The Latest on GB&W 109

Thanks to Gregg Wolfersheim, who has sent another progress report on Green Bay & Western 109, the wood coach currently in Barn 4 for a quick cosmetic restoration...

The south side of the 109 has had some of the original siding sanded down. The old Marquette & Huron Mountain RR yellow has come through. It's mostly in good enough shape to leave as a base for repainting. Around the arched glass it was very loose, so we sanded down to bare wood. White primer has been applied to that, and any new wood.

A close-up of the stained glass area. Notice the new trim applied by Ralph and Jack.

While sanding above these windows, I decided to clean up the glass. I used a wire wheel to remove the oxidation and soot revealing some fancy stained glass!

The scissor lift made it easy and safe to work on the arched glass and letter board.

The man from Chernobyl showed up, too! Actually it was Marcus Ray running the belt sander and later the pad sander.

The area where the bay window was has been enclosed for now. Car siding was installed by Ralph and Jack.

Most of the south side is in primer now. Several holes were filled in with epoxy. Next will be Pullman green.

IRM on TV

On Thursday morning our Museum was visited by a crew from Fox-32 news, and everybody had a good time.  Of course, they focused on Transport Extravaganza which will be this Sunday, and that's always a good way to get more people interested in IRM who might not otherwise know about it.

And here's a link for part of what was on TV.

Joel and I were running the 309, and Gregg is seen here as motorman on the 1374.

A handful of antique autos are already on the property, but the vast majority of them will show up on Sunday.  You won't want to miss it!

And by the way, we could still use at least one trainman on the CA&E cars to help out.

After that was over, I had a chance to check out things in Barn 4.  Tim, of course, was working on the 1268; the platforms are being rebuilt.

The platform floor is cleverly designed to slope outwards and down.

And at the other end, you can see there's more to be done.  Watch your step, please!

The 306 project is making tremendous progress, and here's the current status.  The walls for the lavatory have been made and are being put in place.

The floor has been painted, and they say they will start putting the seat frames in place tomorrow!

So this is really exciting.  

And finally, a few more pictures of the progress on the GB&W 109.   Gregg and two of the new guys are working on it.

As I said to Gregg, all it needs now is trolley poles on the roof and it will be ready for service!

Finally, as I've mentioned before, we still get occasional spam comments which we have to deal with.  Some are more amusing than others.  One this morning started out with:

Searching for a car wash centre in Zirakpur?

If so, you've come to the wrong place!!!

The Latest on Green Bay & Western 109

Thanks to our fearless freelance reporter Gregg Wolfersheim, who has sent along another batch of photos recording progress on GB&W wood coach 109, which is in the Electric Car Shop for a short time for some woodwork.

The south side of our wooden coach finally has a relatively complete side! The area where the bay window was has been framed in. Eventually it will be covered over.

A young volunteer, Cameron, helped on Sunday by sanding down some of the siding. The green was house paint applied years ago at the museum. The yellow, which is still in good condition, was from the car's tourist railroad days on the Marquette and Huron Mountain.

More rot has been removed, now on the north side of the car.

And, more!

There was nothing behind this area of siding. So, some new uprights and then some horizontal boards will support the siding.

Ralph and Jack have been rebuilding the window openings on the south side. They hope to have this all done by the end of the week!

GB&W 109 Update

Gregg Wolfersheim has sent along another update of progress on Green Bay & Western 109, the wood car currently in the Barn 4 Electric Car Shop.

Slowly the bad stuff goes away on the wood coach.

New siding is getting spliced in.

About 40 pieces are beveled at a time and then primed on the back side.

About 60% of the lower siding is on. The areas between windows are mostly done on this side. Where the bay window was, we are framing it in and making it a solid wall for now.

On the east end of the car there were severely deteriorated pieces of siding. Underneath, it is in pretty good shape. New siding is in the works!

Car Shop News

Excellent progress continues to be made in the car shop by our hard-working experts, even when for extraneous reasons no one is around to blog it all.  I had a few minutes on Saturday to take just a couple of pictures.

First is the 306.  Here we see all of the canopy electrical switches and controls that go into the car at the ends, carefully prepared and looking as good as new.  These guys do very meticulous work.

And the canopies are being  thoroughly restored.

And then, down the track, the Green Bay car is being rebuilt.  Because this car was built at the very end of wood car construction, like the CA&E Jewetts for instance, it does not have the wooden truss construction in the subframe that you would expect, relying instead on the steel underframe.

And here Gregg is painting the siding pieces.  

 And as usual, that's only a small sample of what's going on.  I might also mention, although I didn't get a picture, that Barn 15 is progressing rapidly, as seen in Frank's earlier post.  And I could point out that Barn 15 will add more covered track space than most museums have in total.  We're Number One!

Green Bay & Western Car Update

Thanks to our intrepid roving reporter, Gregg Wolfersheim, for sending along the latest news concerning the restoration work taking place on Green Bay & Western 109 in Barn 4.

We're starting to close up the side of the car. Using a 1x8 oak plank, the back side has notches to fit over the uprights.

Here's another view of the boards set up for cutting. I used a skil saw set up for limited depth.

Here, several boards have been applied - just like Lincoln Logs when I was a kid. The vertical posts and the horizontal boards interlock together. The sill is mostly done above, too.

GB&W 109 Update

Thanks to our intrepid cub reporter Gregg Wolfersheim, who sends along this update of progress on Green Bay & Western wood coach 109, currently being worked on in the Barn 4 Electric Car Shop.

There's been more progress on the wood coach with the sill support installed. Inward of the large pieces can be seen the sash stop. These are pieces of poplar roughly 1x3" for the sash to rest on.

This is looking towards the west end of the car. The large opening is where the bay window was. The lower part of the post will be restored next. However, the upper part that would go all the way up to the roof won't be recreated at this time. The plan is to temporarily blank off this area for the time being.

On Wednesday, the lower out was added. It includes the notch inside the 2 pieces for the threaded rod that would have run from the side sill to the roof. Perhaps in the future when the car is fully restored, it can be added at that time.

Last week, four people worked on getting the upper clerestory sash installed, along with several of the lower sash. A new volunteer from Michigan spent a few days installing all of these and making them open and close.

Some only have clear glass in them. Tim F., Phil Hehn, and Ralph Durham also were involved.

Many of the sash were reassembled and marked as to where they go. Some got hardware applied, as well as glass. Others actually got put back in their openings once the tracks were located and attached.

Weekday Report

On Wednesday, among other things, I dropped off the items recently donated and shown in a previous post.

During the most recent operation of the 319, we noticed that a metal strip on the floor had come loose and was sticking up, like a miniature "snakehead" from the early days of railroading.  This wouldn't kill anybody, but people with open-toed shoes might get hurt.  Anyway, I fixed it.  And we'll have to keep an eye on it.

And on Thursday morning, the machinist finished reboring the final motor bearing for the 309.  I finally thought of taking a brief picture of the machine in operation.

All this work was done by Gabriel's Machine Shop in Oswego, not too far from where I live.  Gabriel is a good guy to work with, and an interesting person.  He's from Argentina, and an inventor.  He markets a machine he designed for making food packets for things like soy sauce.  I personally have no use for soy sauce, but more to the point, he also does a lot of work on engines for race cars and antique automobiles.  They're certainly interesting to look at.  And much more complex than the motor bearings we needed to have machined.

Back at the Museum, John and Gerry were working on parts for the 306, but I was busy putting the bearing into the oven and didn't get a picture of them at work.  Gerry was painting these parts, among other things.

Out in the barn, two guys I hadn't met before were working on installing windows in the 109. Their names are Ralph Durham and Ray Amash.  This car is really going to be a great addition to the collection when it's finished.

I put the newly-machined bearing into the big oven in order to break the epoxy holding the two halves together.  After a few hours it was up to 500F but still didn't come apart.  So I have left it in the oven and will try again when I get a chance.