Days of the Diesel

Frank writes…

As always, the big news this second weekend of August was Diesel Days, when incessant rumbling and acrid smoke fill the air in East Union.

The major highlight, I suppose, was the unveiling of the newly repainted Ingersoll-Rand 91, our 100-year-old boxcab diesel. Jamie and the Diesel Department guys outdid themselves again, putting this thing back into gleaming bicentennial colors for the 250th. IR 91 was new for the 150th, painted like this for the 200th, and repainted like this for the 250th. With luck, it will be running again long before the tercentennial!

For fans of things less than 100 years old - and these fans are rumored to exist, though I have my doubts - another highlight was operation of our recently acquired SD70MAC, shown here during its stint as a Take the Throttle engine.

Late in the afternoon, Metra dropped off our Illinois Central MU cars, now safely back at home after an eventful trip to home rails in Chicago that, by all accounts, went extremely well. Metra's "250th" locomotive was one of the two engines doing the hauling, and it was brought over to the property for a quick photo shoot with the 91, as shown above. Better photos can be found in various places online.

I spent a while needle-chipping in the 451, but failed to get a progress photo. Oops. I did take about an hour off to show a friend from college around, and then after service ended, I helped Zach, Joel, Jimmy, Steven, Nick, and Greg with some switch moves to get the IC MU cars back into their usual spot in Barn 6. Above, ComEd 4 and CCW 300 wait for a block of diesels to clear the streetcar line.

The MU cars were brought in by the Army diesel as the light started to fail; ComEd 4 was the planned motive power, but its governor was being balky, so the 8537 was called in.

Simms Collection -- More CSL

Back to the Simms Collection -- we have lots more CSL and CRT to publish!  

Unfortunately, most of these have little or no information on the backs.  I've added numbers in case anyone wants to comment.  Feel free!

#1

#2

#3

#4

#5

#6

#7

#8

#9      9-20-47

#10      CSL Mar 1937

#11      CSL mail car

#12

#13     S201    75th State  1942

#14       9-20-47

#15

Thursday Glimpses

This is just a fraction of what was going on during Thursday.  The CA&E third rail beams are nearly done, except that the new hanger castings need to be machined, and new shoes and swing links need to be cast.  Here's what's left of one of the old beams during the recovery process.

I also did some more stripping on an interior door for the 451.

Lots of work continues on the 306.  The pilot is being reassembled by Gerry and Jim.

Here Phil checks out the operation of the folding doors at the west end.

Fred and Steve K. made a mouse trap for the car, being assembled here.

And of course Tim was working on the bench seats for the 1268.

Don't forget that this weekend is IRM's Diesel Days.   Diesel be a really good time!

Truck Work on the Mother Car

Thanks to Jon Fenlaciki, who sent along photos of work that was performed this past weekend by IRM volunteers - mostly by Jon's son, Dan - in a heroic all-day marathon of truck work. I wasn't there, but anyone who has more information or corrections, please leave a comment.

The 65 was over the pit on Saturday for repair work following a hotbox a little while back that took it out of service.

Here's Dan disconnecting motor leads and brake rigging.

The car is jacked up and the #1 truck is rolled out. After this, the truck was lifted and the #2 axle was rolled out so its condition could be examined.

Here's the end of the axle.

And here's the burned bearing. A replacement bearing was installed, the car was put back together, and it was successfully operated. It's now back in Barn 6 but more testing is needed.

Next Trivia Question

This question is pretty straightforward.

CA&E car 321 has always been kicked around like a stray dog that nobody wanted.  It will soon be moved to Barn 13 to be worked on, and when this happens, it will have been stored in eight different barns over the years: 2, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, and 13.  Is this a record?

Tuesday Report

 Just another productive day in the old car shop.  Frank and I are mostly working on CA&E 451.

I've made the mortises for the bolts and attached a new casting for the next third rail assembly.  The casting will need to be machined, and we still need to make castings for the shoe and the swing links.

Meanwhile, most of the work on the 451 is concentrating on restoring the interior.  My particular task right now is to strip the interior doors so they can be repainted.  I started on this today, but it may take a while.

There are three layers of paint here: the final tan color is on top, under that is the original blue, and under that the white primer.  Since we will be restoring the 451 to its as-delivered condition, the interior will be restored to the light blue.

None of these layers is coming off easily.

But we'll keep at it.  Meanwhile, the pilot for the 306 is being rebuilt.  Many of the vertical pieces were badly damaged, and Gerry has removed all of the ones that need to be replaced.

New ones have been fabricated.

And here they are being painted.

Finally, here we see Tim doing the upholstery on the long bench seats.  This is not easy.

Many other things were going on, of course.  Ridership seemed to be quite good today.

Ron Seavers was running the 460 in revenue service.  And all of the customers seemed to be satisfied.  What more could you want?

Transport Extravaganza #35

Nothing succeeds like success, and our annual Transport Extravaganza was once again a real crowd pleaser.  Once again, I was too busy to get any good pictures of all the antique automobiles and other vehicles. Sorry!  

The three-car CA&E wood train was in operation again, and on almost every trip we really needed three cars. 

And here's our crew:  Myself as a trainman, Frank as motorman, and conductor Mike Rizzuto.

One highlight of the festivities was operation of the West Towns car:

It was certainly going direct to a zoo.

Say, did I ever tell you about the time a CA&E train wound up on the wrong track at Wheaton??

The Shay was very popular, as always.  It's also a magnet for photographers to stand directly in front of it as it approaches the station, which is naturally very aggravating for the crew.  I wish I had a good solution. 

But otherwise, everything seemed to be running smoothly.  What a great day!

News from the Steam Shop

 Buzz writes:

I happened by the Steam Shop Saturday and caught part of 1630's boiler rebuilding process. Steam team members led by Jeff are heating, then using a pneumatic hammer,  to press the boiler tube ends to the exact size needed to fit the end plates

Very impressive.  I would love to get more pictures of the Steam Team in action!

Thursday Brief

This report will be brief.  Fred Z. and Steve K. are making great progress on the wiring at the east end of the 306, and Gerry is welding the west end pilot together.  But I didn't get any pictures.

Meanwhile, I'm almost finished on the last two beams for the 451.  Gerry helped free up the bolts on one of the scrapers.  These will be the last ones we need, at least until work starts in earnest on the 453, and that's far in the future.  We now need to get the parts cast for three more shoes assemblies, however.

Tim continues rebuilding bench seats for the car with an identity problem.

And then, we're still working on arranging to have new leaf springs made for CA&E 36.  This is probably going to be expensive, more than $10,000 at least, so contributions to RCAEWOOD would be greatly appreciated.

Trivia Question:

    What do the following cars (and no others) have in common?   101, 309, 749, and 1100.