The Belly of the Beast

Yup, you guessed it, this is the front of #1309. the front engine was out front getting its pre-work inspection(I was told it actually looked to be in pretty good shape), so the boiler here was supported on some makeshift support which consisted of a truck with I beams welded to it. all the old tubes had been removed and the new ones were in the yard waiting to be installed. what was holding the operation from going forward, was that the crews were waiting on a special X-ray imaging device that looked for imperfections and micro cracks in the boiler walls. I'm not sure if its unfortunate or awesome, because with all the steam locomotive restorations going on in the county there is apparently a considerable wait in line. But they were hoping to get the machine over in around a month.
Our guide was fairly confident in the boilers integrity, the lead mechanic however was more...reserved