The New-Fallen Snow

Frank writes...

I was out at IRM again on Sunday, this time without the rest of the family, but something seemed a little different... oh, that's right, it's the 10" of snow on the ground that fell over the course of the day Saturday. This caused the cancellation of the day's Happy Holiday Railway operations, but our volunteers were out by 8am Sunday shoveling and snow-blowing, and all Sunday trains ran as planned. The guys even cleared out the Barn 7 doors so the 3142 and 749 could go into streetcar service.

I arrived just in time to run the 3142 for a few laps while the regular motorman, Jeff, took a well-deserved mid-afternoon lunch break.

After that, it was back to the car shop. A huge thank you goes out to Richard, who got the pattern for our first reproduction third rail beam casting ready. I worked for a little while on cleaning it up so it's ready to go to the foundry.

This is the piece that bolts to the underside of the third rail beam. Holes will be drilled out so that the shoe can hang from this using links. We are getting seven of these cast because that's how many we will need in order to make the rest of our fleet complete.

Our old friend Steve was visiting from Oklahoma, and he spent the better part of the day putting a coat of primer on our CSL air compressor wagon, AX545. Above is how it looked when I arrived...

...and here's how it looked when I left. Pretty spiffy! After priming is complete, the next step, of course, is a coat of CSL work car green.

Jimmy and Greg made more progress on NJT 4. The Allen bit we ordered came in, so they were able to remove both wheels from the left side of the rear truck. Here, Jimmy is removing one of those Allen bolts. Both of these wheels need a bit of work before the new, wide-tread wheels can go on - one has a bracket that will get installed before the new wheel makes access difficult, while the other wheel had a stud that loosened and came out, so that will need to be reinstalled. We also came up with a plan for removing the frozen bolts from the #1 left wheel. It's coming along!

Pretty much the whole car shop crew spent the morning clearing snow, but they were up to various tasks in the afternoon. Richard manned the "food bus," parked inside the entrance to accept donations of food for the Marengo food pantry. Greg and Good Nick worked on assembling a good set of batteries for the CTA 2200s while Joel worked on various shop and equipment improvements and cleanups.

Thinking of getting into the "Giving Tuesday" action? Consider the IRM Visitor Center! The transformational impact of this structure is impossible to overstate, and with everyone pitching in, it will happen sooner rather than later. Thank you!