In service at Eddystone or a modern Steamtown view?

http://cgi.ebay.com/3723ND-RAILROAD-PHO ... otohosting

An old "back-in-the-day" shot. Nice pic.

So how is her restoration progressing at steamtown, any progress updates?

A lot is happening with this little 0-6-0 in the past month. Just last week, the cistern of the tender was removed from the frame of the tender. The interior of this was sandblasted for repairs, and will be coated with a preservative before the coal bunker is re-installed. Also since July, the mudring, wrapper sheet and brand new combustion chamber have been riveted together, with the caulking of the rivet heads taking place the last couple of weeks. The staybolts and flexibolts were installed last year, and will be beaded down or capped as the other work progresses. Radial stays will be installed connecting the crown sheet with the wrapper sheet of the firebox soon.

The frame is being straightened. Her six drive boxes will be reworked to accept the repaired drive wheel sets. Brand new binders, shoes and wedges were produced in the shop last fall in preparation for the drive boxes to fit in the frame. Many pieces have been sitting for 5 years waiting for all this heavy work to be done before she can be reassembled.

This is a total rebuild, perhaps more than she has ever gone through since her "birth" in 1929. She will turn 80 next year. She has seen around 50 years of use in all that time, and will probably not need this extensive a repair for the next century or so. I'm known to overstate this point, but I believe that with the future care she receives in the hands of the NPS, she will be a reliable runner well into the 21st century.

I was in on the first restoration of the then Jackson Iron & Steel #3, after Jerry Jacobson bought it in the Jackson steel mill in the late '70's. It was essentially enough of a rebuild to get it operational and movable out of the mill. I have very vivid memories of needle-scaling the inside of the firebox and scraping rust from the legs of the tender (I was much smaller then - weren't we all<g>). For awhile the old mill was quite a restoration site. CB&Q 4960 was there briefly for restoration to operate on a briefly existing tourist railroad in SW VA, and Dave Corbett had a car there for restoration, I believe it was Eagle Canon.

If I ever get around to updating my PhotoShop software, I found the group photo from the first steam-up that John Corns took of all of us, end of March, 1981. I just might post that, if John doesn't mind. When the DT&I was going to pull out of Jackson, Jerry arranged to store it at the Mad River-NKP Museum in Bellevue for awhile. He steamed it up there a couple of times, including for the famous meet between 765 and 611 at the roundhouse in '83.