Southern Pacific 9010
Short Hood Reconstruction
Page 3

-- Update March 12, 2010 --
The two front number doors doors have been fabricated and work progresses on their attachment to the number boxes.   Once this was finished, the only thing remaining is to cut out the door opening that will receive the glass.
 
The one remaining fabrication item was the installation of the nose top vents that we received from Germany and Austria through the hard work of our crew members Richard Oed and Gerold Eckl.   

Bob Zenk came down from Seattle for a week and once again, dug right into the finishing process for the nose.  He is an artist with body filler and sand paper and his help is greatly appreciated.  We painted the inside of the nose doors and the number boxes with Suede Gray.  We had previously pulled  a piece out of the cab and found that "Suede Gray" is an almost perfect match for Krauss Maffei's "Sweden Gray".

A coat of epoxy primer was then applied to all the exterior nose surfaces plus the various light housing doors.  After the primer set up, a preliminary coat of red was sprayed on the light housing doors and on some nose surfaces to insure that everything gets covered in the final coats.  The finished number boxes (minus the doors) were installed as were the class light assemblies and they were then wired.  By the way, the red appears orange in some photos due to the sodium vapor lights in the shop.  Photo #3 is closest to the true color.


-- Update September 26, 2012 --
The time has finally come.  The cab exterior is painted, the front part of the interior is painted and the front windows are in.  We moved the nose out into the sun to blow off the dust and set it back in the shop on blocks so we could put paper under it.  Bob Zenk came down from Seattle to lend his expertise with the preparation work for which I am extremely grateful and when he was done, we shot the entire nose with 2 coats of scarlet.  I also shot the number board doors which will be sent out for glass.

Next came masking for the "wings" and a couple of coats of Dark Lark Gray.  That sounds very simple but the masking and surface preparation took nearly 10 hours of Bob's valuable time.  All I had to do was shoot the paint.  The photos say that he took great pleasure in revealing the finished product and I took great pleasure in watching the nose come out of its wrapping.



And then came the time to put the new nose on the 9010 .    The poor locomotive had been without a real nose since 1968 so this was a pretty big deal.  Bob and Denny guided the fork lift with me driving and held onto our precious cargo.  We rigged the lift with straps and after some adjustment due to the nose being much heavier in front than back, Rich Anderson on the crane did a great job of following the signals of Steve Barkari who was guiding the lift.   Bob and I held the tag lines and then settled the nose into its new home with no problem.  And after a few bolts were installed in the base mounting, Bob and I took a moment to congratulate each other on surviving the operation.

We took the opportunity to grab a 'family photo' of the crew who were primarily responsible for the work on the nose and the cab which culminated in today's success.   Left to right we have, Gerry Feeney, Rich Anderson, yours truly, Jon Vlasak, Bob Zenk and Dennis Mann.   Unfortunately our ace machinist Bill Stimmerman was out of town and Dan Furtado was unable to be there for the lift.

The photographers in the crowd asked that the 9010 be taken west out of the yard and after 5 or 6 seconds of deliberation, the crew agreed.  There were a few million pixels used up during this little outing.  No sooner had the 9010 been put back in the shop than we found Bob and Dan Furtado hard at work installing the rubber gasket between the cab and the nose.  You just can't keep a good team down.

-- Update April 12, 2013 --
One of the last items of business on the nose was the application of the new number box doors.  We discovered that the rubber bumpers that keeps the nose doors from hitting the headlights also keep the number box doors from striking the hood.  Was that an accident of design or intentional?