Paul, We continue to enjoy your hard work and great progress. It will be a great pleasure to see the cabooses fully restored to their original glory, car bodies restored, windows open to light and prototypical paint schemes. Thank you for your dedication and contributions to preserving part of our history. We look forward to much more. Hope this helps. Thanks! Mark
Guys, thanks for the kind words, it helps me feel like my efforts are not in vain or just frivolous. I still love this project and get excited when progress is made. I am determined to restore this girl with great detail in the original as delivered appearance. We pulled out the coonskin logo this morning and it looks pretty good. Would have been nice to pull it on the same side as the "ship it" logo but we just have to take the logos where the present themselves the best. Got a bit too hot to pull the other painted details out today but we will catch them on another cool morning. Fun stuff !
Transferring the graphics to paper, from here we will transfer them to cardstock and cut out the letters and have a stencil we can use to transfer the graphics back to the caboose after red paint, and then we can hand paint the logos back on. I'm going to see if some of the sign companies can transfer the graphic to 1/8th inch Plexiglas and cut them out with a lazer cutter so we can build a permanent stencil that can be used to spray paint the logos back on just like the Frisco did. Looking forward to September and October to make some more progress with some sandblasting, primering, and painting !
I agree Ken, the green is depressing and I am tired of seeing green on this caboose ! I am glad we were able to pull the logos out and they look great even with a green background. That green will disappear by the end of October ! Most all the structural and rust repair is done so now its time to focus on appearance and re assembly.
Very interesting Roger, she resembles 1201 and 1249. That makes 3, could there be more? Not likely considering there are only a dozen or so that I have not seen images of. But it is possible. I wonder if 1201 and 1268 had the interior changed up like 1249 did.
Actually 4, 1201, 1243, 1249 & 1268, so far. BTW, on the 1291 on the lower left hand side there is some lettering, looks like a repaint date. Is it 01-84? Roger
Roger the repaint date was 4-84 and it also says that "imron" paint was used. The paint still looks pretty darn good for 31 years old. The imron paint helped preserve this caboose, there is not any pitting on the car body.
Fun to see most of the logos pulled out on one side , we got all of them with exception to "SL-SF" and "1291" but we caught a lucky break and were able to reveal 1288 from the top of caboose 1288. With that we were able to get 3 of the 4 needed numbers for 1291, and we hand drew the 9. Also hand drew the SL-SF. Now we have a full set of hand made stencils to the exact original size. I think I will have a sign company come out and capture the logos in real size and store them on a pdf file so they could be used to make some computer produced decals or some cardstock stencils. I will upload the file when it gets made, that way if anyone ever needs a set, they will be available without all the legwork. Looking forward to September and October, with the oilfield equipment business coming to an abrupt halt we will be free to work on the caboose steadily for those two months. More pics to come, I'm pretty excited.
The rust under the cupola, first image shows all the bad metal cut away neatly. Second image shows welding the new panel in place. Third panel shows it installed and primed. This was a very slow process, all the cuts in the body were made by hand with a small air powered cut off saw. Replacement panel was cut from a large sheet of steel. Custom cutting and fitting of the part took two men 2 full work days. We have been working steadily on the caboose since October 2, and will stay on it at least through the end of November. So close to being ready for sandblasting, just have to replace the other copula lower section. In the very near future we will have a building erected to house the caboose for all the finishing work, and she will go back on her trucks so we can roll her in and out of the building. Fun stuff for sure !
Interior panel replacement shown in these pics. You are looking at the B end of the caboose, right side of the end door. this is one of quite a few replacement panels installed in order to replace rusted out or severely damaged areas. First pic shows damaged panel removed exposing the interior insulation, second image shows new hand fitted panel tack welded in place. After the last image the full seam was welded and ground smooth. This is a milestone for the project as it was the very last of many steel panels that needed replaced...so all the metal work is done. You will not find a dent, wrinkle, or rust on 1291 ! We are meeting with sandblasting companies in the morning to discuss stripping and painting the caboose. Big changes coming soon. I am pretty excited.
We are still taking bids from sandblasters/painters, we talked to Russell Crosby who runs the TSU (Tulsa Sapulpa Union Rwy) , and their preferred contractor for painting will be giving us a bid as well, hopefully we will have something ironed out in the near future. Below are some pics where we repaired the collision damage on the coupler pockets on 1291, she was hit pretty hard, rolling back 3 edges of the coupler pockets. We cut the damaged paerts out and welded in new metal, and ground all the seams smooth. We are very pleased with the result. The metal man on this job was Jimbo, a really good friend of mine since we were both small boys in school together.
Looks like first class work, cabooses use to really take a beating, from slack action to helper service. Sometimes the side pocket damage comes from, by-pass couplers. That is where the drawbar housings, miss a coupling, they by-pass each other on opposite sides forcing the drawbars apart. Sometimes it spreads the gage, I have seen it put a kink in the track and resemble a small sun kink or track buckle. Generally it breaks off, the glad hand, off the train air. I seen, the helpers, shove off cabooses, on a curve or through a crossover, just lifts it up and sets it off on the ground. The air pop's, good news is it dosen't do too much damage.
