Al Reinschmidt Remembered

 A friend sent us this link to an article in Railway Age, announcing the establishment of a scholarship fund in memory of Al Reinschmidt.

Al was a good friend of many of us, and a frequent blogger on this site until his death three years ago.  He joined IRM after his retirement, and helped us a great deal with the restoration of the 36 and 319 after they arrived from Trolleyville.  He will probably be best remembered for his enthusiastic participation in Day Out With Thomas, among other things.  He was also widely known in the railroad industry, and we are glad to see a tangible reminder of his contributions to railroading through this scholarship fund.

Year-End Clearance

 Yes, friends, it's that time of year again when we need to clean out our inventory of old, worn-out tools and supplies to make room for exciting new fashions and projects!  In my case, I wanted to clean up the scaffolding around the roof booth in preparation for installing canvas on the 453.  And after that was done, it was time to start cleaning the interior of the car.

I found a light string on one of the shelves on the platform, and installed it in the 453, with some new bulbs.  It's nice to have lights inside the car, especially at this festive time of year.  And of course it makes cleaning easier.  Several parts from the car were removed and placed on the correct shelf in the shop for refurbishing.  And then I did a lot of sweeping and so on.

The interior will eventually need a thorough restoration, but for now it's not too bad.

Now that the car has actual lighting, I noticed for the first time that there are a couple of car cards that look authentic but which I haven't seen in any of the other CA&E cars.  More on those later.

Meanwhile, the rest of the Tuesday crew were at work.  John is seen here patching up the frames for the arched windows in the 306.

Frank Kehoe was working on truck parts for the 1754, but I didn't get a picture of him at work.  Sorry!  Tim was working on more parts for his ticket booth, as usual.

And there were other people at work, but I don't have any pictures or details.  Unless they want to submit their own stories.

A little bit of everything

Frank writes...

A lot got done on Sunday on a number of different projects. I managed to keep moving.

This isn't going chronologically, but the big news happened in the late afternoon and evening. Greg suggested working on bending the steel that was obtained last weekend by Joel for Shaker 18. Our resident steel-working expert, Richard, manned the torch to heat up the two 2' long pieces of bar stock while Greg and I ran the channel locks. After a bit of work, this was the result.

And then after dinner Greg cut the new pieces to length on the chop saw. This is the final (to date) product, with two new brake bars sitting in front of the two old brake bars. The task for next weekend will be to drill holes and grind in some radii. These will then be ready to install in the 18. A huge THANK YOU to Greg and Richard for all their work on this!

Moving back to mid-afternoon, when I had arrived at the shop I found this happy sight: during the week Richard was able to separate the two pieces of the 18's tail light casting. The inner ring and outer ring shown here had been fused together by a mixture of rust and paint, but with a lot of patience and heat he was able to get them apart. He even drilled out the end of the crack in the inner ring and brazed that up.

In the previous photo you'll note there's a bit of a chunk missing from the outer ring. We were able to salvage that, so Richard brazed it back into place as shown above. Afterwards he sand-blasted the work and then I primed both cast rings. The next step in this little project will be to construct or procure a metal can about 7-3/4" in diameter and 2-5/8" deep to replace the hopelessly rusted original.

And as we continue to regress in time, when I first arrived at the museum there wasn't anybody around. Joel and Richard hadn't arrived yet while Greg and Good Nick were out working on DC Line Department projects (more on that later). So I grabbed some black paint and got to work painting the saddles for the 453. Here's the "before and after" when I was partway through; rest assured that I did finish painting all of the saddles. I also put a second coat of black paint on the "bird house" signal box but it really doesn't look any different than it did before so I didn't snap a picture. But it's definitely ready to hang on display somewhere now. Per Joel's recommendation I also put some aluminum paint on the base ends of the three trolley poles painted last week.

Of course everyone else was hard at work too. As mentioned previously Greg and Nick were out in the bucket truck doing line work. A replacement pole in Yard 6 needed to have the last of its hardware swapped over from the rotted original, so they completed than and then took down the old rotted pole. Meanwhile Joel is working on repair work on our old reliable, the 415. The step gearbox on one side failed, meaning the step just stays in the "down" position and doesn't raise when you close the doors. So he's disassembled the gearbox for repairs as shown here.

Ashton and Thomas were working for much of the day on DC Line Department projects too, in this case cleaning up wood strains. This isn't the most glamorous job but it's absolutely necessary if we want to keep our overhead in good repair. Richard was also out, of course, mostly working on projects for the 18. I also gave him the Scalzo 5x7 collection and took home the Scalzo 8x10's. So watch for some more interesting stuff to come.

And it was the last night of Happy Holiday Railway: The Holiday Light Experience. This was the oddest HHR yet but it worked out pretty well in the end and we got nothing but rave reviews from everyone who attended. At the end of the night, the electric cars got put back into the barns amidst a bit of freshly-fallen snow. The open car is pictured out on the tail track with the surrounding snow lit up by the car lights. Hey, is that guy qualified on this car?

Christmas Tree Limited

Here at the workshops we can't have a Christmas tree without American Flyer trains running around it, and this year we have my limited collection of Wide Gauge in operation.  Since of course the development of IRM's model train displays has been delayed by the virus, this is the best we can do.

Naturally, the larger trains tend to require more real estate.

Here comes a one-car branchline local, running extra on the holiday.

The locomotive is patterned after the early New Haven boxcabs, and dates to about 1928, as does all of the rolling stock, I believe.

And this is the freight train.

This might look like a boxcar and gondola to you, but according to the catalogs it's an Automobile Car and a Sand Car.  So the gon has a load of sand.

The tunnel was vaguely patterned after catalog illustrations, since authentic Wide Gauge tunnels are nearly impossible to find.  But it was fun to make.

Finally, you can even go for a ride in the cab by following this link.  Please remain seated while the train is in motion!

Christmas Greetings

Virgin and Child Crowned by Angels

(Colyn de Coter, Dutch, c. 1490)

And the grandchildren wish you all a safe and happy holiday season:

Tuesday Snapshot

 This will be brief.  The usual Tuesday crew were at work.  John continued working on the wood parts for the 306, and Tim still has some trim pieces to add to the ticket booth.  Bill W. showed up later in the day also and continued work on L car parts.

I painted the new saddles for the 453.

And also all remaining parts of the roof, as seen here.  Now I'm waiting for the canvas to arrive.

I also worked some more on the bent grab irons at the #1 end.  I didn't get any pictures, but they're barely visible at lower right in this picture.  They must have been bent in the same Trolleyville collision that punched a hole in the roof.  I was unable to get either of them loose, however, even though I managed to break off a couple of bolts.  This job will require heating.

So that's about it for today.

Sunday miscellany

Frank writes...

I was a bit delayed getting out to the museum Sunday but still managed to get some stuff done. It turned out to be a day with a little bit of everything.

First up, I was tasked with turning the 4' long piece of steel that Joel obtained in Rockford for the 18 into two 2' pieces of steel. The results are shown here; these two pieces will be bent and then cut to length and drilled to create two more short brake rods. The originals that we are replicating are to the right on the work bench.

I also put more oil in the forklift per Joel's instructions. Then it was over to the "lean-three" to put a coat of aluminum paint on our trolley poles. The two poles for the 453 are in the foreground while beyond them is a slightly shorter pole earmarked for the 36. These are now all ready to go out to their respective cars and, later on, be installed.

By the time I was done with that, it was a bit after 4pm and time to get things prepped for the Holiday Lights Experience. The 19 had been parked at Barn 9 North as shown so that the wye remained clear, so I moved it over to Central Avenue and plugged in Jolly Polk Santa. Others including Richard and Joel got the 749 and the 4000s going and plugged in a lot of strings of lights.

Then the 251 caught my eye. Zach had been able to procure a less-worn journal wedge from a spare truck and installed it in the car. A couple of short test trips Saturday night suggested that the car's longstanding problem with a bad journal may be solved, but more testing was called for. So Zach, Greg, and Nick made a couple of low-speed trips down the main line with the car, stopping at regular intervals to "shoot" the bearings with a laser thermometer. I'm a fan of railfans taking pictures of railfans taking pictures, so I managed to get Abby taking a photo of Jack - home from college for the holidays - on the car's steps. I then went along on another test trip. It had been a while since I'd ridden in the 251 and the prospect of it rejoining the operating fleet is an exciting one.

Back at the barn, I helped Joel move some large jacks around and then the 68 got moved onto the inspection pit. It needs some brake work on one of its trucks so that will be among the planned wintertime projects. With luck, the car will be available for revenue service again next year.

And finally, at the end of the night, I helped Richard in trying to further disassemble the marker light from the 18. A week-long soak in Evapo-rust helped but some additional cajoling was needed in order to remove the red lens from the casting. But it did come out and is shown here. Richard tried a few rounds of heating the lens casting, which as shown is actually two castings that are currently painted/rusted together, but no luck yet in separating them. But we don't give up that easily. Stay tuned!

The other notable project that was underway was that Joel joined Andy Sunderland in patching a hole that had developed in the tarpaper roof on the Kankakee streetcar body. This is one of the few electric cars still stored outside so it's a priority to keep it somewhat watertight. Of course more was going on too. Steel was procured for brake parts for the 68; Zach, Nick, and Greg cleaned up governors that then got installed on the 409 and 251; and I dropped off the last of the Scalzo Collection 4x6's that got sorted and cataloged. But that's not the end of the project: Richard gave me a box of 5x7's to similarly sort through. So keep an eye out for more "mystery photos" coming up. And, of course, tell your friends about Happy Holiday Railway. It's been extended one more weekend, to the 26th-27th, so you still have a chance to see what the whole town is talking about!

A Signpost of Progress

 Paul Krot sent us these pictures of B&G work yesterday, with text.

The B&G crew prepare to lift the signpost for the future gas station into place on the corner of Railroad and Central.  The concrete foundation with anchor bolts and conduit for future lighting was installed last Saturday by B&G.

Al Choutka made the lift using the digger derrick truck while Mark Afelt steadied the post from the bucket truck.

Dave Diamond and Jerry Lynn ran the nuts down and torqued them to spec.  The sign itself will be hung at a future date.  This is one more step forward in our Main Street scene.

Thanks to Paul for sending these in.  It's more difficult than ever to keep track of everything that's going on, so we're glad to post news like this from around the Museum.  Soon, I expect we'll be advertising gasoline at 35 cents a gallon.  That's a members only price, of course.

Thursday Report

Thursday saw the usual crew at work: Tim working on the 50th Avenue ticket booth, John Sheldon and Gerry working on the 306, and me on the 453.

I spent the day making new roof saddles for the car.  I'll spare you all the tired jokes about saddles that we've used before.  So here's some stop-motion photography instead:

We start with a pile of 8/4 white oak.  This stuff is heavy!

One of the original saddles is used as a pattern.  Sixteen new pieces are cut out on the big bandsaw, then sanded down on the belt sander as needed.  

Then we start drilling holes.  Since the bottom is curved, I need a long piece of plywood as a table so the holes are vertical.

We start with a 1/4" through hole, and then a 5/8" countersink hole.

Finally, at the bottom I drilled the shallow alignment holes.

Explanation: One of the bigger challenges in roof work is aligning the saddles directly over the carlines after the canvas has been stretched, so that the screws go into the carlines and not thin air.  In the past this has required various measurements, and often drilling pilot holes to find the carlines.  For this car, I have installed a small round-head wood screw into the center hole of each of the old saddles, which were easy to locate before the wood was painted.  (One of these screws is posed above.)  These screws should show up as small bumps in the canvas, and they are exactly in the longitudinal middle of each carline.  In this particular case, I determined that the old saddles were about 3/4" off center, so the alignment holes in the new saddles were placed 3/4" away from the center holes.  (We also need to make sure the seam in the canvas doesn't go over the alignment screws.)  When it's time to install the new saddles, the alignment holes will be placed over the alignment screws under the canvas, and everything should line up automatically.  We'll see how well this works.

Finally, I just had time to start painting.

I didn't have much time to photograph what the others were doing.  Here are a couple of grab shots of the steel work on the 306.

 Stay tuned for the next exciting episode!

IRM's Collection Grows

It's a Hicks Car Works exclusive! Many thanks to our intrepid cub reporter Jeron Glander for passing along the news that the museum's latest acquisition (and, I believe, our first rail-borne acquisition of 2020) arrived last Friday to very little fanfare. I didn't even hear it mentioned when I was out Sunday.

All photos are copyright Jeron Glander and may not be reproduced or distributed without permission

The new arrival is our only GE 25-tonner and is from Lone Star Cement - more recently known as Buzzi Unicem - of Elkhart, Indiana. I believe it was unnumbered. Jeron writes that it was built by GE in October 1942, has one traction motor, is 16' long, weighs 50,000 lbs, and is rated at 150hp. In a true "David and Goliath" scene, he captured this smallest GE passing our largest GE, the turbine, which is some 10 times as long, 17 times as heavy, and has more than 50 times the rated horsepower. And yet, in a fashion appropriate to the Biblical metaphor, the 25-tonner will surely end up pulling more weight at IRM than will the turbine. Many thanks to Buzzi Unicem for donating this diminutive, yet undoubtedly useful, little switcher. I suspect we will see it hooked to many a streetcar in coming years.

The Clock Is Ticking

 As the year quickly draws to a close, another busy Tuesday provides the substance for our latest report.  I spent the time painting the 453's roof with a finish black, as seen in these pictures.  First, the center was rolled with a long-handled roller.

After that was done, the one remaining grab iron was removed.  It shouldn't be necessary to climb onto the roof again until the canvas is ready to be placed on it.

Then I went along with the roller to finish off the sides.  The scaffolding makes it easy.

It looks nice, if I may say so myself.

That just leaves the bottom edges of the tack molding, which will be exposed after the canvas is attached.  So that has to be painted with a brush.  

I managed to get all the way around the car.

And it then looks like this.  Two corners are not yet complete, they're one day behind.  But otherwise the painting is finished.  The next steps will be to order the canvas and start making saddles.

Meanwhile, Gerry was working on steel repairs to the 306.  Here he is grinding metal parts that will be welded in tomorrow.

And John was working all day on woodwork for the interior of the 306.

This, for instance, is a window shade track with the ratchets for the window latches.

Tim has made more progress on the ticket window.

By the way, I might mention that work on the interior of the Electroliner is continuing at a steady pace.  There's at least one person working there nearly every day.  However, they prefer to remain as safe as possible, and thus the Liner is open only to the restoration crew.  So, as much as I'd like to be able to provide progress photos, we'll just have to wait.  I'm sure you will understand.  Of course, if anyone on the crew wants to send us updates, we'll be happy to publish them!