The Next Third Rail Restoration

 I wasn't out today, but via the grapevine here's the next big CA&E restoration project: the 451!

Photo by Greg Kepka

The car was moved into Barn 4 today (Sunday), on track 41 next to the 1268.   Mostly it needs interior work, and that can now continue during the winter months.  It also needs exterior lettering, but that's in the Futura.  (Stop groaning.  You'll just have to get used to it.)  I'll have pictures of the interior as soon as I can.  And of course, eventually this car too will need third rail beams.

At IRM, the news just never stops!

Jazzing Things Up

Frank writes...

IRM has been running trains past dark on Labor Day for over a decade now (I had to check - 2015 was the first year) but I daresay we outdid ourselves this year. My father will report on the day's activities from Saturday, but to summarize, daytime activities included five trains on the main line, including the 50th Avenue shuttle; trolley buses in operation; and lunch/dinner service aboard the Zephyr.

I had signed up to run the wood cars for the evening shift and Ted Kuhn was my conductor. In the afternoon, we got everything ready, including checking the pumps on the 309 and 319 and testing the kerosene markers. We also coupled the 309 and 319. We were ready for service by 4pm.

We ended up making three mainline trips, all of which were pretty full, and everyone seemed to have a good time. The real action during the evening was down by the diner annex, where a blues/jazz band, The Stephen Hull Experience, put on a concert at 7pm as part of IRM's "Trains and Tunes" programming. This was the second T&T concert this year and it sounded like it was a great success! And after the concert there was a fireworks show, which was plainly visible from the 309 on our way back from Kishwaukee Grove.

After we got the train (and all the markers and headlights) put away, it was time to get to work. This week we are taking the rest of the seats that were removed from the 460, and will be going back into the 451, to the upholstery shop to be re-covered. Thanks to Dave from B&G for making the museum's new-to-us van available for this. And a HUGE thank you goes out to Good Nick, Richard, and Jeron for loading all these seats into the van. It was a big job!

I took very few photos because I didn't have my phone with me for the most part, but fortunately, we had some photos sent in. The remarkable photo below was taken by Nick Espevik of the 144 at Barn 9 North with the fireworks show in the background, seen over Barn 9.

And Ted, my conductor, took some terrific photos of the CA&E train. First, we have a photo of the train on the ladder track in Yard 8, waiting to go into service.

And here we are on Station Track 1 between trips. After our third trip we terminated on Station Track 2 (see the first two photos) which was a bit of "rare mileage" for these cars.

Overall, a terrific time was had by all, and the museum really put on a great show.

And as promised, here are a couple of views from operating the NWERR 24 during the day.  The car was full on nearly every trip, and everything went well.  Thanks to Zach for being the car host!

Progress on Seats, and More

On Friday I drove to Bellwood with a museum van to pick up the next shipment of nicely reupholstered seats for the 451.  Thanks to our friends at Kustom Seating, we're making good progress.  They certainly do good work, and have helped us immensely.

And since I had the van, I stopped at home on my way back to the property, and picked up the Jewell Road sign I made several months ago.  (Since it's 8' long, it wouldn't fit in most available vehicles.)  It's now stored inside the shelter.

Tim was working on the interior of the 1268, as usual.  He too is making good progress.

And we had a large number of schoolchildren visiting.  There should be a lot more of these visits once our new Visitor Center gets built.   And you can help!

Nearing the Finish Line

Frank writes...

Sunday was another day of steady progress on the curve-sider seat project. First, the big news of the day was that Jon F was out with his SUV to start taking the second car's worth of seats to the upholstery shop to be redone.

We sent 10 seat backs and 11 seats' worth of cushions to the upholstery shop in Bellwood (late edit: Jon dropped them all off on Monday). Above are four of the seat backs leaning against the 234's truss rod. These seats were removed from the 460 but will go back into the 451. Many thanks to Jon and to Mike for helping load and transport these!

Back to the 460, a huge thanks goes out to Richard for spending the better part of the afternoon working with me to get the day's quota of two more seats completed. One was the remaining partition seat, in the main compartment located next to the smoker partition, shown above. Underneath this seat is the car's S-type governor.

The second seat completed Sunday was against the equipment locker at the #1 end of the car, shown here.

Here's the "after" view of that partition seat. There are now only four original seats left in the 460: the two single seats in the corners, by the railfan windows, and the two double seats closest to the #2 end of the car.

I moved all the remaining seats and cushions that had been removed from the 460 over to the 451, so the 460 is less crowded with random seat components now. And we installed the above "car card" that lists the donors to the 460 seat project and assigns each a seat (or more than one, depending on how many seats they sponsored). Similar car cards will go into the 451 and 453 when those cars receive their seats. All seating is still first-come, first-served as always, of course, but we hope this helps our donors in making the results of their contributions more tangible.

In other news, progress continues apace on the storage building extension. Despite warm weather a few days earlier, it snowed Sunday morning and had stopped just an hour or so before I arrived.

And here's proof that reader and friend of the blog David Johnston was absolutely right when he identified the mystery casting as a pantograph part! A broken pantograph component was found by Jimmy over at the IC MU cars as evidence. In other news, Joel was hard at work organizing parts and moving tools into the new shop extension; Mikey, Nathan, Jeron and others were working on inspecting the 1374; Greg and Nick were testing and cleaning substation components; Norm was stripping paint off ceiling trim for Michigan Electric 28; and Nathan, Mikey, Jimmy, and Will were all buzzing around, often on the Taylor-Dunn, but I'm not sure what they were up to.

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!

Shaker Progress

Frank writes...

Sunday was gorgeous, a sunny day in the mid-70s. Due to family commitments, I changed my usual schedule and was at IRM from late morning until I skipped out mid-afternoon. I still managed to get some stuff done, though.

I spent most of my time putting more orange paint on Shaker Heights 63. The brush work is the slowest part of the job, but it's necessary because I can't get into all the corners and along edges with a trim roller. As shown above, I completed the trim work on the front end, including the bumper.

This photo was taken midway through the work, but I ended up completing nearly half of the left side of the car above the belt rail. This is not going to be a "one-sided" paint job! I am running low on paint, so I need to get another gallon of vermilion/orange, but I should have enough to finish the brush work on the rest of the car. Then the second gallon will go toward rolling all the flat surfaces.

I also had a few errands I needed to run. The most pressing was to make up the train for Thursday, when the 309 and 319 are on the schedule. The cars had been run together but weren't coupled, so I just needed to back up the 309, insert a link, and run them together again. And voila; note that when "stretched" there's about 3/4" between the coupler faces. I also checked the oil in both cars' air compressors.

Then, I dragooned Richard Schauer into helping me attempt to figure out what was causing the 18 to ride up on the frog at the South Junction facing point switch. The switch is shown above. We found that a few bolts holding the guard rail to the near (inside) rail, in the foreground, were loose. We're hopeful that tightening these may solve the problem, if it pulls the guard rail closer to the running rail. You'll recall that the 18 didn't pick this frog the last couple of years; the problem only started this year. But only time and testing will tell. Stay tuned. And thanks to Richard for all his help with this!

And in a final bit of good news, we have a photo of the first newly reupholstered seat for the 450s! The first example to be completed by the upholstery shop was delivered and test-fit in the 451, as shown above. This seat will probably actually be installed in the 460, and the 451 is dirty enough inside that I left both the seat back and cushion in their protective bags, but it looks like they should fit just fine. More seats have been completed, which means we need to remove the rest of the seats from the 451 and send them in for refurbishing as well.

Finally, before leaving town, I took some measurements of a spare Tomlinson coupler that may work to replace the one under the 453 that's missing some parts, and I snapped a couple of photos for the new signal roster. The what, you say? Here you go.

Seats Away!

Frank writes...

There's been a lot of progress on the CA&E curve-sider seat project since the last blog update! A huge THANK YOU goes out to Jon Fenlaciki, who towed a trailer into Chicago last week to pick up the custom-woven seat material right after it arrived in town. He took it over to the upholstery shop in Bellwood, and then on Sunday he met me out at the museum to get to work in the 451.

The plan is to remove the seats from the 451, get them restored, put these seats into the 460, get the 460's seats restored, and then put those into the 451 - hopefully, after we've repainted the 451's interior while the seats were out. Hopefully that makes sense! Each seat back is held in with three machine screws through the tube along the frame top and anywhere from zero to five wood screws driven in sideways from underneath the cushions. Once we got into a rhythm, the work went pretty quickly.

We're holding onto the leatherette antimacassars because it's not part of the scope of work we gave the upholstery shop, and because not all the cars will get them back. These were installed by the CA&E sometime around 1950 or so, we believe. As such, the 453 and 460 - which are being restored to end-of-service condition - will get the antimacassars back, but the 451, which is being restored to its condition around 1947-1948, won't. Here, Jon is pulling tacks out of a particularly stubborn antimacassar.

And here are half a car's worth of seat backs and cushions loaded onto Jon's trailer. After this photo was taken we tarped everything and tied it down securely with ratchet straps. I'm happy to report that Jon dropped these seats off at the upholstery shop today (Monday morning).

Here's the 451's interior with many of its seats gone. You can see where the paint is flaking off the walls and ceiling, but in general, the car is in remarkably good shape. These cars have no appreciable rust at all; they were only 12 years old when retired, the railroad took care of them after retirement because they hoped to sell them, and Trolleyville kept them indoors for their entire preservation career.

What else was happening around the property? It was the second day of a highly successful "Chicago & North Western Weekend," and on Saturday the C&NW Historical Society's archives and museum building on Main Street was dedicated to great interest and fanfare. Things were a little lower key on Sunday, but the 1630 did make its inaugural main line (test) trip of the year. And over at the Hoffman Garage, the Trolley Bus gang was working on affixing more accoutrements to our newly restored Milwaukee Marmon.

Up on the rooftop, Richard was bolting down the trolley hooks and the saddle they're mounted to.

Over at 50th Avenue, Douglas Park service was being provided by C&NW 1518. The first GP7 ever built has seen a LOT of work go into it the past few years, including quite a bit of exterior paint and - as of just recently - interior paint as well.

The cab has been completely restored and repainted and was open for visitors on Sunday. The restoration job is beautiful and involved a lot of backdating to return the engine to essentially original condition.

At the end of the afternoon, before dinner, I grabbed the can of vermilion orange paint and started doing some touch-up on the 63. Trim rollers are great for doing the large areas but I still need a brush for the nooks and crannies. Zach snapped the above photo of yours truly.

And here's how the car looks at the moment. I'll still need to use a brush to do the edging around the standee windows, not to mention the doors, but soon enough the car will turn orange from the belt rail to the roof. And then we'll start in with second coats, not to mention the ends and the other side. "Quickie" paint job is a relative term.

Take a Seat Fundraiser Update

We are thrilled to announce that our Take a Seat fundraiser is now FULLY SUBSCRIBED! We are incredibly grateful to the 20 donors who between them sponsored all 71 double seats that we will be having reupholstered for curve-siders 451, 453, and 460. One particularly generous donor, who wishes to remain anonymous, sponsored no fewer than 29 seats. Overall, the results of this fundraiser exceeded our wildest expectations. A huge THANK YOU from all of us to everyone who donated!

A bit more information is available on the fundraiser web page (though this page will probably come down at some point) but here are the next steps:

• Delivery of the custom seat material is expected in June or July 2024. At that time, the first batch of seats to be reupholstered will be removed from car 451 or 453 and sent to the upholstery contractor.
• The first car's worth of restored seats will be installed in car 460, which is in regular service at IRM.
• The second and third car's worth of seats will be temporarily and securely stored. We are currently hoping to strip and repaint the interior of car 451 sometime in the next year, after which its newly reupholstered seats will be installed. Stripping and repainting car 453's interior will follow that.
• Additional work that is required:
• Car 451: air compressor repair; installation of replacement air tank (the tank was delivered in early 2024); wheel truing; reinstall one trap; reinstall end hardware; paint lettering onto car
• Car 453: exterior stripping and repainting; repair of one coupler; air compressor repair

Not all the work listed is necessary to put cars 451 and 453 into service hauling people at IRM - in particular, car 451 can be operated in mid-train service even without a repaired air compressor. Once the car's interior is repainted and the seats are reinstalled, you should start to see it out on IRM's railroad. The same goes for car 453, except that it will need a paint job and some coupler parts first.

Wednesday Brief

It's time for another brief report on a few of the activities on Wednesday.  Of course, we're leaving a lot out.  I can't be everywhere.

The first task was to get the newly repainted door installed in the 460.  It's heavy, but with help from Fritz and Paul we were able to get it into place. 

 

 

And from the inside:

Most of the rest of the time Pete and Fritz were working on North Shore doors.  Here Pete is sanding down part of an electrical cabinet door.

Some parts of the 451 were still in primer, so I went over to Barn 6 to take care of  that.  Before:

And after:

(At the #2 end, I believe the headlight bracket was painted red in error.  Should be silver.)

Later, I went over to the 453 to get the letterboard tracings, which we'll need to letter the 451.  This will be an interesting project, so stay tuned.