Fifty Years

Frank writes...

My father and I were both at IRM on Saturday for reasons that will be made clear shortly. The big news was that Richard made a lightning trip out east during the week and visited the Middletown & Hummelstown Railroad. The M&H's former owner, Wendell Dillinger, died late last year; he had been a major force in CA&E preservation in the 1960s and saved quite a bit of CA&E-related material. He left his estate to the M&H Railroad and its employees, so they've started distributing his collection. Some of the CA&E artifacts have now arrived at IRM. Thanks to Mike Graycar and the people of the M&H Railroad for making these items available and to Bill Wall for facilitating the acquisitions. Special thanks to the late Wendell Dillinger, who had the foresight to preserve these items.

There were some boxes of paperwork, which is appreciated and which we will go through and scan. A lot of the items were patterns, as shown above. Some of these were obvious - brake heads, center bearings, swing link hangers - but others weren't. All of them had CA&E pattern numbers painted on them, which is good, but of course we don't have the key. Still, these were dutifully labeled and added to our collection of patterns.

All, that is, except for this pile. We're really excited to get these because this appears to be a full set of patterns for casting third rail beam components! From left to right, you've got contact shoes; suspension links, with the contact shoe hanger behind it; in the foreground, the large casting that bolts to the underside of the wooden beam; then a wooden pattern for the base of the sleet scraper cylinder (the second board behind it is the sleet scraper shoe); and in the box at right are patterns for the sleet scraper cylinder. Wow, neat! We acquired a number of third rail beams from Trolleyville back in 2010, but not as many as we need, and we're a total of five beams short. We are going to look into pricing for getting these components cast, hopefully in the near future. Watch this space for updates!

While we were sorting parts, the boss stopped by. "The beatings will continue until morale improves." Many thanks to Zach and Ashton, who worked with me to get the patterns into storage. And a huge thank you to Richard for making the trip out east and loading all these items!

After that, I worked in the 460 for a while. It took some time and elbow grease, but I got all the screws to thread into the first replacement seat back, after which we added the cushions. Voila, the first seat is done! My father models it, pointing out the window at a North Shore car going past as part of a switch move to rearrange the 714 and 749.

In other news, a contractor was working during the week to spray foam insulation into the ceiling of Barn 4. There's more to go, but they made a lot of progress.

In the evening came the main event: a small party to celebrate my father having been an IRM volunteer for 50 years! He joined in July 1974 and started working on the 309 in 1975.

Pizza and cake were enjoyed by all. Many thanks to my wife Bevin, who ordered the cake, made up the decorations and party favors, and was really behind the entire thing.

My father thought ahead and brought a bottle of sparkling grape juice, which went quickly. Photo by David Fullarton.

Here he is cutting the cake with Bill, Jon, Norm and Steve at the table behind him, while some of the younger "second shift" guys are in the background.

After the food came a slide show, with my father showing a few trays of slides he took from the mid-1970s through the mid-1990s. Here he is, pointing out something, with onlookers including me, Will, Mike, and Steve. Photo by Zach Ehlers. Many thanks to all who attended, and of course, a big congratulations to my dad on 50 years of volunteering!