From Another Angle

We welcome Steve Smunt and Paul Hough as contributors, who have started sending photos of their work on the 277.  

Start of rehab.  Window sashes, interior transom, jambs, and mullions have been removed from windows #9,10. The exterior transom with 1913 art glass is exposed.

The alligatored paint has been heat stripped off the wall veneer.

A close-up view of the failed paint during removal.

Paul Hough is positioning the compression brace for regluing wall linoleum to the bulkhead

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The compression brace for regluing wall linoleum is in its ready position.  The first top coat of tan wall enamel has been applied.

The editor adds: This compression brace is the one I made back in the late 70's for gluing the veneer back onto the walls of the 309.  And I never throw anything out.  Incidentally, pictures such as the third one down bear an uncanny resemblance to what the 309 used to look like. 

IT 277 Progress

 Gregg reports on recent work on the IT combine 277.

Some more progress on the 277. An old belt was reused to make a strap. A grommet was also recycled.

Steve and Paul are making good progress on the interior. Stripped and sanded. Then white primer.

In the baggage compartment are a slack adjuster and a brake shoe. Recently the 277 was over the pit for its yearly inspection. Some problems were discovered and are being worked on. Meanwhile, some of the parts are being stored on the floor.

End of the Season

Frank writes...

We're posting a bit out of order here, but my father got his post about Monday's news written before I even started on my post about Sunday's news. Oh well. Sunday was the end of the museum's regular season and the final day of the Pumpkin Train event. It was also (barely) warm enough for another coat of paint on the latest "broom job" cosmetic restoration subject.

I put a third coat of orange on the entire car below the belt rail. It may need one more coat, I'm not sure, but it is looking a lot better regardless. If I get another day or two of warm weather this fall, great; if not, then in the spring we'll apply the maroon pin-striping, black lettering, and grey roof paint. After this, I went along Bruneau Drive at Joel's request and used a paint marker to identify some of our spare air compressors. I believe the plan is to move these into indoor storage in the new Barn 4 addition.

The exciting news came after we returned from dinner, though. After cleaning up a couple of the antimacassars from the 451, I took one of the reupholstered seat backs over to the 460 for a test fitting. The lights didn't work because the batteries were dead - this darn modern technology! - but by flashlight, I was able to get the first redone seat back into place.

Success! It's hard to see below, but I got two of the three machine screws that go down through the tube frame into the seat back threaded in. The third is close but I couldn't get it to thread in; with leatherette and fabric in the way, it's almost impossible to see exactly what you're doing. But we'll get there. It will also be a simple job to install the three wood screws that go sideways into the bottom of the seat back, and then we install new cushions and voila! You can see in the above photo that some of the original seats in the 460 are pretty rough; the one I took out for this test-fitting had stuffing spilling out. This will be a big improvement.

In other news, the future car shop parking lot has been scraped down. I don't think they plan on paving it this week, but that may happen sometime later in November. Several of the Sunday regulars were off on a field trip, but Joel was buzzing around doing Joel things. Jimmy was in streetcar service all day, but after he put the 3142 away, he retrieved an air gauge from the 309 that had been acting up and repaired it. Thanks, Jimmy!

And finally, Joel sends along this photo taken inside the cab of the Electroliner, where I believe they have gotten a coat of finish paint on almost everything. So, that's coming along.

Monday, Monday

It's been a while since I happened to be in the car shop when all the 306 guys were there, so we have a lot of progress photos to share today.  But first, a relic from the distant past.

Back in 70's, we built a platform attached to the building posts along the south wall of Barn 4 for working on the roof of the 309.  The storage box seen below, which had been nailed to the walls inside the 321, was attached to the barn near the roof.  Later, when the platform was removed, the box was inaccessible.  But since that section of the barn is being rebuilt, it was possible for Tim to take the box down to get it out of the way.

Gee, I haven't seen these brushes and cans for about 40 years.  But into the trash they go.

However, the box has been preserved for future use.

I soldered together the third and last bearing.  It looks just like the others.  Now they go to the machinist.

So let's see what's happening on the 306.  Here Fritz is cutting some metal parts.

Gerry and Phil are installing the boards above the windows in the main compartment.

The new ceiling is being installed:

And Gerry is working on repairing the sandboxes for the car:

And among other things, John is preparing these covers for the light switches:

It's really going to look great.

Tim has finished another door for the 1808:

And the interior is coming along nicely.

The cab:

Steve Iversen is working on doors for the Kansas City PCC.  

I've never liked PCC doors.  I'm not sure Steve does either.  But them's the breaks.

He has also ordered new glass for the front windows, since the old glass was broken.

And of course there were other projects going on elsewhere, you just have to be there.

Finally, for some reason Track 52 was pulled and the train parked on Station 2.  Pretty spiffy.

Next stop, Washington Union Station!

Baked to Perfection

Another bearing got soldered today in the big oven.  Just one more to go, and then I will have my machinist turn them down to spec.  Here are the two halves pasted together and strapped:

And several hours later, it had cooled off enough to be carefully lifted out of the oven.  Gotta be careful, it still says "HOT"!

Meanwhile, Tim just never stops.  Here he's painting a door for one of the cars, the 1268, I think.  I forgot to ask.

And Steve Iversen is paying us another visit from Oklahoma.  He says he'll be here for two weeks.  Here he is working on the Kansas City car, and behind him are the front windows that he has been working on.

And watch this space for news about a long-overdue celebration.

Miscellaneous Projects Report

 Buzz Morisette sends us a brief summary of his recent activities.

I have a few pictures to share from miscellaneous IRM projects underway.

The south side of the PRR Tool car has been completed and lettered. Bob, Victor, and Bill have moved on to rebuilding the northwest corner.

After several floor repairs in the Milwaukee X-5001 business car,  the Freight Dept. hired a contractor to replace what was left of the old linoleum. I don’t think the contractor realized that a such a small job could be so much cutting work.

The finished floor looks great:

Lastly I applied car number stencils for the Cleveland PCC 4223. The painter is scheduled to finish the detail stripes and numbers Saturday.

Also of note are the new LED barn lights above 4223 just recently installed in Barn 4.

The Heat Is On

The next step in the long-running 309 bearing project is to solder the bearings halves together so that they can be machined accurately.  To do this, we need the big oven.  Without it, I don't know what we'd do.

We have special solder paste which can be used to attach the two halves.  Then the work has to be joined, and these are heavy cast brass parts.  That's why the oven is necessary.  Here's what the bearing looks like inside the oven.  The halves are joined with pipe straps so they'll remain perfectly aligned.

It takes a long time for the oven to get up to temperature, and then a long time for the work to cool down again.  So I wasn't exactly overworked.  But I don't want to walk away from the hot oven for very long.  One problem is that it's impossible to see what's going on inside.  I certainly don't want to open the door when the temperature is near 600 degrees.  But today the first of the new bearings was put together.

Of course, several other projects were in progress.  As always, Tim was at work on his L cars.  And here Victor shows off the horn for the CGW snow plow which he plans to install.

Victor and Bill have also been hard at work on the Pennsy tool car.  It's been at least partially painted and lettered, as seen here.  As tool cars go, this is a jewel!

Photo by Bob Albertson

And work continues on the interior of the 277.  Back about 15 years ago, I spent some time restoring one side of the main compartment -- work which stopped when the Trolleyville collection suddenly became available.  Gregg recently restored the baggage compartment, and now work on the main compartment has resumed, being done by Steve Smunt, whom I remember from the early days, and Paul Hough.

I went over there to look at what they've done so far, and provide some advice and assistance.  It's really good news that work continues on one of the premier items in the collection.

Finally, it was another beautiful fall day at IRM.  The pumpkin train will be running again this weekend, so don't miss it!

Sunday Report

Frank writes...

Sunday was a beautiful, sunny day in the 70s. I had actually brought my daughter out on Saturday to ride the Pumpkin Train (running this coming weekend too - be sure to tell your friends!) and noticed that the CB&Q scale test car parked behind the Steam Shop had had its tarp removed. A few years ago I had traced what lettering I could off the car, but those tracings had gone missing, so a year ago I agreed to re-trace the lettering. However, the car was shortly thereafter tarped.

I spent a little while tracing lettering fragments onto Mylar, just to put into the files. The car had at least three paint jobs: its as-built livery, which is the only one that is well documented thanks to a nice builder's photo, and featured "SCALE TEST CAR" lettering on the sides in segmented stencil-style lettering; its end-of-service livery, with "SCALE TEST" on the sides in bigger letters (that's what's vaguely evident in the photo above); and at least one intermediate livery with "SCALE TEST CAR" on the side of the car, but with only a few difficult-to-make-out fragments remaining. Anyway, the information has now been recorded.

After that, I spent a while brush painting on the 63, putting a second coat on areas like the front window alcove, anticlimbers, and doors. It still needs one (well, hopefully just one) more coat of orange on the side sheets, but depending on the weather, that may need to wait until the spring.

Norm was working on the Electroliner, Nick and Greg were moving more spare parts out of the area that will soon become the car shop parking lot, and Joel and Richard were clearing space in the "first addition" section of Barn 4 - now the middle third of the building - so that the electrician can install nice new LED work lights. Others including Zach, Matthew and Jimmy were also hard at work, among other things getting the Illinois Terminal train inspected and then switched back to Barn 8. Joel showed me the air compressor above; I'm not sure where it's from, but it's going to be piped in as a backup to the current two shop air compressors.

Inside the wood shop, Buzz has been hard at work. The table saw in the background is new, while the table saw in the foreground - which used to be where the one in the background is now - has been moved to the former site of the Berlin sander. Joel reports that one of these will be used for ripping and the other for cross-cutting. Swanky! I also ran into Charlie, who did the lion's share of the body restoration and painting work on CA&E 451 back in 2010-2011, and we took a look through the car. We're increasingly convinced that the interior, which is now tan, was originally blue like the 460. Even the baggage racks, which on the 460 are silver, have blue paint under the tan. Since the 451 is being backdated to its condition around 1947-1948, that means the interior should go back to being blue. Pretty neat!