Secret New Locomotive - Updated!

In another amazing Hicks Car Works exclusive feature, we bring you IRM's latest locomotive acquisition! It's hidden from public view in one of the Museum's secret storage facilities, so only we have the ability to bring you pictures of this unique equipment! The lighting is deliberately kept dark so the paint won't fade, but I've tried to adjust the photos as best I could.

It's a highly detailed replica of the first locomotive to operate in the Mississippi valley, c. 1838. And with its rubber tires, it can be used in parades. I love a parade.

You have probably never seen a steam locomotive with a gear shift pattern painted on the backhead (R). Until now.

And here's the tender. We are all so lucky that Nick Kallas never lets an opportunity like this slip by!







Update: I hadn't realized it was supposed to be so historic in its own right. Here's a picture from 1948 (copied from eBay) of this gem at the Fair. We have the stack, but I don't know about the signs saying "Wabash" and "Rogers".

The Glory That Was Grease

As mentioned yesterday, inspection of the 309 was largely completed yesterday. We have a short list of things still to do, but they are minor issues, and a couple were taken care of today. At the end of the day, we put the 309 back in Barn 8 and put the 319 over the pit.

After supper, I went for a walk around the property. The Schroeder Store now has all of its big front windows installed. Now you just have to imagine that platform out of the way and Main Street running through the foreground.

And here in the lengthening shadows is the newly paved turnaround for the trolley buses. Once the poles are installed and the wire is hung, they won't have to back up to wye near the entrance anymore.

Early this morning I started inspection on the 319. Here is the required photo, in case you were doubting. Things went pretty well. Al Reinschmidt helped with several items, including the lubrication. No serious issues were found, and after some more work on the brake piping at the #1 end control system, the air leak has been reduced to a manageable level, I believe.

Al also inspected and lubricated the controllers on the 309, and helped me change out a brake hose valve for one that doesn't leak.

Most inspection work is not very glamorous. The glory of grease faded long ago if you ask me. But let's look at the contactor box while we're under here. There are 13 DB-260's in one large box; it has two covers that swing out.

When the car is over the pit, I can use a piece of wood to hold both covers open; this is the ideal vantage point for checking the interlock operation, contactor movement, and the shunts. Tim took a few minutes from his work on the 1797 to twist the controller for me.

And here's the reverser, seen from the bottom with the covers open. The 319 should be ready for revenue service, so for the first few weeks we plan to run the 319 and 309. Show up during Memorial Day weekend and see and ride the Leviathan too! What more could you want?

And by the way, we need a complete three-man crew for Sunday, May 27, and another trainman for Monday, May 28. Sign up now if you can, you'll be glad you did!

Inspection - Day 1

Frank and I were able to do most of the inspection work on the 309 today, and everything went well. There are a few items that still need to be done, simple things that we don't need the pit for, such as lubricating the controllers. At the end of the day, the 309 was moved back to barn 8, and we put the 319 over the pit. I plan to work on it tomorrow (Thursday). Frank will have pictures in the next post. I won't be able to download until I get home tomorrow evening.

And it's been a while since we've had a restaurant review, so watch for the next informative installment!

Frank adds...

The weather was gorgeous and we got a lot done, completing most of the 309's inspection.  No serious issues were found and the only really unexpected part was having to replace one of the brake shoes that was getting a bit worn.   Below left, the car sits sticking out of the door on track 41 with the west truck over the inspection pit (the paddle on the pole sticking out of the coupler is a blue flag); below right, my father works on inspecting one of the #2 contactor boxes.  The 309, unique among the CA&E cars at IRM, has two reversers and two complete sets of contactors and grids.

 

 There was a lot of other activity in the shop as well.  Below is a photo of Bob Kutella toiling away at the Great Northern emblems on the hopper car that was painted last year.  More progress was being made on the Cleveland PCC car, roof canvas was going onto the rebuilt cab on dump car D13, and Frank Sirinek, Mike Alterio and Bill Thiel were working on air brake plumbing on the West Towns car.  They even had the car pumped up on its own compressor, though the brake rigging is not yet complete.

Update on the Sister Car

I recently received some photos from Karl Johnston via Laddie Vitek of work being performed at the Western Railway Museum in the only other survivor from car 205's series, car 202 (originally Interstate 262, later Portland Traction 4001).  This car was acquired by WRM directly from Portland Traction in 1959 and has called the arid Suisun Valley in California its home for the last fifty years, so it was spared the significant deterioration that car 205 suffered while in the rain forest near Seattle.  For a number of years it even operated at WRM, painted in Indiana orange.  Now a team of WRM volunteers is rebuilding the car and restoring it as Portland 4001. (I feel it's quite appropriate that of the two survivors from this series, the one in the Midwest is being returned to Indiana colors and the one in the west is being returned to Portland colors!)  All photos below are by Karl Johnson and may not be reproduced without permission.

At left: one of the first things WRM tackled was the roof, which was completely replaced.  Wow!

Right: this is the "before and after" view of car 4001's roof.

 And the canvas is in place, with roof boards being fastened down.  Beautiful!

Left: An overall view of the car showing the new roof as well as its Indiana orange paint job.

Right: More recent work has included needle-chipping the car.  This photo shows that car 4001 has the same rust problems that IRM's car 205 has, just not quite as bad.

Left:  Overall view of current work on car 4001.  Note that the roof is done, complete with "mushroom" roof vents and trolley base stands.

Right: An end view of the work being done on car 4001; note that the window sill has been removed.


Right: This is what the complete (sans seat) motorman's position on this series of car looks like.  Most of this equipment is in place on the 205 with the exception of the brake valve.


Thanks to Karl Johnson for sending along these photos!

Several Steps Forward, One Step Back

Frank and I were both out at the Museum today, with the main intention of getting cars ready for inspection and revenue service. The good news is that the 319's compressor seems to have been cured, and after putting the brushes in, we were able to operate it successfully. The car still has some air leaks in the plumbing that need to be fixed, but it can operate in switch moves with no problem. So we ran it outside and set it on another track.

At one point Frank got drafted to help the B&G guys put the awnings on the diner annex. Summer will be here soon!

After the 319 was switched out, the 308 was next in line. But when we started to pump up, the compressor blew a fuse! @#$%^! It worked fine a week or two ago! It appears the field coils are low. The armature still seems to be fine, so we're hoping there's no damage, but for today we decided not to try it again. I hopefully put a light bulb in it before I left. That fixed the 319's pump, and we can only hope it works again.

But anyway, we ran the 319 back and coupled up to the 308 so we'd have brakes, and ran both cars outside. We then switched places so the 309 is at the door. It will be moved over the pit on Sunday, and this week we'll do inspection. We then need to decide what the second car will be. In any case, it was fun to operate again! We also went out to 14 to check on the 321.

Today was Boy Scout day, and we had a huge crowd of Scouts and other visitors. The 409 and 431 were running in regular service, and it's nice to see them out. Just like Wheaton!

Let me show you some of the other things we acquired over the week with our rental truck.

The most important would be the rebuilt wheelsets for the 972. Here they are with their shiny new tires in Barn 4. Work is continuing on the trucks, so operation of the veteran streetcar is getting closer!

And this is the bead blaster that Nick bought at the auction. The best thing about it is that it's obviously an authentic Santa Fe device!

And our esteemed Executive Director also bought this toy train mounted to a switch stand. Sure looks authentic to me. I'm told that when properly relettered, it will be a donation box. Got any spare change?

Have a Seat

How far are you willing to go to get a good seat? We were willing to go 200 miles, and it was worth every penny, I think. As mentioned before, Rod and Nick had rented a truck to move several other things as well, so we got good use out of it.

Here we are in the barn at North Freedom. Nick looks over the seats as we decide how to load the next one. To the right is Richard Dipping, an MCRM member who was a great help with the previous North Shore seats and again on Tuesday.

Once the truck was loaded, it looked like this. At the lower left you can see the top of a railroad ceiling light fixture, one of the items Nick bought at auction. In the back at right is the big bead blaster, which is now in Barn 3. And under the blankets lie further stories for some other time.

The seats from CA&E #300 had been installed in this combine, EJ&S #2. Now that it's been cleaned out, the interior looks like this. Obviously restoration will be a huge challenge, but the guys at Mid-Continent are experts.

The car was originally built in 1867, and it appears that it had a deck roof. (At least that's what we electric car guys would call it.)

We got back to Union about 5pm on Tuesday, and Rod, Nick, and I unloaded the truck. The seats were placed on the floor in the front of Barn 8. After unloading everything else, we then went for beans after a long but productive day.

On Wednesday morning, I got some of the regulars to help me lift all the seats up into the 150. Pete Galayda, John Nelligan, and Henry Vincent worked hard and the job was done quickly and efficiently. Thanks, guys! The front part of the car now looks like this. I also moved all the seat cushions to the container. And did I mention that we also got two more North Shore seat backs and two cushions that they found? Those I took over to Barn 11 for storage in the 253.

Then I started disassembling the seats in earnest. I decided it was best to remove the backs, arm rests, and pedestals at a minimum, since for use in the 309 I'll generally want to reuse the originals. The first frame I worked on turned out to have a cracked rail I hadn't noticed: (R)

I suppose it can be welded back together, or I may just continue disassembling it for parts. I checked the others and there are no other obvious cracks like this. These things are heavy and awkward, and there are a few frozen screws and bolts, but it's going along pretty well. Thanks again to the donors whose contributions made this possible.

Here are two bare frames, ready for installation.

And here's a selection of pedestals, which I don't expect to need. (They're sitting on a bookcase which came from one of the cars at Lake Shafer.)


But let's see what other people are doing.

First of all, Rich Witt (center) is back at work, and he is continuing to sand down and repaint windows for the 36. He's doing a very careful and thorough job. You'll notice that when the camera comes out, people appear from nowhere. It looks like Rich is over-supervised! I don't know who the other two guys are, I didn't stick around long enough to get their names.

The Schroeder Store is getting new windows installed in the front, and I think you will agree it's really going to look impressive!

And Max Tyms was installing a new switch box for the 600V supply to Barn 8, replacing the old box that was destroyed by a lightning strike.

Of course many other people were hard at work on various projects: sanding, painting, mowing the grass (hey, somebody's got to do it!) and much else. If you're not a volunteer, you're missing out on a lot!

Quick Report from North Freedom

Everything has gone well. Our new CA&E seats have been moved to IRM along with several other things. Rod and Nick drove up to LaCrosse to pick up the rental truck and various things Nick had bought at an auction, and then drove to North Freedom to pick up the seats. I met them there to help, although they were already halfway done, since they were running ahead of schedule. The seats are now in Barn 8, and tomorrow morning they will be partly disassembled and stored. I won't have any pictures to post until I get home tomorrow night.

It's About Time!

Frank writes...

I've been working on the 205 for nearly seven years off and on, in between helping with the CA&E cars and other projects.  It's about time it started to turn orange!!

But body repair and surface preparation, the time-consuming part, is basically complete and we can finally put the car back in Traction Orange for the first time in over 70 years.  Today I managed to roll a first coat of orange onto the entire side of the car between the doors, up to and including the belt rail.  In order to do the window posts I'll need to remove the windows, so that will wait until another day.  This is not the correct shade of orange; during our paint matching adventures last year we inadvertently acquired a gallon of incorrect orange which will serve admirably for a first coat.  The correct orange for the second coat is already on hand.

The Car Department was fairly busy; Rod and others switched out a car that had been blocking in the CA&E wood cars, the Michigan Electric crew was hard at work installing rebuilt windows in the 28, and a trio of spam cans was out in the yard being worked on as well.

Better Schools

Be honest now: who wouldn't be in favor of better schools?

It took me a while, but I noticed that the 36 had a car card we hadn't seen before. It's sort of dull, but at least I find the pre-ZIP code addresses, such as New York 36 or Chicago 15, to be rather charming. How many of us remember when ZIP codes were an innovation? I can (barely) remember my mother explaining that you had to include a number because Chicago was a big city with more than one post office! But we've more or less run out of car cards to post about, and it's making me moody and irritable. Sorry.

And while we're at it, don't smoke in bed, you moron!