Day Out With Thomas 2021

Frank writes...

On Sunday I spent much of the day helping at the main entrance. As was the case in 2019, John Naglich Jr ran the ticket sales and ticket printing operation, while Richard ran the ticket scanning side of things.

This is what people saw as they entered the museum. Overall things seemed to run quite smoothly; the forecasted all-day rain turned out to be a few brief periods of light showers and the number of attendees has so far outpaced our last Thomas event in 2019. Make sure to tell your friends!

We all hope this sort of signage will be nothing more than an historical curiosity by next year.

The last Thomas trip was at 3pm so at around 3:30 we closed down the entrance. I headed over to the car shop where I got to work. As shown above, I painted a drift card "tile red" for Joel so that our in-house paint mixing department can make me up some canvas paint of this shade. Joel is also going to compare this to what's on the roof of our IT cars, like the 518, because if it's the same shade then he'll have some extra mixed. The roof of the 234, at least, could use a fresh coat.

Then I spent some time measuring, drilling, and cutting out holes with a jigsaw helpfully provided by Joel. And voila, the first of the three "temporary" ceiling panels is now installed in the 18. The two holes shown are for ceiling vents, which fortunately we have. The next big panel will span most of the remaining gap and then I'll cut down my third panel to fill in the last foot or two. This will do just fine until we can raise enough money to procure a panel large enough to fill this entire space.

And now for something completely different - it's back to Van Dorn stuff! Our friend Bill Wulfert emailed me to say that he'd found a CSL trailer-style Van Dorn coupler out along Bruneau Drive. Sure enough, I managed to find it, though it took some searching (I'd overlooked it when I scanned the area a few months ago). It's shown here, with the coupler head at bottom left and the anchor casting at top right. It appears to be basically complete, which is great, because the 9020 is missing its coupler at one end. We also have two spare coupler heads of this same type.

I spent a few minutes looking underneath the 9020 out of curiosity. The east end still has its coupler, though the radius bar (circle iron?) is badly mangled - on one side of the coupler it was torched out and on the other side it was bent up, apparently from the car being lifted by the radius bar. But as near as I can tell, the CSL preferred to haul these cars around using a plain old tow-bar pocket, so most or all of the trailers that were adapted for storage or work service - at least, the ones that stayed on their trucks - had their couplers removed from one end. The west end of the 9020 has lost its coupler, anchor casting, and radius bar, and had a tow-bar pocket casting bolted under the end of the car. But the bolt holes are still there, so it wouldn't be too terribly difficult to replicate this equipment and re-hang the second coupler. It's not exactly high on the priority list though.

Speaking of the CSL, we've got some interesting photos coming soon, so stay tuned!

Trolley Bases

I had to take a break from IRM while we had children and grandchildren visiting, but now it's back to work again.

Today I was able to get both trolley bases assembled and mounted on the roof of the 453.  The usual procedure is to assemble the complete base on a bench in the shop, and then lift it onto the roof somehow.  But lifting it can be a real challenge, as these bases are very heavy and of course the lower half of the base rotates easily relative to the upper half.  And you run the risk of dropping the whole thing and damaging the roof, or yourself.

So I decided to assemble the bases in place, mounted on the trolley boards, since I have this nice scaffolding available.  The heaviest parts are the lower base, the pole clamp assembly, and the four springs.  But each of them is light enough to be easily carried up the steps and put in place.  The bases have been firmly clamped to the boards.  I lubricated the roller bearings and put them in place, followed by the springs.

There are still some smaller parts to be attached, but the heavy lifting has been done.

Bolting the bases in place takes some work, but it's much easier when only one piece is involved.  And both bases are now connected to the roof cable.  So that's a step forward.

Meanwhile, John and Fred were working on the 306, mostly the roof.   The tack molding is being repaired or replaced as necessary, and here we see Fred cleaning up the roof so it can be painted soon.  Then the canvas can be stretched.  I let him borrow my little vacuum cleaner for this project.

By the end of the day it looks like this:

I went over to Barn 8 to check on the wood cars; everything appears to be fine.  And then, let's stop in and see what's happening in the Multi-Purpose Building.  A couple of contractors were working on the A/C, so I stayed out of their way.  Things are really coming together.  Here's the south half of the building:

And some of the facilities:

When I opened the door to the washroom, the lights and fan came on automatically.   Nice!

And the model railroad section:

So progress continues on civic improvement.

And I shouldn't have to tell you who's the star of the show this next weekend:

So if there are any small children you can find, or can't get away from, be sure to bring them out next weekend, before all trips are sold out.  You have been warned!

More Pictures

 We always have room for more pictures submitted by our viewers.  Here are some from Chris Buck.  They probably don't need much in the way of explanation, except that the Com Ed 4 was used to pull the Highliners to and from Schmidt Siding, through places where the wire is not pan-compatible.  Thanks, Chris!

And then some from Stephen Karlson:

Freight Car Report

Here's a report about the Freight Car Dept. from Buzz Morisette:

Wednesday Freight Dept. Doings:

The rush is on to paint at least four Milwaukee Road cars for the Milwaukee Road Historical Assoc. who will pay a visit to IRM in August.

 

Rick M. of the Steam Shop has been at the center of much of the work. We have use of a dustless sand blaster on loan from the good people at Graco. Rick and Paul are seen here getting it ready.

 

You can tell that’s me behind the goggles about to blast the Milwaukee X-5001 Caboose.

 

Rick’s crew painting one of our Milwaukee reefers. Bob A. manning the roller.

 

Victor and Dave putting a new roof on the Pennsy Bobber caboose. Missed Bill on the inside doing detail work.

 

Bob and friend blasting the MILW Airslide hopper. They will start to paint Saturday.

 

The MILW Dynamometer has been included in this work a lot but I still need to get some pictures. 

The MILW X-5001 office car back in barn 11 starting to turn orange. 

Happy Third of July

As we have done for most of the last 34 years, according to my calculations, we recreated the abandonment of the CA&E on July 3, 1957 at IRM and everybody was much more satisfied than on the original infamous date.  As often happens, I was too busy to get many good pictures, but I hope we might get some more submissions to fill in the gaps.  Regular service trains in the morning included the wood cars 309, 36, and 319 as seen here.  Andy Sunderland was the motorman, Frank was the conductor, and Nick DeRicco and I were trainmen.  Sorry, but no crew picture!  

We ran two full trips with a good crowd of passengers.

The 409 and 431 were also in mainline service, as seen below in an excellent reproduction of busy times at the Wheaton station, and the 460 was running shuttle service to Schmidt Siding for the IC Highliner operations.

Both the Decapod and the Shay were in service, as they will be all weekend.

Speaking of the Highliners, that seems to have been quite successful.  When I checked in about 1pm, there were people signed up until 5:30, and more customers were coming to the table.  So we had well over 60 people signed up.  But if you get there early, you too may be able to snag one of these coveted opportunities.    

Getting Ready

On Wednesday I started cleaning up the trolley bases for the 453.  One of them had already been disassembled by Greg, so I took the larger parts out to the rear of the barn for wire-wheeling.

This one still has its OB builder's plate; the other doesn't.

I then disassembled the other one...

...and left a second pile of kit parts on the bench.

I think the springs still need to be wire-wheeled and painted, but they need to be stretched.  We have a spring stretcher, I'm told, but we have to find it, and in any case I don't know how to use it.  And stretching those springs is potentially dangerous.  So that's another job for the second shift!

Meanwhile, the bases and pole clamp assemblies got primed and painted.

So now, I think, we just need to repaint the springs, lubricate the mechanisms, and re-assemble the bases so they can be installed.

Pete Galayda was working on the 160, of course.  I should have tried to get some interior pictures.  Anyway, here is the first aid box, with a furniture-quality finish.

I feel safer already.  And John was working on the 306, mostly on fitting parts to the window posts.  Some fixes will be needed for the tack moldings in various places:

Next, I installed more leather straps to hold the roof cables in place on the 453.  I will need a helper to resolder the connectors onto the cables, to undo what we did here.  

And then, I went over to Barn 8 to check on the wood train.  We have three cars ready to go: 309, 36, and 319.  I checked the oil on the compressors we'll be using and filled them up.  Nobody wants to do that job when he's got his operating clothes on.   And I checked that everything's in place, the switches are in the correct position, etc. 

And while I was in Barn 8, I ran into Nick Dey who was getting ready to clean up the IC Highliners for their big debut this weekend. 

We won't be handling too many passengers, of course.  As I understand it, the train will be at Schmidt Siding to run back and forth a little, and the 460 will be in shuttle service from 50th Avenue to take people there.  So I suppose the regular main-line trains will all short-turn at West Switch, which is fine with me.

As we've mentioned before, you -- yes, you -- can run the Highliners briefly this weekend for the low, low price of $10, cash only, first come first served.  I can only hope we don't have fisticuffs. 

But you won't have to fight to get a seat on the many regular service trains that will be operating this weekend, so don't miss it!  Visit the IRM website for details.