D&RGW 223 Featured in Charles Trentleman's blog

Charles Trentleman, recently retired from the staff of the Ogden Standard-Examiner, has begun writing a blog of his own, called "The Retired Rambler" (after his weekly column he wrote for the nespaper, "The Wasatch Rambler". You can check it out here: http://charlestrentelman.blogspot.com/

Mr. Trentleman has written many articles about the Union Station, Utah State Railroad Museum and the 223 project (which was featured in his blog post Rebuilding History One Bolt at a Time) for the newspaper, and now as a regular volunteer for the museum, is covering the everyday aspects of life in the Junction City's station.

Utah State Railroad Museum - update on security

The ball is rolling now, folks. Recently an agreement between the Union Station Foundation (operators of the USRRM) and Scott Pitman was signed, making Scott the contractor for large restoration projects such as rebuilding the Saltair open cars, or repainting the 1969 Golden Spike Centennial display car in the museum's collection. Scott has extensive experience restoring vintage automobiles, and as a fireman at Golden Spike National Historic Site. One of his first projects was to fix the fence surrounding the Eccles Rail Center. That's right, after months of debate and meetings money was set aside to fix the gaps in the fence to prevent people from sneaking in from the back. The front will be left open, but since it faces Wall Avenue and is well lighted it was decided to leave it alone for the time being.

The good news about this is that there have been no more cases of new broken windows for the past few months! The Golden Spike Chapter finished boarding over the already broken ones, and Scott is currently collecting money to purchase new glass to replace the damaged panes.

To combat the problem of visitors climbing on roofs and walkways and leaving every imaginable unsecured hatch open, Lee Witten produced signs that are attached to the grab irons of the locomotives with u-bolts, which are then locked on the ends to prevent people from just unscrewing them. As far as we've observed these have been effective in keeping most people off of the equipment, although as in any public operation, there are always those who will disobey a sign just for the heck of it...

One of the signs installed on the 833. The cab has been boarded shut, much to the dismay of the professional photographers and tourists (they can't get any hanging-out-the-window shots, but it's a necessary sacrfice). The damaged storm wall is still under repair.

In other news, two separate projects are underway. One, artist Tom Hudson is preparing murals in the Art Deco style to decorate the recently remodeled Browning Theatre in the old Postal Terminal building. The murals will depict UP 833's driving wheels on the storage doors under the stage, and the original GM "Train of Tomorrow" in the archways along the walls, a nod to the Moon Glow, which is in the museum's collection and is the last car from the trainset.
These are the arches so far - he's still working on the ToT artwork.

 The images of the 833 installed under the stage:

 And here's an extra image that is stored inside the restoration shop for the time being. These are combinations of photographs, 3-D renderings and digital painting. Tom worked as a roller coaster designer for many years, designing famous rides in Las Vegas and elsewhere.

Another volunteer is painting replica numberboards for the 5371 in the Rio Grande's "Railroad Roman" font used on the 5371 from the 90s until they were stolen in 2006. As such, both boards have been removed, leaving an interesting view that most people don't see: the bulbs that illuminate them.

Friends of the R&LHS

This year the Golden Spike Chapter/223 Project is listed on the Friends of the Railway & Locomotive Historical Society fundraiser, right alongside the Pacific Coast Chapter (archives), Southern California Chapter (Outer Harbor Terminal #2), and Mid South Chapter (Leeds Depot Exhibit). If you are an R&LHS member, please contribute to any number of these great projects and help the R&LHS accomplish its goal in preserving railroad history.

More information about each project can be found here: Friends of the R&LHS So far (as of January 2nd) eight people have donated to the Golden Spike Chapter, which will be very helpful as we move on to some harder and (very) expensive steps in the restoration process, including coating the tender interior and rebuilding the boiler.

As a side note, Happy New Year everybody, and thanks for your support!

223 Update - December 15 2012

The tender is pretty much done, and just awaits painting and interior coating which will be done by contractors. This time it's final. As such, work has been focused on the locomotive.

Several potential boiler contractors have been contacted, among which are Wasatch Railway Contractors in Cheyenne (who has been helpful to the museum in the past) and an Amish fellow who does traction engines but has recently branched out into locomotive boilers. The final pick will be announced when the decision is reached.

The Johnson Bar was primed and reassembled, and since the number 1 request our group gets is for detail pictures, here are some:

 

 

And finally, the uncoupling bar has been installed on the pilot, which just needs paint to make it complete.

Frontrunner South public opening

December 8th was the public opening of Frontrunner South, the extension of Utah's commuter rail system from Salt Lake City to Provo. The route is interesting in that it follows the old D&RGW main line nearly the entire way, and offers glimpses of portions that aren't normally seen by the public, such as the Jordan Narrows (interestingly, the Narrows was originally shared by the D&RGW with the Salt Lake & Utah, the "original" Frontrunner South that ran all the way to Payson). Rides were offered for free from 10 am to 10 pm.

The Golden Spike Chapter took the oppurtunity for a field trip and rode Frontrunner from Ogden to Salt Lake, and from there changed to one of the free trans to Provo. Utah County appeared to be quite excited for the event, as lines in Provo stretched the whole length of the platform and across the parking lot despite the freezing temperatures and light snow. Here are some pictures at the newly constructed Provo Station:

 

223 updates: November 2012

So the mystery is closer to solving. Why won't the 223's wheels turn? It was originally thought that it was because of the bent main rod on the fireman's side, but the pins were pulled and the rod disconnected from the wheels...and they still won't turn. So that rules that possiblity out - there's something deeper that's keeping the axles locked. What it is we don't know yet.

An attempt was made to roll the 223, with the rod disconnected, to remove the rods completely, and nothing happened with the car boot -  other than actually lifting the pony truck from the rail. A pickup was chained to the drawbar pin...and likewise nothing happened. So this is going to be harder than we thought.

On November 24 quite a bit of work was accomplished. In the past few months the piping, brake cylinders and johnson bar were removed, leaving the boiler looking very bare. Maynard reported in the last chapter newsletter that "As fill in for the winter we are working on many of the engine parts.  Some pipes are being replaced with new pipes.  Parts are being removed and cleaned up either by sand blasting or in the solvent tank.  The engine brake pistons have been removed to be cleaned up and refurbished.  One seems to work well but the other is leaking around the piston seal.  Numerous sheet metal pieces have to be made and holes cut into the metal cab floor pieces for pipes and levers.  Sand blasting of the big parts is being done at a commercial shop.  Since I am the one taking the parts in and back, I can verify that they are heavy."

The pieces were sandblasted, and an exclamation of "That's what you see in real restoration shops!" was jokingly directed towards Maynard:

Then they were primed...

With a break to enlighten a visitor on the Cumbres & Toltec, since that is one of the railroads that's been tossed around as a location for the 223 to run.

The coupler cutoff bar has been completed and chained to the pin. The brackets were made by Bob Wachs, who as noted in the previous post (Chapter News) passed away the next day on November 25. He has left behind a legacy in his work on the 223:

Plus, the main airtank hydro tested. We are deciding if we want to reuse it, or build a new tank and encase it inside the original shell.



With work on the tender wrapping up, as can be seen attention is being focused on the locomotive itself. Maynard wrote about what needs to be done to complete the tender:

 

"Coating the inside of the tender tank is a bigger problem than I expected.  There are numerous materials we could use but there is little data as to how well each would perform.  By the end of the year we should have the air tank renovated and the airline piping done.  We won't put the air tank on the tender until spring when the weather is nice.  We need to roll the tender out of the shop and have a crane lift the tank up and onto the rear of the tender water tank.  Along with this we need to install some steel plates on the bottom of the wooden bolster beam.  We can hopefully do both when we have a crane come to the shop.

 

"We received the pipe (3/8 inch and 1 1/4 inch) we had on order.  Getting the 3/8 inch seamless pipe turned out to take more time than expected and it is expensive. Great Western Supply agreed to give us the pipe and fittings at cost, which sure helped.  We pressurized the big tender air tank and it passed our test at 120 psi. The vertical drain pipe was clogged so we had to cut it out.  Will install a new pipe and weld up the 2 inch square hole we had to cut into the tank.  The 2 inch hole made it easier to clean out the rust particles.  The three rusted tension rods will be replaced next Saturday with new 1 1/8 inch steel rods.  Like the tender water tank we plan to coat the inside of the air tank.  Open for suggestions as to what we should use."

Chapter News!

Some interesting items:

First off, Frontrunner South opens December 10th, which is exciting for many because it connects Utah Valley with the rest of the Wasatch Front's rail network, and one can take the train all the way from Provo to Ogden. Great news, even though the interurban network used to run from Preston, Idaho all the way south to Payson...Frontrunner isn't anything new, but it is definately a welcome addition to the rapid growth of Northern Utah.

The chapter hosted an open house during the two visits from Union Pacific 844 in September. Because the 844 pulled into the museum tracks forwards rathern than backing in as usual, it was positioned directly in front of the shop, which attracted many people to see the work on the 223.

Jay Hudson, the man responsible for the restroom rennovation, has kept busy interviewing our current restoration crew, and has written short biographies that were added to the chapter website today - interesting stuff if you want to know more about the people behind the 223 project. The updates can bee seen here: Volunteer Biographies

On a more somber note, we are sorry to hear that Bob Wachs passed away Sunday, November 25th, of pancreatic cancer. Bob was the blacksmith of the project, and rode Frontrunner every Saturday from Murray to help out. His eagerness and smile will be missed.

Bob (with the hammer) making a bracket for the coupler cutoff bar.