Twas a Dark and Stormy Afternoon

Frank writes...

The weather outside on Sunday was frightful, but inside nicely heated Barn 4, all was well. Mostly.

Not long after I arrived, the museum lost power for an hour or so. A few people departed for the day or made a quick trip over to visit the newly purchased house of one of our volunteers, but before too long the power was back on and it was back to work. I got one more "bay" of the 451's main compartment ceiling needle chipped, as shown above. The end is in sight!

Thanks to Richard, who helped with some paint archaeology. All the layers of paint on the 451's ceiling seem exceedingly thin, but as near as we can tell, we're looking at 1) top layer, 2) top layer with some oxidation taken off, 3) a slightly pink or coral layer that we're guessing is a primer, 4) a slightly yellower cream color that we believe is the original ceiling color, 5) very thin layer of white which may be a primer, 6) a thicker putty color that's almost certainly a primer, and 7) bare metal. Since we're backdating the 451, layer (4) is what we want to match.

I didn't get any photos, but a whole crew was working on the 451. Will started out repairing drain cocks to affix to the air tank piping and later joined Ashtin, who spent the afternoon wire-wheeling more baggage racks. There's only one more rack to go, and then they'll all be ready to prime and paint!

For what it's worth, I took the above photo during the power outage. Joel got a generator going outside the barn, so the 268/1268 was all lit up.

"The 268/1268?" you ask quizzically. Yes, and here's the proof. Tim is speeding along with lettering the car, and it's being restored to about the same era as Northwestern Elevated 24: the early teens. This was a period of transition, as the four elevated lines were consolidated under the same operator, and cars (except for the South Side) were renumbered: 1000-series for NWERR, 2000-series for the Met, and 3000-series for the Lake Street. For a time, until they were repainted, many cars ran with their new four-digit number in the window but their old three-digit number on the car side. And that's how this car will be. It's already acquired NWERR lettering and numbers; next comes the striping.

Here, Tim laboriously burnishes the vinyl masks for painting on the gold striping. He's got something of a horsecar setup, with Dan serving as the horse and moving him down the car as he makes progress. The 268/1268 was also the focus of electrical work as Greg, Zach, and maybe others rewired the controller at one end. And in other news, Jimmy was working hard on inspecting CSL 144, Richard was working on the rail display, and Joel was working on various things.

I stopped by the office and snapped a photo of construction progress in the new south wing of the office building. This was taken from the southwest corner looking northeast, with the doorways into the two offices along the east wall visible beyond the ladder and the doorway into the current office to the left.

In other news, this photo was submitted by Richard Schauer and shows a new acquisition of the Bus Department. This government surplus airport tug comes to us from the FAA, which used it at Reagan National Airport in Washington until recently. It will come in handy moving around dead buses.

Now, let's go back in time to Saturday, when the crew was hard at work on everybody's favorite pastime: switching!

The first several photos of the switch move were taken, and submitted, by our fearless leader, Joel Ahrendt. Above, the prides of the fleet, Terre Haute Indianapolis & Eastern 50 and 58, are all ready to carry passengers from Terre Haute into Indy.

Here's a shot of track 132 in Barn 13 before the switch move. The focus of this move was to extract the wooden Santa Fe Bx-W class boxcar from near the west end of the string on the right.

Here, the 25-tonner moves C&LE box motor 640 through the yard.

This is the same view as the shot of the empty barn tracks, but taken from about 300' further west, closer to the west end of Barn 13. In the foreground is Milwaukee Electric crane D16 followed by CTA 4321, our last unrestored CTA "plushie" in passenger configuration.

Our faithful freelance photographer, Zach Ehlers, was also part of the switch crew and sent the following roster shots of interesting cars that are rarely seen by the public (or, for that matter, most volunteers).

South Shore package trailer 504 started life as an Indiana Service Corp combine before becoming an RPO and, eventually, a freight trailer.

Fort Wayne-Lima 91 has seen better days. It's a lightweight interurban combine that became a house for several decades. The original lettering is still plainly evident on the end of the car.

Our portable substation, Wisconsin Electric Power 12, is pictured outside Barn 14.

Here's Milwaukee Electric crane D16.

South Shore 8 is our representative from that railroad's first order for coaches. It's not in bad shape, but its motors were removed by the railroad before it came to IRM, so it's effectively a control trailer. Fortunately, the first order of South Shore cars was built with very good quality steel, so this car has little or no serious body rot.

North Shore 172 came to us in 2018 from the Indiana Transportation Museum, where it had been stored by its owner, IRM member John Horachek. Those tubes you see in the windows are rolls of custom-made seat fabric for use in restoring this car's seats when the time comes.