Doodlebug Update

Many thanks to our indefatigable on-the-spot reporter, Gregg Wolfersheim, for sending us the latest news of his progress on restoring Union Pacific doodlebug M-35.

The fuel tank on the doodlebug is now painted safety red!

In this area a stencil will be applied stating the contents.

The Men's toilet seat was pretty tired. So, I'm replicating this. Using some poplar joined together, I'm tracing it out on the bandsaw.

The two pieces cut out.

Inside the lid is a metal forging that the hinge attaches to.

By carefully morticing the edge, I can insert the forging into the slot 

This is after the metal is installed. The seat had a similar operation, but with two rectangular nuts placed into it.

Tuesday, Jack and I removed the train door and started refinishing it. It needs a little gluing also, on some joints.

The car number came through near the top of the door.

Some of our clamps helping the glue while it sets.

One of the four air reservoirs getting needle chipped from under the car. This is the inside view. The outer areas will only need to be sanded before painting.

Annual Meeting Weekend

Frank writes...

This past weekend featured a day full of activities on Saturday, with the safety meeting and rules test in the afternoon followed by the annual membership meeting in the evening. Unfortunately I missed the afternoon's festivities, but I did make it to the membership meeting.

One interesting part of the meeting, which took place while the tellers were counting ballots during the board of directors election, was a presentation on the planned Visitor Center and on the capital campaign that is getting underway. Our Event Manager, Tricia (above), one of the leaders of the capital campaign, Mark (below), and Executive Director Marcus Ruef all gave excellent presentations and took questions.

Everyone was cheered by the fact that only one ballot was necessary to elect three board members. The usual congratulations and condolences go out to Marcus Ruef, who was reelected, and to new board members Scott Nauer and Andrew Ossler. Outgoing president Nick Espevik, who went off the board due to term limits, was succeeded by fellow Electric Car Department volunteer Zach Ehlers, who is now the museum's president. Congratulations, Zach!

Glutton for punishment that I am, I was back out at the museum on Sunday. What was it Bob Bruneau used to say concerning the subject of how much time he spent at IRM? "When you're dumb, you suffer!"

I spent much of the afternoon looking through the contactor box under the 319. The goal was to figure out why the car doesn't sequence in parallel. While this isn't necessary for operation, we'd still like to determine what's going wrong.

For future reference, the sequence chart here (the first one, not the "correct" second one) is still what we're seeing. Numbers 1, 3, 4, 5, and 6 aren't picking up at all, and 9 isn't picking up until the 10th point. The interlocks all appeared to make, and some (though not all) were tested for continuity. We also tested the connection from the cabinet to #2 interlock, and that wasn't a problem. The next guess is that the lifting coil on 1, 3, or 6 may be bad. I was able to test the coil on contactor 3, and it read okay, but wasn't able to get to the other two. The coils on these DB-260s are hard to access; you need to detach the board on the back of the contactor that holds the interlocks or control resistors, depending on the contactor. Anyway, the next step is probably to test the coils on contactors 1 and 6 at some point. In the meantime, the 319 has been cleared for service (except for lubrication, which needs to be done outside at some point in the next few weeks) and can be moved back home to Barn 8. Many thanks to Brian, Jimmy, and Richard, who helped with this project, and to Nathan, who finished up a lot of the tough inspection work (like motor and roof inspection) on Friday.

You unlock this door with the key of imagination. Beyond it is another dimension - a dimension of sound, a dimension of sight, a dimension of mind. Or maybe it's just Yard 6. Good Nick hauled this 460 door, which he painted last weekend, over to Yard 6 to compare to the actual car in the sunlight. Unfortunately, for the second time, the color match was noticeably off. We will need to have the paint company come out and color-match the car.

However, we need the 460 in service, so we agreed that the short-term solution is to patch the paint on the doors with "slightly off" red and put them back on the car. Here are the doors ready to be touched up; I sanded and primed the Bondo patch my father had applied to the side door, on the right, to fill a rust hole in the steel sheet.

More exciting things were happening elsewhere. On Saturday, we were notified that the occupancy permit for the new South Storage Building - aka the Bob Bourne Transit Building - had been granted. Richard moved the first bus into the building Saturday after the annual meeting. On Sunday, it was time for everyone's favorite air compressor wagon, AX545, to finally exit the "lean-three" shop. Above, Brian and Richard hook it up to our new-to-us airport tug.

And away they go! This is Richard and Steven on the tug, with Brian following. It was at just this point I got the call to come check paint matches on the 460 door, so I didn't follow AX545 all the way to the new barn.

Fortunately, Brian sent photos of AX545 in its new temporary home. It is not remaining in this barn long-term, but to send its wheels out to get badly needed replacement tires, we need to leave the wagon on blocks for a while. Once the wheels come back repaired, the wagon will leave the Bourne Building.

As you can see, AX545 was the second thing in the new barn after the newer of the two Janesville buses. (Well, I suppose the airport tug was the second thing.) Speaking of new tires, we still need to raise money to get the wheels for AX545 shipped out and re-tired! You can help - click here and donate to the Electric Car Department/Equipment Restoration fund. And don't forget to email us and let us know your donation is to go to AX545!

I spent a few minutes talking with Steve, who was grinding away rusted steel on the Kansas City PCC. I need to trace the front and back outline of the "spitball" along with the car number, since the plan is to strip the paint off the car and repaint it using good-quality paint. Steve revealed that careful examination of a portion of the car that hadn't seen sunlight revealed that the color I painted the 755 back in 2001 was pretty spot-on accurate, so that was nice to hear. We had matched the color to an original sample that, as it turns out, Steve himself had procured from a junkyard somewhere out in Kansas.

Of course, Brian and Will were working on air brake things as usual. While we were looking around for DB-260 stuff, we happened upon some boxes of governor parts, which were forwarded to Brian. Included in the miscellany was this bag of gaskets marked for "700 loco." That would be for 700-series South Shore locomotives, the big ex-New York Central freight locomotives that were cut up in the 1970s. I'm sure this bag made its way to IRM from Michigan City at some point thereafter.

Opening Day Photo Essay

Thanks to fearless photographer Steven Jam, who was visiting the museum on Sunday for Opening Day and sent us a selection of photos from the day's festivities.

The Track Department has been hard at work replacing ties on the west track of 50th Avenue.

Here's a shot of the future location of the gantlet track switch. Since the present 'L' station replaced Yard 1 about 45 years ago, the east track has been "narrow" (i.e. Chicago 'L' width) and the west track has been "wide" (steam road width - or, more applicably, South Shore/Illinois Central MU width). But the plan has always been to eventually put in a gantlet track on the west side so that either wide or narrow cars could use it.

The service car for opening day, North Shore 749, at Car Line Junction.

Here's Larry Lavery from the Strahorn Library speaking at the Mitch Markovitz art exhibition opening ceremony. Mitch is to the right with his hand raised.

The unveiling...

...and voila!

Here's our president, Nick Espevik, speaking in front of a second piece of artwork that was also unveiled, one focused on IRM. The artist is to the right.

Here's Mitch speaking to the assembled attendees.

Air Brake Work Update

Many thanks go to our pneumatics correspondent, Brian LaKemper, who sends along this photo essay of work he was involved in over this past weekend (in between inspecting CA&E cars!).

With S governors waiting on parts, attention is turning to beginning a batch rebuild of M23 motorman's valves. Here is a wagon load of valves hauled in from the air brake car for assessment and rebuilding.

One thing that did happen with S governors is work on converting one to be a spare for the CA&E curve siders which have spitters to actively drain water out of the air tanks when the compressor cycles. I didn't take a photo of the base, but here's what happened when I got a little too carried away with the easy out to remove the plug on it.

This S-16 (above three photos) was rebuilt by someone who chose to use RTV or "form-a-gasket" instead of the proper gasket between the base and body. Its been cleaned as time allows. I believe it can be salvaged, but its not a pleasant cleanup. 

One of the M23s that was opened up displayed this substance on the rotary valve. It has been dubbed barbecue sauce and we don't recommend eating it. Add that one to your IRM vocabulary. 

The end of the weekend shows quite the mess on the air brake bench, S-16s, M-23s, National Straight Air valves and feed valve pipe brackets all in various states of cleaning and repair. It looks like a mess but all of it will be rebuilt in time.

Opening Day

Frank writes...

Sunday was opening day of our 2026 regular operations season, though we were open starting at the end of March for the Bunny Trolley Hop event. But in either case, let's go back to Saturday, when I wasn't at the museum, for a quick prologue.

The car shop guys worked on Saturday to finish up the annual inspection of the 309, and we're happy to say that the car was cleared for revenue service without any major issues. Brian LaKemper submitted the above photo, showing the 309 leaving Barn 4 and the 319 heading toward Barn 4, stopped alongside to swap over the adapter coupler. 

Here's another view that was sent by Ted Kuhn. A huge thank you to everyone who worked on the 309 inspection and on starting the 319's inspection!

And that brings us to Sunday.

When I arrived, I briefly stopped over at the art exhibition opening, then snapped a photo of the season's first regular service car on my way back.

In Barn 4, the guys had started working on the 319 late Saturday. The first job tackled was the trap at the #1R corner, which had started to pull out of the body corner post. That's no good. Here we see the trap support bracket removed; thanks to Joel and Zach for drilling out and dowelling the holes so the bracket could be reattached securely.

Zach also noticed that the floor latch wasn't working right, so he and Richard removed it, as shown here. Thanks to Zach for replacing the spring in the latch! The traps on the CA&E Jewetts and all the steel cars are basically the same as on North Shore cars except that the latch is mounted to the floor next to the trap instead of to the trap itself, and consists of a pedal you step on to release the trap. When they work, it's great - you don't even have to bend over to raise the trap.

I didn't take any photos of the regular inspection work, but a huge thank you goes out to Ashtin and Will for inspecting the #2 truck and both controllers, along with some other things. Ashtin and I spent some time trying to get the feed valve working; since the 319 arrived, it's had the wrong type of feed valve, but it worked fine until last fall. We tried two different feed valves of that type before giving up on that avenue. Many thanks to Brian, who had a nicely rebuilt C6 feed valve (the correct type for the car!) on hand, and Richard, who cut a threaded stud to install it. The 319 now has the correct type of feed valve and, even more importantly, it works. We didn't get the car's inspection work completed, but we got most of it checked off, including truck inspection and brake adjustment on the #1 truck as well as inspection and some repair work in the contactor box.

On Saturday, the Diesel Department guys dropped off a gallon of red paint with a revised color match, and Good Nick wasted no time getting to work on the two doors off the 460. Here he is scuffing up the previous coat of red...

...and here are the doors after a mirror-smooth application of fresh red paint. Next weekend, we hope to take these out in the sunlight along with some older samples to confirm that we have the correct shade. If we do - fingers crossed - then these doors will get their outsides painted before reinstallation, and then the 460 will be ready for service.

For a CA&E fan, it's hard not to like this view! The 451 on the left is seen with its baggage racks, on which wire-wheeling is just about done; then the 319 is on the pit; and the 306 is on track 42. Joel surveys Wheaton West.

As always, there's plenty going on. Tim was hard at work installing floor slats in the (1)268 while Brian and Will were working on rebuilding a handful of M23 motorman's valves they pulled out of storage. Joel was cleaning stuff out of the west end of Barn 4 so it can be opened for public viewing. Speaking of which, Kansas City 755 has seen more attention from Tim, Mike, and Greg. Above, the battery compartment has been cleaned up and painted, and they've reinstalled one of the two smaller outboard markers on the back of the car. These were removed when the car went to Philadelphia. The rooftop markers, which were installed by Philadelphia, were also removed from the rear of the car.

The 755 has its share of rust, which was made more plain when the floor-level rub rail was removed. But this was anticipated; new steel will be welded in as necessary. Tim and Greg also removed the vertical rub rails, which were installed at Philadelphia, one of which was formerly located on the right side of this photo.

Finally, at the end of the evening, Greg and Nick helped me schlep the 460's fourth third rail beam - the one we didn't get installed two weeks ago - from Barn 8 over to Barn 6. We'd left the beam conveniently located next to the car, but then the car went and moved itself two barns over. The nerve. Anyway, it turns out the hole spacing is ever so slightly off, just barely enough that we couldn't get it bolted onto the truck. It won't be a difficult fix, but we ran out of time so this will have to wait.

Fine Art at IRM

On Sunday afternoon, the Museum held a grand opening of  the current exhibition of Mitch Markovitz's art works.  A good time was had by all, although the gallery is really too small for all the work that is on display.  Our planned Visitor Center will provide a much larger space for such things, so donate today!

Mitch gave a very interesting and informative talk.  He has been doing this his whole life, and has produced art work in several different styles and techniques. I should have been taking notes.

Barb gave an introductory talk.

The exhibition will continue during this year's operating season, so don't miss it!