This is a great site but is there any more forums or websites out there that deal with locomotive restoration, primiraly diesels?

This one 5 years ago, before the foam quotient became overwhelming.

dave

I can't think of any forums dealing with diesels on a national level, but there are a few museums that have blogs.

Perhaps the most extensive collection with the most operable diesels is at the Illinois Railway Museum. You can check out their blog at: http://www2.irm.org/blogs/categories/1- ... Department . Unfortunately it hasn't been updated in awhile. You might want to check out Youtube for videos of their Diesel Days.

The only museum that I know of dealing mostly with diesels is the Western Pacific Museum at Portola. Their blog deals with general museum news with an occasional mention of diesel restorations. It's at: http://frrs.wordpress.com/ And you might want to check out their collection at http://www.wplives.org

The Museum Of The American Railroad at Dallas/Frisco has a couple of restoration projects on their website. One is a restored F-7 painted in Santa Fe colors at: http://www.museumoftheamericanrailroad. ... fault.aspx . Another exciting project is their restoration of an Alco PA: http://www.museumoftheamericanrailroad. ... LCOPA.aspx

The Orange Empire Railway Museum at http://www.oerm.org has some good info. Their chief diesel guy used to put out a weekly email update, but he's been out of action and I don't know if his replacement, Jeff Williams, still does the same. You might contact the museum and ask. Their main restoration project has been SP 1006, a 1939 SW-1 which has a page at: http://www.oerm.org/collection/southern-pacific/sp-1006

These are the few I know of. I'm sure there are many others. I'm not that familiar with Facebook, but I understand that many museums post info and updates on their projects there.

Charlie

Jeff Williams recently put out a new update. I think it went out to the same email list Dave Althuas uses.

While the SP 1006 project is an ongoing, long-term project, the Diesel team has just started a new restoration on a much tighter schedule. By November of this year, OERM should have another operable diesel in its as-delivered appearance. I'd say more, but I don't really feel it is my place to announce the project here. The news is in the next Gazette I just sent to the printers.

San Diego Electric Railway PCC 508 has also just been repainted. It looks amazing. Lettering will follow, while work continues on the interior.

While perhaps not rail related there's a good steam forum over at http://www.smokstak.com/.

The Pacific Locomotive Assn/Niles Canyon Railroad has a web site with a feature that goes into great detail of the restoration of their Western Pacific F7. I found it extremely interesting and informative.

http://www.trainweb.org/wp918d/

I've seen similar pages from the group describing the restoration of their SP passenger Geep and a SP SD9. All good stuff, very informative.

While on the topic of the PLA, by far one of the most inspiring diesel restoration websites out there is one Howard Wise has maintained on the ongoing work to restore Southern Pacific Krauss Maffei 9010. http://sp9010.ncry.org/