We are keeping busy here at the roundhouse, aside from our usual maintenance on our locomotives and rolling stock that see daily service, a lot of work has been performed on the Detroit and Lima Northern Baldwin 4-4-0 No. 7. The tender tank has been sandblasted inside and out, coated, painted, and stenciled by hand. The boiler has recieved insulation and the jacket is being test fitted before paint. Also pictured below is steel channel being drilled for the 7's new riveted tender frame. The tender trucks have been dissasembled, cleaned and some parts replaced, the re-assembly process will begin as soon as the new bolster beams are completed. Our Mason needed a bit of attention this winter. The lead axle was dropped to allow for the driving box hub liners to be replaced.


No. 7's Tender Tank Before


No. 7's Tender Tank After


Test fitting the jacket on the 7's boiler, all of the insulation has been installed.


# 7's tender trucks


New bolster Beam being drilled




Driving box being removed from the our Mason Bogie C&H Mining Co. No. 3

Beautiful! Just beautiful!

Where did the shop truck with outside counterweights and a geared axle that the painted tender is sitting on come from?

Ted Krumreich

Ted,

It's been brought up before, the truck frame is homemade, and I believe the wheels came from a scrapped GE 45 ton locomotive. It was made as a shop truck.

What do you use for boiler lagging?

Let me say she's turning out to be a beauty, can hardly wait for the photos of the finished product. . .

http://www.michiganrailroads.com/RRHX/i ... ds/D&LNNo7[InsideTrack].jpg

Don't you wish this one was around to keep No. 7 company?

http://www.michiganrailroads.com/RRHX/i ... s/D&LNNo67[WilliamPletzCollection-InsideTrack].jpg

The source of the two photos:

http://www.michiganrailroads.com/RRHX/S ... ePart1.htm

http://www.michiganrailroads.com/RRHX/S ... ePart2.htm

IIG Thermo-Gold Calcium Silicate

The IIG Thermo Gold is great stuff in that it mimics the old asbestos bindered block insulation. However, it is cost prohibitively expensive selling for around $12-$14 per square foot. Also it's insulating characteristics fall very short of other modern commercial products.

Case in point, the IIG MinWool-1200® Industrial Board ( http://www.iig-llc.com/pdfs/IIG402.pdf ) provides EXCEPTIONAL insulating properties at a cost of about $2 per square foot. I have applied the 8lb version of it with great results, out performing the thermo gold actually. The top of the boiler is insulated with the Thermo gold board from about 10:30-1:30 for the purpose of protecting against the jacket squashing down when kneeling on it ( this proved to be unnecessary when using proper gage jacket material), the balance of the boiler being insulated with MinWool.

At the boundary point between the two the surface temp of the jacket jumped approximately 30-40 degrees ( depending on the day ). This is right out of the shop prior to having to account for any interference regarding heat from sun. The temp of the jacket in the MinWool area rests about 140 degrees, Thermo gold 170 - 180. The thermo gold area of the boiler is difficult to wash as the "grime" really bakes on coupled with the rapid nature in which water/soap evaporates.....not to mention the loss in heat from the boiler, keep in mind that every exiting BTU must be replaced....

Either is better than houshold insulation used by just a few tourist roads. Household insulation has whatever "R" value in it's uncompressed state, take it down to 2" and that drops to nominally an "R" value of 4( you have successfully eliminated the air space engineered into the product) , put it through several thermal cycles which cause the binders to break down and that decreases even further. The same locomotive I spoke of having rejacketed and insulated was insulated with still seemingly intact household insulation, it was utterly impossible to wash due to the temp the jacketing consistently stayed at.

Cheers, Jason

WOW! @_@

Wonderful work that the GVRR has done with D&LN 7's tender. I remember seeing that always out near the old back shop rotting away. Looks like it came out fresh like new again. At one point, there was a around old round DTI logo on it late in it's career. That could be the right font, it was so faded in recent years. Love to #7 in action soon when it's all competed again. ^_^

Great looking work, Matt! Keep it up. By the way, thanks for the help last weekend from everyone. It was appreciated.....mld

The tank looks great! Do my eyes decieve me, or is it painted "Baldwin green?" If so, it would be interesting to know the details of the color matching. There are quite a few Baldwin's out there that green would be appropriate for.

TIA,

Rob

I have a few more pictures from inside the Roundhouse.



A speeder crane makes an easy way to grab the Torch Lake driving boxes from down in the drop pit.




While the first set of drivers were dropped, it looked like the Torch Lake was floating. What you can't see is the support beam on the front end spanning the gauge.




With the axle out of the way, you can easily see how a Mason Bogie gets its steam to the cylinders and exhausts to the smokebox.
Larger view






A keen eye will notice the lack of holes in the back head boiler jacket to access the four crown sheet washout plugs.
Access to the crown sheet was unnecessary when the #7 was cosmetically restored for static museum display.
This will be rectified for operation.
Also note the green frame.

Rob,

The 7 was originally specified to have 2 shades of olive and gold. The hunt for the correct shades of olive went across the U.S. I placed a call to the fine folks and CSRM for information on the paint and finish style. In addition to the paint and finish style information they also provided us with a sample of baldwin olive from the sand-dome of V & T #27 in a jpeg format. I was also put in touch with Jim Wilke who has been a wealth of information on Baldwin paint styles. With the paint sample we spent some time in front of the computer and compared diffent colors from the Munsell books. After settling on the shade of olive we had some paint mixed to see how it reacted in various types and levels of light. Then more comparison and debate. Finally it was time to have paint mixed and applied. The benefit is there all the painters at Baldwin mixed their own paint so no two shaed were necessailly alike. I am really appreciative to the folks at CSRM as well as to Jim Wilke for their help thus far.




Jason,

I am sorry to say but it seems like someone has taken you to the cleaners when you purchased the Thermo Gold. We only paid around $3.00 sq/ft for the insulation we purchased. It is the same product we have used on our other locomotives with great success. It may not be the best product on the market but we have been happy with the results we have had.

I would like to say thank you to everyone for their positive comments. The project is an interesting one and we will all be glad when & is in service again.

Dave Sutter

While looking around for info on the Ford Museum railroad operation, I came across this bit, with a variety of photos about the line, including some in the house with that lovely 4-4-0. Of course, the fellows in Dearborn have gotten some work done on her since. . .

http://www.trainweb.org/chris/ford.html

If the number of photos available is any indication, a lot of people are taken with the Allegheny, No. 1604. I know it's a fantasy, but how I would love to see this one run; better still, this one and the 1601, one fore, the other aft, on a coal drag up the mountain between Hinton and Alleghany, Va., as it used to be:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/rafapf/5620127011/

Not too closely connected with the museum, it's still interesting to find that a lot of those concrete arches for the DT&I electrification project are still around.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/thomas-merton/4839918886/

A nice shot of the Mason, Torch Lake:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/thomas-merton/3825703888/

Finally found what I was looking for--an aerial shot of the museum. What stands out is how closely this resembles Walt Disney's original concept for Disneyland as an educational place surrounded by a railroad--but on a larger scale than what Disney was able to do.

http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&q=hen ... a=N&tab=il

I also notice that the passenger cars used are like those of a park train (like an open trolley); is this for the same reasons they are used in parks?

Anyway, I again compliment you on the work in that roundhouse. . .

I think I recall that they're still around because it was cheaper to leave them standing than to tear them down because of all the reinforced concrete.