Electroliner diner update

Bill Wulfert has sent along a couple of photos showing recent work in the diner section of the Electroliner:

Of course that second photo shows Mister Electroliner himself, Ed Oslowski. The dining car has had its flooring taken up so that the subfloor can be repaired. Once that's done, new replacement flooring will go in. I believe that the diner actually had red carpet during its North Shore Line days, so that ought to be eye-catching.

Just Visiting

 

On Sunday, we had a few idle hours for a change, so my wife and I decided to drive out to IRM to visit and ride the train.  Luckily the weather was pleasant, after all the rain we've been getting.  The two mainline trains are seen above -- they make a nice contrast.

The 3:00 trip was nearly full, and everyone seemed to be having a good time.  I think that makes about 45 years of part-time labor all worthwhile.

Of course, we need the usual crew picture.  Here we see the (temporarily maskless) conductor Noah Uher and motorman Larry Stone.

Here Mike Stauber is checking his new yellow paint on the 3142.  As he says, it's much easier to see any problems in daylight, instead of in the barn.  But it looks great.

And here's the 36 over the pit being inspected, as reported before.

Once in a while it's nice to take a break!

Another pleasant Sunday

Frank writes...

I was out at IRM for the afternoon on Sunday and when I arrived, I noticed that despite the uneven weather forecast, the wood cars were in service. So of course this called for a stop up at the depot to admire the train. Larry was motorman and was diligently checking the weather radar between trips to watch for rain, but the rain never showed up and the 309-319 ran all day without any issues.

As for me, I wanted to get the 36 inspection done so that we can run a three-car train next Saturday for "CA&E Day" on the 3rd. I found the feed valve on the 36 cut out, and for a good reason: it leaked like an open drain cock. Fortunately my father, who just happened to stop by, came to the rescue with a feed valve that he happened to be carrying around in the trunk of his car. As you do.

So with the new feed valve in place, I was able to run the 36 over to the pit and finish up stuff like brake adjustment, motor check-ups, and controller inspection. A bunch of the inspection work on the contactors, and all of the lubrication, had been done previously. So the car is now ready for service.

Note to self: the anticlimber at the east end of the 36 never got a second coat of blue paint, and needs it. Oops. Anyway, at the end of the day we broke the service train on the tail track, added the 36 into the consist in the middle, and we now have a three-car wood train for the 3rd. Many thanks to Joel and Jeron for helping with switch moves and pit work.

My other good deed for the day was finally locating the two spare Shaker Heights ventilators we acquired with the trove of Trolleyville parts. These are off of a center-door car like our 18, but never got painted by Trolleyville, so we can use them for matching the correct color of roof red. From an initial glance, it appears that the correct color is much closer to "tile red" than to the "circus red" that Trolleyville put on the 18's roof in the 1960s, which is not a shock.

In other news, most of the Sunday regulars were working on getting two of the Highliners taken down to Schmidt Siding by a diesel to test them out under the overhead at the west end of the railroad. Next weekend, on the 3rd and 4th, you'll be able to run a two-car train of these behemoths for the low cost of just $10. No advance reservations, first-come first-served, so make sure to arrive early! There's no telling when, or if, we may offer this opportunity again.

And here's the interior of the Electroliner end car following spray-painting all the walls with primer. Joel reported that the 'Liner crew wasn't sure whether they'd be able to get this job done today, but he offered them a bag of "Casa Ahrendt" brand cookies if they did. Lo and behold, the spraying was done and the cookies were obtained. What can we say? A good manager knows how to motivate his workers.

Special Charter

 On Friday, IRM hosted a charter group of children from the Boys and Girls Club of Chicago, sponsored by the Union League, I was told.  Community outreach is an important part of our mission, so some special equipment was brought out that you don't ordinarily see on a weekday.

Such as the Shay, pulling the heavyweight coach train.

And our oldest Chicago L car, the 24.

A large number of volunteers showed up to make all this possible, including in particular the Steam Dept., Operations, and the Car Dept.  (not just us old retired guys!)

Everything went smoothly, and I believe a good time was had by all.

The 4410 and 4412 provided service for our regular visitors.

Meanwhile, back in the car shop, it was more of the usual activities.  As reported before, some of the headlight resistors on the 319 were blown out.  And since we would like to be able to run the wood cars after dark later this year, it's time to try to fix it.  

I soon decided that it was far better and easier to remove the individual tubes rather than try removing the entire box, with its wiring and so on.

So the three that were obviously bad were left on the bench in the shop for the electrical experts to ponder.  I don't remember what the cold resistance for the coils should be, but that can easily be measured next time.

I did some more wire-wheeling in the smoker of the 453, and after Joel provided me with a supply of leather straps, I started attaching one of the roof cables to the trolley boards.

Tim continues work on the platform of the 2872.

John spent much of the day on woodwork for the 306, but here he is painting the little latches for the window guards.  He also reports he now has a good formula for the orange paint, so the 306 will soon start looking much better!

Freight Car News

In case you've been getting bored with Electric Car Dept. news, our friend Bob Albertson sends along some pictures and information of recent progress involving freight car projects far to the south, out in the nether regions of Barns 10 and 11.  Nobody can be in two places at once, so we really appreciate getting updates like this!

1) The bobber roof is 1/3 done. Victor Humphreys, Dave Rogan and Bill Peterson continue to work away on that project.

 2) Rick Marzec and others from the steam department have been helping work on a couple cars to get them ready for the Milwaukee Railroad Historical Association event in August. Last week his team painted the sides of URTX 37190 in barn 11 and this week the side ladders and hardware were painted black. I've included a couple pictures and will take more next week.  Buzz will do the lettering in July and that car will be done.

 

3) MILW hopper 97051 has been moved outside to take its turn being sand blasted. It will be repainted grey with black lettering. Also planned to be done by the MRHA meeting.

 

4) SOO caboose X5001 is not SOO any more.  Buzz is leading the project to return it to MILW X5001 orange. Also planned to be done by August.

 

5) Warren Newhouse is heading the effort to blast and repaint the MILW dynamometer, but I'll let him talk about that project.

Breaking News

 We still need a trainman on the CA&E wood cars for this Sunday.   You do not need to be rules-qualified.

And in other historic news, Frank discovered that the Hicks Locomotive and Car Works built some of the early Jordan spreaders, as documented at this post.  We hadn't known that, but it makes more sense than building furniture.  In any case, I'll update the company history soon.  With luck, you learn something new every day.

Tuesday Progress

There are so many different things happening at IRM, even on a weekday, that it's hard to keep them all organized.  Let's see how well I can do.

I'll start with the 453.  The second shift guys are helping with this; here we see that Greg has disassembled one of the trolley bases and will be refurbishing it for service.  This is a big help, as right now there's not a lot more that can be done on the roof until the bases are in place.

I was able to remove the rest of the screws holding the baggage rack on the south side of the smoker, and with some help from John I got it down and stored in the main compartment.  Now I can start prepping the walls.  Wire wheeling, however, gets old in a hurry.

This is where the first aid box should be, but it's been stolen.  Luckily I still have some replacements that I made several years ago.

Then I remembered that there were still two brackets for cables running up through the canvas that need to be caulked and attached.  So that got done.  I will still need some assistance to solder the connectors back onto the cables.

Tim wasn't out today, but I noticed that a new steel plate is now in place on the west end of the 2872.  He certainly works fast.

Let's take a break and see how urban development is going.  Here we're at the west end of the Central Avenue paving, looking southwest where the street makes a bend.  Lots of material has been dumped and rolled.

Here is where the pad for the North Western building will be.  It's been rolled also.

To its west, there's an empty lot waiting for a customer, and beyond it is the alley that will run behind the buildings.  Contact Diamond Realty if you're interested. 

We had a pretty good crowd of visitors for a weekday today, I think.  Service was provided by two CTA singles, with motorman Fred Zimmerman (shown) and conductor Robert Neil.  

The 309 and 319 will be running both days this weekend, so I went over to clean them up, and removed the yellow ropes.  We can now run them at 100% capacity.

John Sheldon was working hard on the 306 all day, and he has really made tremendous progress.  Here he showed me various paint samples for the orange paint; the final color has not quite been decided yet.  I think orange is especially hard to match.

Meanwhile, the window frames on both sides of the car have already been painted with a first coat of yellow.

And he was hard at work all day making new wood parts for the body posts.

Steve and Samuel Sanderson stopped by to paint some parts for the Electroliner out in the barn, and also visited the 453.

Speaking of which, I took some time to vacuum up the roof a little.  When the car is pulled outside and can run under its own power, this problem will solve itself, but I can't wait that long.  Anything to get away from wire-wheeling.

And after:

And I also sanded down the latest Bondo job on the end of the car, from several weeks ago.  It ought to be ready for primer.

And I did some touch-up black on the roof.  At this point, the canvas had gotten dirty from me climbing on it.

Back on the inside, wire-wheeling the south side of the car is much harder than the north, for some reason.  Getting even this little patch down to bare metal took a lot of effort.

And I finished up one of the end panels.  If you look closely, you can see the holes where the elevated license is attached.  Now we just need to locate one that will fit.  I went into the 460 to check on the placement of all these items.

And at the other end, we see the compartment for the wrecking tools.  At some point, this needs to be supplied with the appropriate tools.

EXTRA!   EXTRA!

We should mention again that the 309 and 319 will be running in regular service on both Saturday and Sunday this weekend, June 26 and 27.  Things are getting back to normal!

But wait, it gets better!  For July 3rd, a date that will live in infamy, we should have the three-car wood train, 36, 309, and 319, in service, plus a two-car steel train, 409 and 431, plus the 460.  That's six, count 'em, six CA&E cars that you can ride.  You won't want to miss it!

The 460 is currently over the pit for inspection.

TRAVEL ADVISORY

For those of you who haven't been out to the Museum lately, we should mention that a large road project is currently in progress at the intersection of Union Rd. and Route 20, by Seven Acres.  20 is detoured for two or three miles.  And it'll take several months, they always do.  This could be a real headache on a busy weekend, if you're coming from the south or east, as most of us do.  We can suggest a couple of detours.

Coming west on 20 from Elgin, I prefer to turn onto Briar Hill Rd. at Henpeck (where Big Timber crosses 20) and head north to Harmony Rd., then jog west to Seeman and north to the Museum.  If you're getting off the toll road at 20, you could head northwest on 20 to the new Harmony circle, then east on Harmony to Seeman.  Obviously, there are other routes you could take; any other suggestions are welcome.