07/24/2004
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Work continued on the frame side doors and the pilots.  Front pilot work included needle gunning, removal of the last vestiges of the ditch lights, welding up a few holes from past appurtenances and general cleaning.  Three of the handrail stantions had been broken and welded and were in pretty sad shape.  This is a result of having the locomotive connected to another locomotive with the walkway safety chains connected.  When the locomotives are cut apart, someone forgets to disconnect the chains and the handrail stantions are bent outward until the chains break.  I had a supply of stantions acquired from LMC may years ago and decided to replace 3 of the 4 in front.  We also replaced 3 bent stantions on the fireman's side and 1 on the back end.  All of this work was leading to the primering of the end sheets so they can be painted in the correct Black Widow scheme.  While cleaning the rear end sheet, I found 2 more of the 3946 stencils.  It occurred to me that they would have been put there when the locomotive was run through the GRIP program in 1977.  In that rebuilding, the locomotive was sandblasted and given a fresh coat of gray and scarlet in addition to all of the mechanical and electrical work that was done.  During the rebuilding process, the locomotive was effectively without a number and was assigned its new number 4423 when the job was complete.  I suspect that the stenciled numbers were there for record keeping purposes during the rebuilding process.

Saturday saw the usual mad dash to get everything masked and prepared for paint.  I shot both ends and the fireman's side frame with primer and after a suitable time, shot silver on both ends.  Ultimately, the silver will only be a band at the top of the sheet but since I have to mix the paint in specific proportions, some excess metal got painted.  This was another productive week.