Something New, Something Blue

Frank writes…

I'll get the big news from the weekend out of the way first. I arrived at the museum late Sunday afternoon and was greeted by this novel sight:

Yes indeed, Metra 614, one of the last two surviving F40C diesels, had arrived at the museum a few hours earlier to great interest from assorted railfans and diesel folks. One of the unusual things about this engine is that IRM volunteers Herb Hansen and Lois Geister were on the Nortran board when these locomotives were built in 1974 and supposedly had a hand in the addition of those unique E5-esque stainless-steel side panels to the design. If you're a fan of burning liquified dinosaurs for fuel, feel free to add a comment with more details and items of significance for our newest acquisition.

I spent most of my time in the 460, naturally. With quite a bit of help from Richard, shown above driving in some uncooperative wood screws, I got three more seats installed. These included one more rotating seat in the main compartment and two of the three rotating seats in the smoker.

Here's an overview. That seat cushion poking up is a "shorty" that goes into one of the slightly narrower bulkhead seats. I haven't yet started on redoing the bulkhead seats.

As for Richard, until I distracted him he was working on the rail display in Barn 8. The bottom shelf is now done and the second shelf, complete with LED lighting, is going in. Above, the lights are on; it's not as obvious from the picture, but it makes a big difference in person.

And here's a sample photo with the barn lights off. Pretty neat, huh? I believe there will be a total of three shelves in this display.

I made a trip over to Barn 8 to take old seatbacks removed from the 460 over to the 451 for storage and to pick up reupholstered cushions. While at the 451, I stopped to admire the handiwork of Dan, Will, Asten, Jimmy, and Steven, all of whom worked on Saturday to hoist that car's two main reservoir tanks into place. The car's tanks were removed nearly five years ago because one had a hole. In the time since, we procured a replacement tank and painted both the new and old tanks. Now, they're finally back on the car. The next step, I suppose - other than plumbing them up - will be to try and fix the car's air compressor.

In other news, Joel and others loaded three North Shore motors onto this museum truck for a trip to the motor shop Monday. The hope is that the shop can do some investigating to get to the root of the problems we've been having with motor armature bearings burning up and can send a rebuilt motor back for the 160. When these motors are delivered, the truck will also pick up several things we've gotten rebuilt, including air compressors for the 251 and Charles City Western 300 among other goodies.

Speaking of goodies, the newest toy in the car shop is this ultrasonic cleaner, which was humming along when I arrived. I was told that the item inside it being cleaned was an air gauge for the 308, so I'm all in favor of that! Other activities Sunday included more work on the IC MU cars, Joel bolting down more shelving in the shop extension, and...

...seats! The above photo was taken by Jon of Norm (L) and Steve working on refurbishing seats for the 3142. These three, with some help from Mike S, got quite a few seats for our most-used streetcar rebuilt. I also had a chance to talk with Jon about getting the next batch of CA&E curve-sider seats reupholstered. We're going to reach out to the upholstery shop about redoing all the seats I'm pulling out of the 460; those seats will go into the 451, possibly as soon as next winter/spring depending on whether we can get together a crew to repaint the car's interior while the seats are out. Stay tuned!