Southern Pacific
9010
Short Hood Reconstruction
Page 3
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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.
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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.
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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?
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