the cylinders towards the front of the block. Tri-state ( the owner of this engine, we just lease it ) will have some one come up to test the engine to determine where the problem is. Then the offending power assemblies will be replaced. The second problem is that the oil that is getting past the cylinder rings is getting into the exhaust , going through the mufflers, out the stacks, and pooling the top of the engine. This is a fire hazard, something we do not need. 
   
To fix this we will have to remove the top hatch and mufflers, mop it all up, and replace everything that we remove. We did this a few years ago on 664, so we are prows at it now. We spent a decent part of the day prepping for this work.