CERA Visit in 1988

In 1988 the CERA paid a visit to IRM, and we put on a show, as we usually do.  The main line had almost reached Seemann Road, but not quite.  Among other things, Jim Johnson brought out his panoramic camera and staged a picture of the attendees, of whom I believe there were almost 300.  And this picture has recently been hung in the new shop extension (Lean Zero).  It's about six feet wide!

Friday Photos

Another brief report from the car shop, where progress never stops.  At least not for very long. 

I realized that I needed to swap cylinders for the last two beams in the current set.  The cylinders are not all the same; they have different ways of providing the air pipe connection, and so the one I had mounted on #3 needed to be replaced, so the pipe will point in the correct direction.  And I also cleaned up the next cylinder, and checked that it would fit onto the beam correctly.  Anyway, after changes were made, both beams got a coat of primer.

Next time, I'll start on black paint.

Meanwhile, Tim continues to make steady progress on the 1268.  Here we see shiny new paint on the new siding on the south side of the car.

And Gregg is making progress on the east end of the Green Bay car too.

But wait, there will be one more...

One Last Fling...

 ...before the calendar turns over.  Tuesday was another typical day with several projects being worked on in the car shop, as well as other things across the property. 

I was working on third-rail beams again; #3 needed some adjustments to the parts holding the scraper in place, and then got another coat of primer on everything except the bottom surface.  #4 had the notch cut, and then had all of the holes drilled.  It could use a first coat of primer if anyone's looking for things to do.

Work continues on the 306; here Phil is adjusting one of the doors for the closer mechanism.

Gregg and Jack were working on the buffer at the east end.  The old one turned out to be more solid than they expected, but has now been replaced.

Tim continues on the 1268; here he is painting the upper sash.

And more work was done on the 28, but they turned out the lights and went home before I had a chance to see exactly what was happening with the ceiling.

Highlights of 2025

It's time once again to celebrate as we review the accomplishments of 2025.  Additions and corrections are welcome!

• Visitor Center planning and fundraising are now the focus of attention
• Acquisitions: four new diesels and a freight car
• BNSF 9400 (SD70MAC)
• BNSF 6976 (SDP40F)
• Amtrak 231 (F40PH)
• Metra 614 (F40C)
• ICG 767253 (covered hopper)
• New buildings completed: Barn 15, South Storage (bus barn), and Southwest Storage extension
• Improvements to the new Barn 4 extension
• New paving and sidewalks
• Hops Aboard -- an exciting new special event was a success
• Seats for CA&E St. Louis cars -- 460 got new upholstery and seats for 451 are at the shop
• CTA compressor AX 545 was acquired and is being restored
• Many other restorations in progress
• Many new volunteers contributed time and talent -- welcome aboard!

And as always, regular train operations and the usual special events went smoothly and safely, thanks to the expert guidance of the Operating Department and the careful attention of everyone.

Fresh Lettering for AX545

Frank writes...

Sunday was a rainy and foggy day, with volunteers taking down Christmas lights and other displays from the recently ended - and very successful - Happy Holiday Railway 2025 event.

My focus for the day was lettering our air compressor wagon, AX545. This has been painted green by Mike S. but it was my job to letter it.

I'm fairly happy with the result. The most annoying thing was that the lettering paint was thin enough that it will need a second coat, though these photos don't make it as obvious as it is in person. I'm also not entirely happy with how the CTA emblem looks, but this is based off what we traced from the original, so there you go.

Anyway, the wheels are still in primer and there are some parts of the compressor mechanism that haven't been painted, but AX545 is getting close to having the repainting work completed. 

In other news, Will and Jimmy made more progress on NJT 4. It looks like the guys completed wheel #5 (actually the right wheel on the #3 axle) Saturday, as shown in the above photo. They then tackled the penultimate wheel, the right wheel on the #2 axle. This evidently included Jimmy countersinking the torque arm bracket holes, as shown below, for replacement of studs with bolts. By dinnertime, this wheel change had been completed in record time. Seven down, one to go!

In other news, Greg was working on hauling in lights and other displays (you can see some of the HHR "wildlife" in the compressor photos above), after which he and Brian switched CTA 3142 over to the inspection pit for some post-HHR maintenance work. They also put the BRC caboose, which had been spotted at the south end of the Yard 8 connector track, back in the barn before the predicted snow hits this week. And thanks to Brian for helping me retrieve a feed valve and J governor that he is planning to rebuild; the feed valve will go on the 319, while the governor will (I believe) be a working spare.

And at the end of the day, I cleaned up and primed the last significant parts of the spare grid box. These grid box parts have the laudable tendency to magically turn gloss black during the week when I'm not looking, so fingers crossed! But otherwise, I'll spray them black next weekend and that should complete this little side project.

CSL Women's Auxiliary Memento

Our old buddy and well-known band leader Ron Smolen sent me these pictures of a real CSL artifact: a dance card from a ball given by the Women's Auxiliary in 1923.  How many of you remember learning how to fill out a dance card?  ...not that there's anything difficult about it:

This particular lady seems to have spent almost the entire time dancing with Jim.  Hmmm...  And Ron says that he'd never heard of the Robbers' Onestep, but it must have been popular in 1923.  If only we had a time machine! 

Christmas Greetings

Madonna and Child

with St. Louis of Toulouse, St. John the Evangelist,

and Donors

 Davide Ghirlandaio, Italian

1486

On a marble pavilion that opens to the sky, Christ, his Mother, two saints, and two donors form a figurative pyramid, a hallmark of Renaissance composition.  The ethereal appearance of the holy figures makes a contrast with the earthly realism of the donors.

(I wish we could commission something like this for our donors!  :)

And then, holiday greetings from the grandchildren during their visit to Barn 9 back in July!

'Tis the Season

And you're never too old for toy trains...  I hope.  This year it's American Flyer Wide Gauge.  Almost everything here is between 90 and 100 years old.  Except me. :)

Happy Holidays!

Monday Brief

Monday was another busy and productive day in the car shop.  It was also the last day of Happy Holiday Railway, added to the calendar due to popular demand and the cancellation of one of the earlier scheduled days because of bad weather.  But as usual, everyone seemed to be having a good time.

And as usual, I was too busy to take many pictures.  Here we see a test installation of the scraper cylinder on beam #3.  In front, two new pieces of maple for beam #4.  These were later jointed, ripped, and slotted.

The cylinder needs to be cleaned up and painted before final attachment.

Later in the day, paint on the bottom of #3, while contestant #4 is being glued.

The other projects, such as 1268 and 306, continue to make progress.  A test application of a revised formula for the yellow paint on the 28 was pronounced a success.

Work continues on the Green Bay car.  And it was loud.

Gregg and Jack are really accomplishing a lot to be proud of!

Wood Shop Report

Another report on progress in the shop itself from Buzz!

I was surprised with a call that the lift screws we asked Eric to make were completed just a week after we removed the old ones. The new ones look fabulous.

The new nuts made from bronze slugs should wear better.

So on Monday with Tim assisting we put them in.

Tim was the brave soul to run the first wood through.

Finally had the time at the end of the day to finish a project I wanted to do for a couple years. Re-surface and seal the two central wood shop work benches.

It’s an essential clean space to lay out interior sash to be varnished, look at large blueprints, cut upholstery fabric, and other fine work, like eating lunch.

Sleigh Ride

Frank writes...

Sunday was the penultimate day of Happy Holiday Railway 2025, and although this year's event was impacted by both snow and extremely cold temperatures, in the end the whole things was very successful and our visitors seemed to really enjoy themselves. As for us volunteers, the 30-ish temperatures on Sunday meant one thing: it's time for our recent tradition of bringing out the one-truck open sleigh!

Our Veracruz open car, appropriately festooned with battery-powered lights, came out for a few trips at about 4pm. Many thanks to Good Nick and Mikey for working with me to get the car out of the barn (including moving North Shore 749) and operating it. Here, the car sits at Depot Street just after sunset with the president running and Lee and Jimmy conducting a check ride.

We ran it for about seven laps and put it away about 6pm or so. The regular heated cars, the 431 and 3142, stayed in service until after 8pm.

After that, I spent some time with the copying machine and drafting accoutrements to complete the stencils for the air compressor wagon. I didn't get a photo, but it is now completely painted in dark green, including the underside. Joel said it's ready to letter, which means I'm up! You'll note that it will receive a CTA, rather than a CSL, emblem. As a CSL fan, it pains my soul to do it, but the air compressor's current configuration matches its late-in-life condition with a crosswise air tank on the end and electric markers. As shown by our nice 1953 photo at Forest Park, that puts it squarely in the CTA era. So, we must be accurate.

Most of the focus over the weekend for the volunteers was on HHR, between making sure the trains were running, turning the lights on and off, and so on. But several of the guys were working on New Jersey 4. The car did get wyed, making access to the door side easier, and I believe there was a crew working on it both Saturday and Sunday. One wheel on the right side has been replaced - so that's five down and three to go - with the second in progress, awaiting replacement of those studs at the end of the torque arm.

I also did a little bit more work on that spare grid box, though nothing very photogenic, and I measured the clips we'll need to make to hold up the ribbon fuses on our new grid boxes. Note to self: the clips are 14-gauge steel strips, 1-1/2" wide and roughly 5-1/2" long apiece.

The Bill Sirinek Collection

The late Frank Sirinek was a long-time member of IRM whom most of us will remember vividly.  Besides all of the tremendous restoration work that he did, he took thousands of historically important photos of not only IRM, but other museums and transit operations across the globe.  His nephew, Bill Sirinek, has been hard at work scanning in all of Frank's slides and posting them on Flickr.  He has graciously given us permission to repost a few slides from the Sirinek Collection, but you need to get on Flickr and start browsing.  It's hard to believe.  I'll post just a few we've run across.

For me, the most striking photos (so far) are these pictures of the interior of the 309 dated March 7, 1971 -- just one week before the fire.  It was so close to being done...

You may notice some differences in the interior paint scheme, particularly the ceiling, from what it has now after restoration.  Back in 1971, the original intention was to restore it as it was at the end of service, in the red paint scheme.  The decision to restore it to the blue scheme was evidently taken after the fire, by Bob Bruneau and Bob Rayunec.

And then from a few years earlier in 1967, we have the Museum's CA&E collection on display.  The wood cars are sitting on what is now the west leg of the wye, after track expansion into what is now the central campus had started.

Looking north.  I guess that's Central Ave. in the foreground.

Looking northwest, from about where the pavilion is now!

Bill deserves a  huge thank you from the preservation community for making these available!