Restoration Journal - Summer 2008 Part 1
Shop Work
Over the summer I took home a few odds and ends that we removed from the locomotive whilst preparing it for the asbestos contractors and I would like to take this opportunity to share some of my techniques.
Number Plate and Northern Type Plate
My first job was to clean up the Numberplate and the remaining Northern Type Plate (the other plate was stolen at some point in the mid 90's.). Both of these were replicas put on the locomotive after it was placed on display. The original Numberplate (original in that CN made it, the real number plate was most likely destroyed in her wreck of 1943) went missing in the early 60's. Sadly CN was too cheap to have another plate made so they simply stuck a piece of plywood on the number plate bracket and painted it to resemble a number plate (complete with Square numerals). It wasn't until 1967 when the locomotive was donated to Guelph that the original squad clued in as to what CN had pulled and went and had a new number plate cast (as well as two Northern Type plates, both of which had gone missing in 1959 and 1960). They managed to borrow the number plate off 6137 from a friend to use as a pattern.
Both plates were very thoroughly sand blasted before being polished with sand paper. (When polishing aluminum, try and keep the metal flooded with Varsol to suspend all the material that gets sanded off. This will keep the part clean and prevent the sand paper from getting loaded with material). I then sanded the edges of the plates on a belt sander as they were very rough from the casting process. They will eventually be painted (red and Imitation Gold from 1-Shot - sign painters lettering enamel #191-L) and probably put on display in the museum if we can come up with something better to put back on the locomotive.
Once sandblasted it became obvious that the story of using 6137's number plate as a pattern was true, in that the middle six was obviously a modification. Back in the 60's and 70's they used to paint the raised surface with
metallic paint so that it actually looked like a real number plate (you can still see some traces above the 7). Looking at the photos of the back, you can really see how much material was eaten by corrosion.
I also took the Air Signal Valve Whistle, and the Gauge Glass Nuts from the water column home to clean them up. When we went to remove the gauge glass nuts, the grommets that held the glass in place had dried out and were rock hard, so sure enough the glass shattered in my face. I used a small chunk of aluminum to knock out the remains of the glass and grommets. When it can time to polish them, I put them on lathe and used fine grit sand paper and polished one half at a time. When it came time to polish the other half, I wrapped the clean end in steel shim so that the jaws on the lathe chuck wouldn't mar the surface. I then polished them by hand with a "green" polishing pad to get a real nice, smooth finish. Eventually when they get reapplied, they should get a coat of clear coat so that they don't turn black again.
I also removed the large try-cocks from the tender vestibule (used to measure the water level in the water tank) which were actually fancy CNR castings. This time, I used a steel wire wheel to good effect. Unfortunately my former employer was a most Grinch-like character and objected to me working on this stuff on my OWN time and shut me down. As you can see, the handle on one broke off. I'm not sure how that will be fixed.
