Weekend Photo Album

Happy Halloween from all of us here at the blog! To celebrate, our intrepid freelance photographer Steven has sent along an entire album of photos detailing the activities over Saturday, Sunday, and into Monday. Thanks, Steven!

The big activity on Saturday involved switching to "reload" Barn 6 following the completion of rebuilding work done by a contractor. Here we see the IT Class B on track 63 with the L4 to the right on track 64.

A trio of North Shore cars is heading down the hill at the "end of track" on the tail track at Electric Park with the 749 on the east end.

ComEd 4 pushes the Class B across Central Avenue in the throat to Yard 6. The 1565 isn't operational right now, of course, because its contactors are all being rebuilt. But stay tuned - we hope to have this iconic locomotive back in service soon.

After that, it was time to retrieve the IC MU cars from their temporary home on the 50th Avenue west track. These cars have unusual couplers - maybe Tomlinsons? - so an adapter, shown here, is needed to couple them to anything with MCB couplers.

Here's a nice shot of the interior of one of the IC MU cars. Though a tad bit tired, especially the floors, these cars are really in pretty decent shape and they do run. The factor that limits them from running more often is that our overhead wire would need a lot of work to be pantograph-ready.

This stool was thoughtfully set up for the conductor riding the head end of the shove. We're looking into Barn 6 on Track 61, with the 1100 in the distance.

Now it's Sunday, where Steven was working over in Barn 2 on getting the 415 ready for paint. A lot of this work involved masking. (And note a bit of original IT orange paint peeking out there!)

And more masking.

Here's an overview of the east end of Barn 2 looking east. Over at the northeast corner, on track 21, is the L&N FA, which is in the midst of a long-term and extremely thorough restoration; next is the DuPont (ex-Bath & Hammondsport!) Plymouth, which is getting new cab doors, and the 415 beyond it; in front of us is Milwaukee Road 33C, which just regained a roof hatch; and barely visible on the right, at the southeast corner of the barn, is the UP doodlebug. This spot is where the 966 sat for decades, with the 321 shoved in on top of it and the 309 in the middle of track 24, until the CA&E cars moved to Barn 7 in about 1993 or so. The 966 didn't leave Barn 2 until about 2010.

And now it's Monday, when Steven was able to make it out to IRM again for day #3 of a marathon weekend. Above is the north side of the 415, with all the windows as well as the roof masked.

Plastic sheeting covers the roof to avoid getting overspray all over the canvas. The roof of the car isn't spectacular, but it's not in terrible shape and is serviceable for a while yet. The car was reroofed (well, re-canvased at least) at IRM in the 1970s.

A shot of the 415 looking east-southeast.

With the exception of the ends, it looks like all the initial masking is complete, including all the windows on the south side of the car, shown here.

One more view of the south side of the 415 looking east.

And many thanks to Steven for also painting one more seat for Shaker Heights 18 over in the car shop! Getting all of these seats painted by Frank and Steven is a huge help, and certainly comprises the vast majority of the progress being made on the 18 at the moment.

Sunday Report

Frank writes...

Sunday was the last day of the regular 2023 operating season, and the weather made it pretty obvious why. From temperatures in the 70s two weeks ago, to the 50s a week ago, it was in the 40s on Sunday and after dark we even saw a few ominous snowflakes swirling around. Harumph.

There's plenty to do on the 18, but for the moment it takes a back seat to IT 415, which is on a tight timeline to get painted before the Diesel Department needs the car's berth in the heated diesel shop back. A few of us, including Good Nick, Greg, Steven, and Jimmy, worked on putting the finishing touches on the car prior to releasing it to Jamie and the painting crew. Above, Steven is masking off the edge of the roof line.

I spent much of the afternoon masking windows on the north side of the car, as shown here. This also involved cleaning off some of the dust and crap from the "wet sand-blast" job done on the car a couple of years ago, though they'll finish cleaning all the surfaces before it gets painted, of course. Greg and later Steven added the sheets of paper in the middle of the windows.

Meanwhile, Nick was hard at work sanding around each and every rivet on the entire car. Yeesh. Did I mention that the heated shop over in Barn 2 is a pretty nice place to work on a chilly day?

There was still progress made on Shaker Heights 18, though. Thanks to Greg, who helped me schlep the seats that Frank Kehoe painted during the week from the shop over to the car. We then set a bunch of the remaining seats out on sawhorses and on the traction motors sitting in the "lean-three," as shown above, ready for Frank's next trip out. I also removed a couple of remaining bench seat backs from the car and brought them into the shop, plus I took the two recently painted windows back to the car to free up bench space in the wood shop. In the left foreground of the photo above is part of the bench seat "cushion" that goes in the center drop section, and behind it is the long, thin "seat back" from the drop section, both of which were retrieved from the 18 on Sunday.

And of course we had to stand back in awe of the new concrete in Barn 4. This is really going to be a big improvement! We need to stay off the concrete for 10 days, after which it will be sealed and can then be put to use.

In other news, Bob, Mikey, and Brian were working on machining more pins for Type M contactors for the Class B. They've now machined new components for at least 10 contactors for the locomotive, which is tremendous progress. I also saw Tim, who was working on something for the 1808; Gregg, who was splitting his time between wood for the roof of the 1702 and Lackawanna coach seats; and Joel, who was working on fixing the golf cart, among other things.

STOP THE PRESSES: As I write this on Monday evening, I've just received photos from Frank Kehoe showing the work he did today on the 18's seats.

This is exciting progress - a huge THANK YOU to Frank for all his work on the seats! In the upper photo you can see a mixture of cross seats and bench seat sections (the trapezoidal cushion in the foreground is part of the wraparound bench seat at the rear of the car) while the bottom photo shows a cushion and seatback from the drop section, shown earlier in their "before" state. Frank reports that he painted 10 cushions and there are only eight more that are currently still in the shop and yet to do.

A Heavy Pour

It was another rainy day in Chicagoland today, but inside Barn 4 there was a different kind of pouring going on. Our intrepid cub reporter, Bob Olson, has sent along news that the wall-to-wall concrete floor at the east end of Barn 4 was poured today - and he's got photos to prove it! The area with a full concrete floor covers the former midpoint of the barn all the way to the new eastern wall. Only the westernmost 100' or so is still "open track" with concrete panel walkways.

Our tour starts at the northeast corner of the building, just outside the Track 41 doorway, looking southwest into the new building extension. The visible doors are what used to be the east end of Barn 4.

Same location, but looking south at the wall between the barn and the lean-to extension. Back a decade or so, when the shop lean-to was being extended the second time, some wag dubbed the extension the "lean-three" as a joke, versus the "lean-two" earlier extension and the "lean-one" original shop. For better or worse, the nickname stuck. As such, this new extension being east of the original shop, it is currently dubbed the "lean-zero."

Once again, outside the Track 41 East door looking southwest:

Here we are inside the old part of the barn, at what used to be the east end of Barn 4 looking west down track 42 with the pit to the right.

And just a few feet further west, you can see all the new concrete. Track 43 has had a full concrete apron around it for many years.

Same view as before. Bob reports that 162 cubic yards of concrete were used in this operation.

And here we're standing in that same spot, between tracks 42 and 43, but looking northeast at the pit:

And here's same spot but looking straight east, with the new extension visible through the doors:

One more overview of the new concrete poured in the old section of the barn:

This is the interior of the "lean-zero" extension, which will be used for storage, looking east from the existing lean-to:

And the same view again:

Many thanks to Bob for sending along this exciting news and a full photographic tour!

Fresh Paint

Many thanks to Richard Schauer, who earlier tonight sent along the below two-part update on Milwaukee trolley bus 441, which is off-site being repainted by a contractor.

The time you've all been waiting for has arrived!  441 has begun receiving its finish colors, and it's looking sharp.  You will receive two parts from me tonight, such is the volume of photos.

First, the last two photos of it in primer were taken on October 18.  They were finishing up the masking for painting the ivory above the belt rail.  441 got moved into the paint booth after this, and that's when things started moving....

The next seven photos, for which I didn't have my usual camera, show 441 in the tight confines of the paint booth.  The ivory color is finished, and the V on the front dash shows up clearly.  Note that the V is sort of a compound figure with the maroon stripe, which is why the upper part might look a little angular or unusual.  All of these photos were taken on October 25th.

To be continued...

News as it happens!  These photos are about 3 hours old, and the paint was just barely dry.  441 has received the orange color and is really starting to look good.  The ivory below the belt rail will be overpainted in imitation gold, which will become the lettering and striping color.  This will then be painted in maroon, and when the masks are removed, the gold will be revealed.  The black "shadow stripe" will be applied to the bottom edge, with swells aft of the wheel arches to resemble flowing fenders.  And to finish it off, the rear bumper becomes silver.  All of this work should be done in the next few days, and I'll keep you informed with plenty of pictures.