Project 2472 comes to San Jose

The photo on the right is Locomotive 2472 pulling 7 or 8 Caltrain cars into San Jose's Diridon (Cahill) station. You can see part of the Shark Tank (Compaq sports area) on the right side of the picture.

The train carried around 500 passengers as a fund-raiser for the GGRM. Riders said that every intersection was packed with people waving and taking pictures as they rolled down the peninsula. It also attracted a crowd of about 100 people here at the station.

I worked for about 6 hours one day on this locomotive. Dave (taking wheel bearing temperatures in the photo to the right) has been working most weekends for 3 years on this project. The wheel bearings were barely warm.

I took a couple of photos of the gauges (below) - I have only the slightest idea of what some of them are for.

But, Dave tells me they are (from left to right across the top of both photos):
Feed Water Pump Gauge, Steam Heat Pressure Gauge, Boiler Pressure Gauge, Air Brake Pressure Gauge. The Engineer stands on the left and the Fireman stands on the right, so the big gauge on the left side is another Boiler Pressure Gauge for the Engineer.