In Memoriam Carl Illwitzer

 It is a great shock to learn of the death over the weekend of B&G Assistant Carl Illwitzer.  He was 66.

Good pictures of Carl are hard to find, because he was always at work, and generally preferred not to even look at photographers.

I believe he joined the Museum about 1979 -- at least that's when I first met him.  He was one of Bruneau's electrical/mechanical experts and often did rebuilds on various components - air compressors, reversers, etc.  As the story goes, he was the last person ever to run the D22 line car - after it arrived, he tested some circuits out on the thing and then briefly moved it back and forth under power by holding a "hot stick" up through the gaping holes in the roof to contact the overhead wire!  He was trusted enough to know what he was doing that he was the only person, we believe, to ever have his rulebook list him as qualified on "all electric equipment" (or something to that effect).

In later years, of course, he was one of the few full-time paid employees, and was always to be seen busy on various B&G projects and general maintenance.  We cannot imagine how he will be replaced.

There will be a remembrance for Carl at the Museum sometime soon, and we will post a notice when arrangements are made.

Monday Report

 Another busy Monday, with various projects going on.  This, as usual, is just a sample.

Pete was refinishing molding strips for the ceiling of the 306.

Phil was refinishing the door between the main and smoker compartments.

Fritz and Norm discuss what needs to be done next on the Michigan Electric 28.

The ceiling is making progress.

This is the smoker bulkhead looking forward.

And I was working most of the day on the next seat frame in the 309.  As it turned out, this one will be more difficult than I expected.  But it will certainly be fixed.

BB2 Update

Frank writes...

The rest of the department was out on the railroad working on the overhead on Sunday, but for me it was a return to the "lean-three" to continue working on the 18's National BB2 air compressor.

It took another hour and a half or so, but I finished slotting the commutator. Above, it's hard to tell, but this photo was taken with only six or eight slots to go.

After I took a break to head over to the 18, Richard provided guidance in the next step, "raking" the slots. This just involves drawing the pointed end of a file down the length of each slot to knock any burrs off the edges of the bars. Following this work to smooth off the commutator, the comm itself is ready for testing, though there are a couple of other things we need to do first - not least of which is refilling the pump with oil! Thanks to Steven for the above "action shot" of yours truly.

Although I've brought my daughter out to IRM plenty of times for rides, this was her first time accompanying me on a "working" day. She seemed to enjoy herself. Here, she emulates my work on the air compressor, accompanied by her saying "fix, fix fix! BAM, BAM, BAM!" Yep, that pretty well sums up the recent maintenance history of this air compressor.

Anyway, after I finished with slotting but before the guys arrived back to instruct me in the finer points of commutator raking, it was over to the 18 to install some new advertising cards. Many thanks to Tim, who set us up with his printer, and Jim, who picked these up and brought them out to the museum. These are reproductions, of course, but they're printed on Mylar that's about the same thickness (and pliability) as the original cards. In theory, these should last pretty much forever without warping or suffering any water damage.

These are all circa-1950 designs, a definite improvement over the ones that have been in the car, which are mostly a mixture of 1970s/1980s ones that came with the 18 and 1920s repros that were printed by American Slide Chart for ARM a few decades back.

But we need your help!

It turns out that with the recent work on the CA&E steel cars, including casting new third rail beam parts and building new beams, we're out of money! The CA&E steel car restoration fund is at zero. We've printed extras of the car cards shown below for use in the 451 when its interior is complete, but we'd like to get several additional designs with more "local flavor" scanned, digitally restored, and reprinted. Please consider a donation to the CA&E Steel Car Fund to make this happen!

For a limited time only, you can sponsor one of the car cards shown below. These nice Mylar cards cost $30 each, so for every $30 you donate, email us and let us know which design(s) you'd like to sponsor. We'll put your name on the back of your card for when it goes into the 451. And, of course, any larger donations to support the purchase of paint for the upcoming repainting of the 451's interior are also very much appreciated. Click here and scroll down to Electric Car Restoration - CA&E Steel Cars to donate online, or just mail a check to the office with IRM as the payee and "RCAESTEEL" on the memo line. Thank you!

Bromo-Seltzer

Campbell's Beans

CBS Sunday Evenings

We'll call this "Chesterfield-F"

...and this one "Chesterfield-M"

Circus Peanut

Hill's Nose Drops

Lucky Strike

Red Cross

Solo Bob Pins

Trip Down South to Find PCC Parts

 Steve Iversen has been hard at work, going far to find parts for IRM PCC's.  

Shaker Heights 81 is a PCC in poor condition, privately owned near Dover, Ark.  But the owner has allowed us to acquire parts we need, and Steve went there recently.  He reports:

Today I got just about everything I think I can get off the Shaker Heights 81 by myself.  I removed both front and rear windows, since they are identical to the ones on the 4391, so now we have spares!  I removed the trolley pole and base along with the Ohio Brass retriever.  I also removed the battery tray, marker lights, and dash lights.  The battery tray and light sockets are needed for the Kansas City 755.

I wasn't able to get the MG set off because I don't have a fork or skid loader.  The Little Rock Birney is in the way.  The owner of the property is working on getting a crane so that we can lift the car off its trucks.  Most likely this will not happen until January.  I'll bring everything except the trolley pole and base up to the Museum sometime next month.

It's great that we are able to get parts we need, and that we have someone who is able and willing to go the distance to get them.  You too can help, from the comfort of home!  Donations are needed now to the KCPS 755 fund.

The Fix Is In

Walkover seat replacement is a complicated process, and the parts are heavy.  But I needed the exercise.

For the seat that we saw last time, which had been removed, the first step was to separate the back from the frame.  The back, like all of them in the main compartment, was professionally recovered many years ago, and they're all in excellent condition.  So I carried the seat out to the platform, removed the back, and carried the heavy cast-iron frame out of the car and to the ground.  Then I brought a replacement frame (originally from car 300) from storage to the 309, and put it more or less in place as seen here.  It's several inches into the aisle.  Then I managed to fit the back between the levers.  It's easier to insert and tighten the screws on the inside end of the back when there's more room between the seat and the wall.

Then the frame was moved into place, and carefully attached to the wall and the aisle bracket.

Finally, the arm rest was attached with a dozen screws, and the cushion put into place.  With some lubrication, it moves back and forth just the way it should.  Then I sat down to test it.  Whew!

And you know this has to be the same seat because the L7 hasn't moved.  I believe I have just three more to do in the 309, and several months to do it.

Meanwhile, back in Barn 4, the 306 team were hard at work.  Here Steve Keller and Fred are checking the electrical connections to the controller.

They also checked the alignment of the various parts of the pilot.  Here we see Gerry checking part of it; not shown are John and the others.

The Pennsy tool car looks great, at least the exterior does.

In the distance we see the 1268 and the 65.

Tim continued working on the 1268; these are seat cushions he assembled today.

He's usually moving too fast to be captured on camera.

Tuesday News Bulletins

One of my tasks on Tuesday was to come up with a better way of blocking the side doors on the 460 when it's on display in the barn.  The short pieces of 2x4 we were using weren't very effective, and tended to get lost or used as chocks.  This is the sort of thing I enjoy doing, so here's the solution.

I'll be making some for each of the St. Louis cars.  Patent pending.

The bigger project involves fixing walkover seats in the 309.  One of the frames just couldn't be made to work, so I removed it and a frame in good condition will be replacing it  -- one from car 300 that we got from our friends at North Freedom several years ago.  Just getting the seat back detached from the frame was a difficult task.

Meanwhile, the 306 team are continuing their work on the Fox River car.  The interior is looking better and better.

Next, in Illinois Terminal news...

Steve Smunt and Jim continued their work on restoring windows for the 101.

Finally, in neighborhood improvement news, the old window container sitting out in the yard has been condemned by the authorities, so it was necessary to move all the windows into Barn 4 extension for storage.  Tim Peters deserves a lot of credit for taking on this thankless task.  I wasn't able to get a good picture of him running the forklift to do this, but be sure to give him a round of applause!

Doodlebug October Report

Many thanks to our indefatigable staff reporter Gregg Wolfersheim, who has sent along an update of recent progress on Union Pacific M-35, the museum's EMC doodlebug.

We left our readers with a shot of the inner vestibule door in primer, last month. Soon after, the coach side was refurbished and ended up with a coat of varnish.

Here it is back on its hinges. The other side got painted in the tan, of course.

With the recreation of the right door, the hinges for the door side are missing, as was the original door. I sourced some modern day hinges that were pretty close, but a bit too wide. I cut off the excess, and then added 3 mounting holes. The original doorjamb halves were used for a reference. Here is a comparison of the two.

Here is the new door being fitted to the opening. Jack created this duplicate by using the left door as a model. It was quite a battle on Thursday trying to get this to fit. The doorway is almost a half inch narrower at the bottom, compared to the top. So much for building a perfectly square door and hoping it will just go in! A little more tweaking will have it working soon. Then it can get primed and painted.

Slotting the Comm

Frank writes...

Sunday was one of those days that consisted of one task that took the entire time.

The task at hand was "slotting the commutator" on the 18's National BB2 air compressor. The comm is made up of copper segments with mica insulation between them. The mica insulators are supposed to be lower than the segments, so to speak, but depending on wear and maintenance, you can get to a situation where the comm surface is basically smooth, with the mica at the same level as the segments. That's not good, as it can cause excessive wear and sparking, but that's what the 18's air compressor has had. So, my job was to go around the comm and use a cut-off hacksaw blade to "slot" it - i.e., cut down the mica insulating pieces and create shallow slots between the segments. In the above photo, the segments right of center have been done, while the ones left of center haven't. Unlike with a traction motor that's attached to a car, this comm can easily be turned by hand to advance to the next segment.

I spent the whole afternoon working on this, which was tedious, but not especially unpleasant. The weather for the museum's last regular-season open day of the year was gorgeous, so for a while I had the garage door at the west end of the lean-three open for some fresh air and light. This commutator work is (we hope!) the most laborious of the improvement tasks we have planned for the 18's air compressor, but I got through maybe 70% of the work, so I hope to finish it the next time I'm out. Thanks go to Richard, for guidance with this, and to Steven, who drained the last of the old oil out of the pump and also worked on sourcing new wire terminals that will be needed.

EDIT: Thanks to Brian L for sending this photo of yours truly in action. It's just as much fun as it looks!

Further east in the shop, we were invaded by several Steam Department volunteers, who were cutting boards for a new deck for the tender on Commonwealth Edison 5. Here, Matthew and Mike retrieve boards from the pile.

And our team of Brian Sawyers - Brian D on the left and Brian L on the right - work at the radial arm saw to cut the boards to length. When they were done, the wood was picked back up by the forklift and returned to the Steam Shop for painting.

Speaking of ComEd locomotives, ComEd 4 was on the inspection pit, as shown here. Unfortunately, it's temporarily out of service.

Here's the reason: a brake beam was found to be cracked at the end, just outboard of the bushing. This will be replaced.

When Brian L wasn't working with the steam guys to cut boards, he was working on air valves. Here's a nice, newly overhauled M15B motorman's valve body. When he finishes fixing up its innards, he'll give it to us for blue paint, and then it can go onto the 309 to replace a valve that's been causing some issues. Thanks, Brian!

Finally, not necessarily big news, but when I was driving onto the property, our Muni trolley bus was sitting outside the Andersen Garage in good sunlight, so I snapped a photo. This Fageol-Twin Coach trolley bus was built in 1949 and I believe it's the last of its type.