Demolishing a Railroad Car Made Easy

If you had a plan for saving the Camp Grant, sorry, it's too late.

The job is always easier if you have the right tools. Here half of one side plus the roof has been removed in maybe 20 minutes.

Then they do the other side. These guys are professionals at demolition, although they didn't have much experience with railroad equipment. The supervisor I talked to marveled at how strong the structure was. And I even got to help by setting the hand brake to keep the flatcar from rolling back and forth as the shovel worked on the load.

The carbody was basically a wooden car with steel sides, as seen here. I hadn't realized how much of it was wood.

By the end of the day, we are down to a flatcar sandwich.


But wait, there's lots more interesting stuff to report today!




First of all, we need another trainman for both Saturday and Sunday this weekend. Sign up if you can. Thanks!!

Apart from watching the scrappers, I was working on the 277 again. Here's my new workbench in the front compartment. Bruneau had removed some parts in the front compartment and stripped them; I finished painting them with a first finish coat. Later, after the paint was dry, I installed them as seen here. (R) I'll get around to restoring the front compartment eventually, but for now it's best to store the parts in place, I think.

In the main compartment, the paint has flaked badly on the sheet metal air conditioning duct along the center of the ceiling. I'm hoping that just scraping it thoroughly will be sufficient, and I'm going to try repainting the first few feet as a test.

Then I spent some time stripping a door post where the paint was likewise in bad shape. Notice the inlay which will, alas, have to be painted over again.

And I installed a repainted coat hook on one of the new wall sections. The rest of the hooks that have been removed need to be sandblasted and repainted. Joel Ahrendt has been doing a great job on the baggage racks, and Gerry Detloff has finished repairing one which was bent.

And then I brought the 277's "lobster trap" over from Barn 4, where it had been stored for who knows how many years, and measured it for replacing a few broken slats. That shouldn't be too hard; once it's done, I'll need some help to install it at the rear end of the roof. Again, it's safer stored in place, I think. These lobster traps were carried on the cars so the trainmen could let them down into Lake Decatur and catch dinner. Or so I was told by somebody who was actually there....

And I went to Woodstock to drop off the engineering drawing for new parts for the IRR 205 at R&B Metals, one of IRM's certified suppliers.

Finally, I visited with Fred Ash, who is fixing up one of the "Art Train" cars for displays. Here we see him removing the shrink wrap that been applied; underneath, this car is in remarkably good shape, I think. (R) The lights were off, but the inside is in excellent condition. The larger room has glass-panelled display cases, and once the car is repositioned and wired, this should be a professional-looking display car for rotating displays of various sorts.