McComb Railroad Museum

The railroad museum in McComb, Mississippi has an interesting display of Illinois Central equipment in its downtown park near the station.  Right now the station building is being repaired after a fire and isn't open.

But the train is easily accessible.  It's located under this impressive roof structure, and is generally in very good condition cosmetically.

The locomotive is an IC 2500-class 4-8-2, similar (or identical?) to the one at Centralia.

It appears to be in good mechanical condition, although it still has its jacket and it's impossible to tell what condition the boiler might be in.  From what little I could see of the backhead, everything is still there.

By the way, while doing some research for this post, I noticed that there's only one place in the country that has more than one IC steam locomotive -- can you guess where it is?

Back to McComb -- from a museum standpoint, one of the most interesting things is the signage.  All of the display information is inscribed on these granite blocks, much like tombstones, located beside each item.  You can see them beside the cars in several of the photos.  Some are more legible than others, but they all have a lot of good information.  They have the advantage that they will last forever and presumably won't get stolen.  Of course, they must be very heavy and hard to move, but the display equipment isn't going anywhere so that's not a problem for this particular situation.  They must also be expensive, but most of them were evidently paid for by memorial gifts from local citizens.

This business car was built in 1883 by Jackson & Sharp and rebuilt heavily since then.  I would really have liked to see the interior.

And they have a big hook on display.  South of here, the display track is no longer connected to the main, so the collection has nowhere to go.

Surface Prep

Frank writes...

Sunday was a day for more progress on prepping the smoker in the 460 for paint.

Having previously finished with the necessary wire-wheeling and started with sanding, on Sunday I finished with the sanding and then vacuumed and wiped down all of the wall surfaces to be painted. The results are shown here, looking toward the end of the car. You'll notice that the door, which is on the bench for stripping and repainting, has been replaced by Joel with a tarp - thanks, Joel! The two areas high on the wall that weren't stripped are where the elevated license (L) and first aid box (R) go; the paint in these spots is in quite good condition, so was left alone as a sample of the original color.

And here we're looking toward the main compartment. All of the metal panels were wire-wheeled except for the lower halves of the two bulkhead walls shown here and the blower compartment wall, all of which are completely hidden behind a seat. These were just sanded down and will be repainted. Wood trim and the Masonite (or similar) panels under the windows were sanded smooth. The next step will be masking, then primer.

Let it not be said that Nick Kallas doesn't participate in car restoration work. Here, he studiously removes an errant drip of canvas paint from the side of the 460 with his thumbnail.

In between sanding sessions, Jimmy and I went over to Barn 8 and removed the third rail beams from the #2 truck on the 308, as shown.

And, of course, there was plenty of other work going on. Nick and Greg spent most of the day working on air brake issues with the 'L' cars, notably CTA 4290, which needs its U-valve rebuilt. That was brought into the shop to be torn down and examined. They also repaired one controller on the 3142, which had been causing trouble, and successfully tested it. Joel was working at clearing more space in the east half of Barn 4 for the impending track work inside the barn and I believe Bob was working on Class B control system stuff.

And now, it's time for the return of everyone's favorite game show, "what in the world is it?" This thing was found in the 306 and a cursory inspection was not very enlightening as to its purpose. Get your submissions in now!

Back to Work

I must say it's nice to be able to get back to work at the car shop after my spring break in Florida.  As usual, plenty of things were happening, but here's a few highlights.

I was finally able to megger the control jumper I rewired a couple of months ago, and it's ready for service.

Many of the regular projects were being worked on, but the only one I got a picture of was this door, one of the several that John is making for the 306.  

The next major project for the CA&E wood cars will be to take the motors out of the 308 so they can be rewound and refurbished.  In order to do that, we have to pull the truck out from under the car, and in order to do that, we have to remove the third rail beams, steps, and pilot.  Among other things.

I was able to disconnect everything and loosen the bolts holding both beams to the truck, as seen here.  Lifting them down safely will be a two-man job, but that should go quickly.  The steps are not hard to remove.  I only detached one, since the other is where we enter the car, but it won't take long.  The pilot is going to be more of a challenge.  Then there's the motor leads and the brake rigging.

And I should remind everybody that this project is possible due to the many generous contributions from people like you.  Motors will always be an ongoing maintenance issue.

Then I started stripping a door from the 460, but this turns out to be more difficult than we had thought.  The paint was badly alligatored, but it still doesn't want to let go even with the application of heat.  And I hate working with chemical stripper, especially in the confines of the shop, so this will take some work.

Nearby, Dan Fenlaciki was working on stripping a couple of the clerestory windows from the Tri-City car 483.  This was another time-consuming project.

But it looks nice when done.

Before and after:

Dan wants to try to raise funds for indoor storage for the car, and this is a first step.

Finally, Dave Diamond and his crew were working on cleaning up the kitchen side of the Central Avenue Diner, as seen here.  Old appliances were removed so that they can evaluate the underlying structure and make any necessary repairs.  This work will continue as time permits.

If you don't have time to stop in, we have a take-out menu!

This is really going to look nice!

West Florida Railroad Museum

 This is a small static museum located north of Pensacola in the town of Milton.  The local depot serves as the base.  It's located along an active rail line, although there is no longer any connection between the museum trackage and the general system.

Inside the freight end of the building, there are the usual displays of various artifacts.

Outside, on one track there's a caboose and a couple of freight cars.  The equipment on display is kept in good condition cosmetically.

Perhaps of most interest to us is this L&N diner of the same series as our Galt House, the Globe Coffee House, #2722.   It's nicely painted in the blue paint scheme.  I'll leave it to our resident L&N expert to explain all the details.

The interior was gutted at some point, so there's nothing left of the original kitchen.

But the kitchen end is now equipped with modern appliances, and the car is used for hosting birthday parties and so on.

The other passenger car was built as a standard Pullman 12-1-1 sleeper.  It was later rebuilt as a baggage-dorm combine to AEC requirements for transporting nuclear materials.  The dorm space was used by four armed guards who were there to keep anyone from trying to steal the nuclear materials and holding the country hostage.  Hmmm, you could make a movie out of that....

Across the street is a large garden railway, with two or three different gauges.

I asked the guys who were working on it what they do when a hurricane approaches.  They just take all the trains inside, and everything else gets wet.  I guess it works for them.

But as usual, there's no place like home.

Doodlebug Update

Better late than never, here's another update on the M-35 from Gregg Wolfersheim:

The upper walls in the smoker compartment of the doodlebug are nearing completion. 

The long strips on the left were the wall to ceiling trim seen earlier. The white board in primer is from under the steel window sill next to the toilet. The piece with the hole in it is the spacer the toilet sits on over the floor. The big block fits into the lower wall area and exists only to hold the dump valve for the toilet. These last two parts needed some work as they both fell apart while removing them. Some long screws and epoxy have saved them for reuse.

The top trim piece was made new and installed between the wall and ceiling panel.

Work has turned towards the women's toilet area. The toilet was removed, and repairs are being made to the sash openings.

Back from Vacation

I've been on vacation again, down to Florida and along the Gulf Coast.  The weather was great, the food and drink were too, there's always something new to explore, what's not to like?  I'll have a couple of posts for railway preservation up soon.   By the way, this is a little off-topic, but the Air Force Museum at Pensacola is superb.  I would have liked to stay there longer, but my better half was getting bored.  So it goes.

While in New Orleans, we rode the streetcars, of course.  The system continues to operate to full capacity, and little seems to have changed.  We walked over to the St. Charles shop buildings, but no one was around.  So I took a few pictures, heeding the signs to stay out.

Here is car 29, what you can see of it:

This is an ancient work car, rebuilt from a streetcar.

And then, here's a corner of the San Francisco cable car that New Orleans got from Muni many years ago in exchange for one of their cars.  However, they don't seem to be able to make much use of it.

Finally, while riding the St. Charles line, I saw this hilarious bilingual message posted at Temple Sinai:

"Rejoice in Mardi Gras - let the good times roll!"  There's no place quite like New Orleans.