Visit to Mid-Continent

Over the weekend, it was time for another visit to the car shop of the Mid-Continent Railway Museum  in North Freedom.  My old friend Bill Buhrmaster gave us a nice guided tour.  And these are just three of the current projects.

LS&I 64

The crew at North Freedom are making noteworthy progress on the LS&I Hicks car.  The roof has been finished, and from the ground it looks great.  But the scaffold has been removed, so you'll just have to take my word for it.  In any case, you can follow some of the developments on this car over the years by looking at the Trip Reports for Wisconsin.

Bill pointed out something I'd never noticed before: one of the iron platform railings has a slot, which is visible here:

Bill advanced the theory that this slot is for the uncoupling lever of a Miller Hook coupler!  But why?  A car built in 1910 would never have had such a thing.  Evidently the Hicks company would salvage parts when they rebuilt or scrapped older passenger cars, and store them for later use.  So this railing could possibly date back to the 1870's or so.  He also pointed out that the pedestals on the trucks are similar in size and shape, but they all have different names cast into them, and so the trucks were assembled from whatever spare parts happened to be lying around.  I didn't bother to start taking pictures of the different pedestals.

But a complete restoration of the interior is well underway.   

A lot of the woodwork needs to be reproduced.  Much of it has rotted away over the years.

Finally, they have recreated one of the original F.M. Hicks company seats -- double lever flipovers -- from original drawings and surviving parts, since most of them were replaced long ago in the car's history.  It looks great and works perfectly.  Now they just have to produce a car's worth.

DULUTH

This is a wooden sleeper built by Barney & Smith in 1902.  For over 80 years, though, it served as a summer cottage and is now being slowly restored.  One section was retained more or less intact, while the others were demolished, so at least they have a pattern for rebuilding the rest of the interior.

EJ&S 2

The East Jordan & Southern #2 is one of the oldest passenger cars in existence in the US, having been built originally in 1864 by Osgood Bradley.  Its restoration is now complete.  It's on display, and Bill sent me these official before and after pictures.

In the early days at North Freedom, this car was often used in revenue service.

To me, the interesting thing here is that under the piles of parts you can clearly see the CA&E walkover seats from car 300.  They certainly weren't authentic, so they were sold to IRM several years ago and are used to repair and replace seats in the 308 and 309.

The interior has been completely rebuilt.  The ceiling patterns are painted on canvas attached to the ceiling.  New seats were manufactured.

Tuesday Brief

I spent all day working on getting walkover seats in the 309 to change direction properly, with some success.  But the functional ones don't look much different than they did before, so you'll just have to take my word for it.  Several other Car Dept. projects were going along, however, and they may be more photogenic.

Here Steve Smunt is working on windows from the 101 that he brought over to the car shop.  Some of them are going to need some rebuilding. 

Among other projects, the 306 team continues working.  It looks like the pilot for the west end of the car is pretty much finished and ready to be attached.

Here we see John working on wiring in the west vestibule.

Finally, some of the paving in Barn 7 is being jackhammered to pieces.  I suppose I could have taken some video, but it would be more noise than anything else.  Anyway, B&G never stops.

Decompressorization

Frank writes…

When I arrived at IRM on Sunday afternoon, the guys had already completed my planned task for the day, switching the 319 and 308 over to Barn 6. This was done so that they can be strung with lights for Happy Holiday Railway, while the 431 and 460 - which may see use during the event - are in Barn 8 and available for service. So what else is there to do? Oh, that’s right!

The biggest reliability issue we've had with Shaker Heights 18 is that its air compressor isn't happy when it's cold - like, when it's cooler than maybe 50 degrees. It has had minor flashovers a couple of times, fortunately with little to no damage done. But we decided to remove it from the car for a thorough going-over, which it hasn't had since the car arrived at IRM. Mikey, Brian, Jimmy, and Will all helped throughout this project. Above, after moving the 1374 out of the way, we've brought the 18 over to the Central Avenue crossing.

Mikey did the really unpleasant work of crawling under this (very low-to-the-ground) car to disconnect the air and electric connections as well as the inboard hanger. That's the air compressor to the right and the rear truck to the left.

It took some deft maneuvering by Brian, our expert forklift driver, but here's the air compressor out from under the car! Apologies to the crew (here, Jimmy, Brian, and Mikey) for making you guys look directly into the sun for this shot...

Thanks also go to Richard and Joel, who helped hoist the pump onto a pallet for transportation back to the car shop "lean-three." Above, Brian is running the forklift as Mikey looks on. This is a National BB2, by the way, and it's the only one of the type we have. After we got the pump back, we drained the oil for replacement and checked out the motor on the pump. Richard and Joel helped with draining the oil, while Steven fixed a bent access door latch. I was able to check the bottle valves, which looked okay. The consensus seems to be that with a little bit of work, there's a good chance this pump will be much happier.

So that's the news from Kingsbury Run Shop. But the more important forklift job happened on Saturday, and our intrepid field photographer Bill Wulfert was there to capture the action on film!

The 65, which came over to Barn 4 last week, was lifted so that one of its trucks could be removed for some wheel work. Above, the front end of the car has been lifted.

Here's the truck with a motor being extracted while Jimmy looks on.

Further along in the process, the truck has been disassembled, and here's the frame.

And here are the two motors out of the 65 truck. The previous four photos were by Bill Wulfert.

Fast-forward to Sunday, and I snapped this shot of the 65 sitting back on its haunches. The shop truck being used is historic in its own right: it’s one of a pair of Gilbert trucks IRM owns that originally came from Intramural Railway elevated cars built for the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago, the world's first electrified elevated rapid transit line if memory serves.

And finally, no news here - I just randomly snapped this shot after the sun had gone down, showing the "cowcatcher lineup" at the front of Barn 6.

Progress on the IT 277

Steve Smunt sends us some pictures of the excellent progress being made by him and Paul Hough on the vestibule of our Illinois Terminal combine.  Of course, getting pictures in such a small space is not easy.

And he adds:

Future restoration needed: replace and paint center ceiling section, re-install remainder of trim moldings,  remove sheet metal from end knee walls and replace rotted, missing wood supports, replace knee walls and re-secure side door hinges and grab irons, final paint.

Walkover Wednesday

As I mentioned before, several of the walkover seats in the 309 need some attention.  This one had pulled out from the wall, and I had drilled and plugged the holes last time.  It took a while, but I got the frame reattached firmly.  And this is the only frame that was loose.  Fritz helped me with some of the hardware.

I took an inventory of the walkovers.  It appears that 13 of the 22 are now in good condition and work properly.  Some of the others can be fixed with better lubrication and/or some shims, but in a few cases serious repairs are needed. 

Some of the frames have bent or broken parts, or don't mesh properly.  Luckily, we have several good frames that we got from Mid-Continent a few years ago, and they may be the solution.

And I never pass up a chance to go into teacher mode.  Here we see a good frame.  Most of the movable parts of the frame are identified with red letters.  A is the center rod, which rotates when the back is moved back or forth.  The back is attached to the two brackets labeled C, and those brackets move in grooves in the stationary frames at each end.  Bracket C has a vertical slot in which a pin attached to the top of lever B rides up and down.  The two levers B are attached to rod A, and this is designed to keep the back parallel to the axis of rotation.  But for various reasons, the pins in lever B get worn out and come out of the slot, or lever B gets bent.  And then bracket C can come out of the grooves, and things go awry.  (Aside: just to make things more complicated, we also have parts that move brackets D back and forth to change the position of the seat cushion, and to move the footrests back and forth.  This will be on the next quiz!)

But enough of that.  Here's a picture of the new wall for the White Castle facade, to give you a better idea of how it's arranged relative to the existing buildings.  This will be a big improvement to the neighborhood!

Meanwhile, back in Barn 4, the guys were working on Michigan Electric 28.  The ceiling will be in two layers, and you can see that the first has been attached.  The second layer is being prepared, and will be glued onto the first. Here Pete is working on stripping paint from the bulkhead.

And in the other direction, facing aft, there's still a lot to do, but they're making great progress.

Here Fritz is working on refinishing trim parts for the 28's interior.

And Tim was hard at work preparing new seats for the 1268.

And, of course, several other things were going on.  It's never a dull day at IRM.

Moving the Pieces Around

Frank writes…

There was plenty of activity over the weekend, including substantial progress in some highly visible areas.

When I arrived, the results of some switch moves that the crew had accomplished on Saturday were plainly evident. Most notably, Barn 6 is no longer entirely an electric barn. One goal of the reshuffling of equipment caused by the construction of Barn 15 was to put more diesels on display, rather than just keeping them all in storage in the south barns, and this is part of that effort. The front of Barn 6 is now an impressively varied lineup: North Shore caboose 1003, Milwaukee Road HH660 1603, Toledo-Detroit 4-4-0 16, and the "Talisman."

And over in Barn 4, the 65 has been brought in to have one truck removed so that major truck work can be performed. This is a significant step forward on the museum's "mother car." The 451 has been moved out to Barn 8 for the duration, but don't worry, work on it will continue, and it will be back to Barn 4 when the time is right.

WEPCO L4, one of our Wisconsin steeplecabs, suffered a motor armature bearing failure a couple of years ago. The Saturday switch moves finally provided a good opportunity to pull the motor, so here it is, ready to send out for repair work. We'll come back to switch moves later, but first, let's get some work done.

A huge thank you goes out to Zach and Aaron, who installed the second bracket on the 453. I didn't realize until I was writing this that I took a photo of the wrong side - this is the one we installed a week ago - but take my word for it that both are now on the car. This means we can install the pilot at this end of the 453, so that's a big step forward.

After that, Aaron and I retrieved the last two newly built third rail beams for the 451 from their spot along the wall in Barn 4, hauled them over to the car's new location in Barn 8, and bolted them on.

This means that all of the third rail beams that have been built are now mounted on their cars. The work isn't done; we still need to do some machining on a few of these, and a bunch of them need "washer plates," cable/fuse hardware, or both added. But we'll make progress on all that as time permits.

You have to zoom in, but the big arc across this photo is the rope guard for the #1 end of the 451. This was straightened by Richard a few weeks ago, and I finally got around to wire-wheeling, priming, and painting it. I also put away some more 451 parts that we're storing until interior repainting work is done.

In between all this, the other shop guys were doing more switch moves. Ever since it was built, the eastern extension of Barn 4 was intended to contain one berth assigned jointly to the Freight Car Department and the Track Department, both of which lack their own dedicated shops. This berth was in use for the last year and a half by GB&W 109, but with that car now in Barn 3, the prophecy could be fulfilled. Above, Pennsy X23 tool car 499320 has been the subject of a multi-year restoration project headed up by Victor Humphreys. Here it is being switched over to Barn 4 by Lee and the diesel guys.

Here's the center-east berth in Barn 4 with its medium-term occupants. The tool car is mostly done on the exterior, but interior work is still in progress. After this car is done, a different wooden freight car will come in for work. And on the left is a tamper that the Track Department guys will work on bringing back to life. Bob, Joel, and Aaron are visible.

It wasn't just steel-wheel equipment on the move. The bus guys were busily moving buses and trolley buses around all weekend. I believe the summary is that this work involves largely emptying out the Andersen and Hoffman garages to gain access to the spare parts stored in the back; moving those parts to the new pallet racks in the Bourne garage; and then reloading buses into the garages in their long-term arrangements. If I got this wrong, hopefully one of the bus guys can chime in to correct me. Above is a rare view of the nearly-empty Andersen garage.

And finally, the great wall of china may be located over in Yard 5, but the great wall of porcelain is going up on Main Street in between the Multi-Purpose Building and the C&NW Archive building. The cinder-block structure shown here, which was built a couple of weeks ago to a plan developed by Dave and the B&G Department, will exhibit the White Castle porcelain-panel building front that was acquired from Whiting, Indiana, back in 2023.

This won't be a complete building, just a façade, but I believe the intention is to put some outdoor displays behind the façade, creating additional exhibit space along Main Street while preserving the appearance of the streetscape.