Saturday Summary

Today's first project was to process the wood for the next third-rail beam -- jointing, ripping, and gluing -- and clamping it up for the glue to set.  Buzz later helped me move the two finished beams out into the barn to provide a lot more bench space for other projects.  It's our "Good Neighbor" policy.

Most of the rest of the day I spent working on the sign boxes for the 451.  Joel ordered the right machine screws (1/4" fine thread) for the job.  Most of the holes at both ends needed to be retapped, and that took a while.  But all of them should be OK.  That's a relief, because otherwise I would probably have to remove the glass from the wooden frames and then put it back in.  

This is the west (#2) end; you can see all of the screws in the holes.  Same thing at the east end.

This box still has most of the roller parts, but they need a lot of work.  The two light sockets are there, but need rewiring and reattachment.  The gears for the roller mechanism are frozen.

Here Bill Wulfert is Kroiling the gears to free them up.

At the east end most of the mechanism is missing.  But we may have spare parts -- stay tuned.

Sorry -- we're not done with CA&E third rail beams yet.  Joel proudly showed me the plastic mold for the cast iron plates at each end that allow the third rail beam to be accurately adjusted up and down.  So he is planning to get quotes on how much these will cost.  

As usual, lots of other things were going on.  The only thing I got a picture of was Buzz's work on doors for the Ely.  

   So as always, you just had to be there in person.  Sign up today!

Barn 4 Coach Update

Joel was despondent at the thought that everyone's favorite railroad passenger coach, Green Bay & Western 109, might be departing the Barn 4 Electric Car Shop soon for "Pullman greener" pastures. We told him he really shouldn't worry! While he recovers his composure, our favorite freelance photographer, Gregg Wolfersheim, has sent along a progress report.

We have Ralph on his knees applying a coat of varnish to the lower baseboard area.

Once the varnish was dry, I started priming the floor. First was doing the edge by hand.

Then I followed with a roller doing the middle.

An hour later, and it was done.

A couple of days later, the same routine with Tile Red floor paint. The edges are first.....

And, again rolling the middle.

This was after a second coat was applied. There's just a little bit left to do at the far end behind our partition and around the stove.

The demonstration gas light fixture is up on the ceiling. Unfortunately, the part that attaches to the stem in the middle is not around. We had one we thought would work, but it has a different set of threads that won't screw into this bracket. So, we're trying to locate the correct one.

These are the trim pieces we had made for the arched windows. The thin straight pieces at the left go between the right and left hand curved pieces.

Some of the precut pieces before priming.

Jack was busy today installing these trim pieces on the south side of the car. Soon they will be painted green to match the rest of the car.

To Be Continued

On Thursday, work continued on several of the current projects in Barn 4, and due to our nice new facilities the work can continue almost every day.  And that's important.  Did I ever tell you that a continuous function has a defined derivative at every point?  That means we can determine the rate of change...  well, let's get to the pictures.  I want to be paid for lecturing. 

Frank continued working on sign frames.

Tim continued on the gold leaf lettering on the 268.

Fred continued to needle-chip the 28.  He's a better man than I am, I can't stand needle-chipping.

Jack and Gregg (not shown) continued attaching trim to the arches on the Green Bay car.

And I finished painting the next two third-rail beams.  And sorted parts.  To be continued.

Tuesday Snapshots

 Time for another brief report from Barn 4, Beehive of Activity:

I do not now recall why I took these first two pictures....

Fritz was working on the 28, but I failed to get a picture of it.  Sorry.

On the other hand, Tim has been doing astounding work on the 268.  This and the 24 will make a train like no other in preservation....

The 306 guys were hard at work again on the piping and wiring.  It's getting close.

Jack and Ralph spent much of their time installing arched trim pieces over the upper sash on the 109:

And here they are priming the next dozen or so arches.

Tim cut out a piece of glass for the next sign box frame that I made for the 451.

Twas a Dark and Stormy Afternoon

Frank writes...

The weather outside on Sunday was frightful, but inside nicely heated Barn 4, all was well. Mostly.

Not long after I arrived, the museum lost power for an hour or so. A few people departed for the day or made a quick trip over to visit the newly purchased house of one of our volunteers, but before too long the power was back on and it was back to work. I got one more "bay" of the 451's main compartment ceiling needle chipped, as shown above. The end is in sight!

Thanks to Richard, who helped with some paint archaeology. All the layers of paint on the 451's ceiling seem exceedingly thin, but as near as we can tell, we're looking at 1) top layer, 2) top layer with some oxidation taken off, 3) a slightly pink or coral layer that we're guessing is a primer, 4) a slightly yellower cream color that we believe is the original ceiling color, 5) very thin layer of white which may be a primer, 6) a thicker putty color that's almost certainly a primer, and 7) bare metal. Since we're backdating the 451, layer (4) is what we want to match.

I didn't get any photos, but a whole crew was working on the 451. Will started out repairing drain cocks to affix to the air tank piping and later joined Ashtin, who spent the afternoon wire-wheeling more baggage racks. There's only one more rack to go, and then they'll all be ready to prime and paint!

For what it's worth, I took the above photo during the power outage. Joel got a generator going outside the barn, so the 268/1268 was all lit up.

"The 268/1268?" you ask quizzically. Yes, and here's the proof. Tim is speeding along with lettering the car, and it's being restored to about the same era as Northwestern Elevated 24: the early teens. This was a period of transition, as the four elevated lines were consolidated under the same operator, and cars (except for the South Side) were renumbered: 1000-series for NWERR, 2000-series for the Met, and 3000-series for the Lake Street. For a time, until they were repainted, many cars ran with their new four-digit number in the window but their old three-digit number on the car side. And that's how this car will be. It's already acquired NWERR lettering and numbers; next comes the striping.

Here, Tim laboriously burnishes the vinyl masks for painting on the gold striping. He's got something of a horsecar setup, with Dan serving as the horse and moving him down the car as he makes progress. The 268/1268 was also the focus of electrical work as Greg, Zach, and maybe others rewired the controller at one end. And in other news, Jimmy was working hard on inspecting CSL 144, Richard was working on the rail display, and Joel was working on various things.

I stopped by the office and snapped a photo of construction progress in the new south wing of the office building. This was taken from the southwest corner looking northeast, with the doorways into the two offices along the east wall visible beyond the ladder and the doorway into the current office to the left.

In other news, this photo was submitted by Richard Schauer and shows a new acquisition of the Bus Department. This government surplus airport tug comes to us from the FAA, which used it at Reagan National Airport in Washington until recently. It will come in handy moving around dead buses.

Now, let's go back in time to Saturday, when the crew was hard at work on everybody's favorite pastime: switching!

The first several photos of the switch move were taken, and submitted, by our fearless leader, Joel Ahrendt. Above, the prides of the fleet, Terre Haute Indianapolis & Eastern 50 and 58, are all ready to carry passengers from Terre Haute into Indy.

Here's a shot of track 132 in Barn 13 before the switch move. The focus of this move was to extract the wooden Santa Fe Bx-W class boxcar from near the west end of the string on the right.

Here, the 25-tonner moves C&LE box motor 640 through the yard.

This is the same view as the shot of the empty barn tracks, but taken from about 300' further west, closer to the west end of Barn 13. In the foreground is Milwaukee Electric crane D16 followed by CTA 4321, our last unrestored CTA "plushie" in passenger configuration.

Our faithful freelance photographer, Zach Ehlers, was also part of the switch crew and sent the following roster shots of interesting cars that are rarely seen by the public (or, for that matter, most volunteers).

South Shore package trailer 504 started life as an Indiana Service Corp combine before becoming an RPO and, eventually, a freight trailer.

Fort Wayne-Lima 91 has seen better days. It's a lightweight interurban combine that became a house for several decades. The original lettering is still plainly evident on the end of the car.

Our portable substation, Wisconsin Electric Power 12, is pictured outside Barn 14.

Here's Milwaukee Electric crane D16.

South Shore 8 is our representative from that railroad's first order for coaches. It's not in bad shape, but its motors were removed by the railroad before it came to IRM, so it's effectively a control trailer. Fortunately, this car has little or no serious body rot.

North Shore 172 came to us in 2018 from the Indiana Transportation Museum, where it had been stored by its owner, IRM member John Horachek. Those tubes you see in the windows are rolls of custom-made seat fabric for use in restoring this car's seats when the time comes.

Penn-Ohio Railfanning

Frank writes...

The Pennsylvania Trolley Museum and Winterfest were the main event of our trip this past weekend to Pittsburgh, of course, but that didn't mean there weren't side trips. For Richard and me, there were two.

Our first side trip, predictably enough, was simply a stopover in downtown Pittsburgh when we arrived in the area on Friday. We made a beeline to the Duquesne Incline, with its attractive 1880s Brill-built cars like the one visible at the bottom of the above photo.

At the top of Mount Washington is all the equipment that powers the incline, and you can walk into a mezzanine area and get a good look at it. Above is a general diagram.

Here are the main gear and cable drum. The motor is out of sight behind the drum; in the foreground is the backup motor, which is on rails so that it's normally backed away from the main gear.

The back wall has all sorts of tools and other stuff on display.

The view from the cars is hard to beat!

And here's the view from the bottom.

We also rode the Pittsburgh light rail system a bit, which was more enjoyable than I expected. There was a lot of street running, and of course the hilly terrain makes it pretty interesting compared with a lot of light rail lines.

On Sunday, after Winterfest, a bunch of us met back up in Cleveland. As much time as I've spent working on Shaker Heights 18, I'd never actually ridden the Shaker Heights line! The closest I got, and the only time I've ever ridden the Cleveland RTA, was in July 2003, when I rode CA&E 303 on the Waterfront line.

We met up at Green Road, at the end of the Shaker Boulevard line, where we boarded Breda LRV 824.

Here's the group: Richard, Brian, Steven, Zach, Will, and Jimmy. Greg joined us at Shaker Square.

Here we are at Shaker Square, where we got off and rode out to the end of the Van Aken line.

Our car is at Shaker Square as an inbound car comes off the Van Aken line.

Here's the builder's plate on car 836. We rode to the end of the Van Aken line, then back in all the way to Terminal Tower, where we had lunch. After that it was time for a trip on the old Cleveland Transit System line.

Here's Jimmy, Zach, Will, Richard, Steven, Brian, and Greg with Tokyu car 185 at the Cleveland Airport terminal.

The Tokyu cars are about the least interesting rapid transit cars I've ever ridden, both inside and out, but at least they have big windows and reasonably comfortable seats. We rode out to the airport and then from there all the way back to Windermere, though a few of the guys bailed at Terminal Tower because they needed to get back to their cars and hit the road.

Here we are at Windermere. A good time was had by all. I'll admit, I enjoyed riding the Shaker Heights line; that had to have been a kick to traverse on a five-car train of center-door cars.