Titan Missile Museum

David writes....

Also, on my recent trip to Arizona, I managed to visited the Titan Missile Museum.  The museum consists of a missile silo and control room of a deactivated Titan II missile site.  

At one time, the U.S. Air Force had 54 of these in the United States, each missile with a single nuclear warhead.  During the height of the Cold War, the silo was staffed by a crew of four, working 24 hour shifts (called "alerts), 7 days a week, 365 days a year. This particular missile silo was taken out of commission in 1981, and turned into a museum.  Let's take a tour, shall we.  

To enter the control room, one must descent 55 stairs, and then encounter the first of several blast doors.  These large doors weigh several tons each, but swing easily and freely on the hinges.  When closed, both the silo and control room were protected from the shockwaves of a nearby nuclear blast.  

Here, we see the control room.  As you can see in the background, the entire structure is mounted on large coil springs, which allow the control room to move several feet in any direction, to enable the facility to survive a nuclear blast.  We also see the safe, where the launch codes were kept.  During this portion of the tour, we saw a simulated launch sequence, which included the simultaneous turning of two keys, located seven feet apart.  It was eerie to realize that World War III would been fought largely by people pushing buttons and turning keys.  

The next part of the tour consisted of walking down a hallway, also mounted on shock absorbers.  

Finally, we managed to see the Titan II missile and warhead.  This particular one was used as a training missile in Texas before being placed here in place of the in-service missile.  On the top we see the simulated warhead. The staff frowned when I attempted to ride it like Slim Pickens.

Overall, I was impressed at the level of preservation of the facility.  It was clean, and appeared to have just been taken out of service, despite being a museum for nearly 25 years.  

What Terror Lurks Within???

 

 I'm afraid to go in it myself, at least if I'm alone, this ancient Pullman car from a circus train said to be haunted by the ghosts of malevolent clowns. And  to get there,

you have to detour through this boxcar, and pass through the rest of the Train of Terror. 

Meanwhile, the Screamliner is sitting on Station 2, waiting to transport you to destinations not shown on any timetable.  I would seriously advise you not to try this by yourself -- bring several friends.  You'll be glad you did!

I'll be a trainman on the Screamliner tomorrow night, so I hope to see some of you there.  Unless you lose your nerve....

It was a beautiful fall day, and here's a view of Schneider's Grove.  The trees are turning earlier than usual, due to the drought I suppose, and we're getting more color than usual here on the property.

I applied a first coat of finish blue to the #1 end of the 36, so it now looks like this.  It's essentially done until I start on the final painting sometime next year. The doors and end windows all need to be taken to the shop to be stripped and repainted, but for now, at least on the ends, they're not too bad.

Soon I can start removing the last of the ugly dark green.  This is almost exactly the same color the 321 had been painted in, and which I spent a lot of time removing over the years.  I'll be glad to see it go.  I spent most of the rest of the day stripping paint and sanding on the #2 end, and painted one side of it with white primer.

Here we can view the 308 as seen through the end gates on the 1024.

As usual, Tim was hard at work on the 1797, finishing up the remaining parts of the interior.  Here he is painting the ceiling of the vestibule.

Unloading the 504 - Updated

 I just bought a new slide scanner and wanted to try it out.  These particular slides are not very good technically, but I thought the subject matter might be of interest.

This is Fort Wayne and Wabash Valley car 504, the parlor car Talisman.  After that line was abandoned, the body became a house in Indiana.  Norm Krentel discovered it, and it was purchased and moved to IRM in 1993.  Here we see it after it was unloaded from the trailer onto cribbing in the newly-constructed Barn 7. When you compare this forlorn wreck to the car's present appearance, it's hard to believe.  Glenn Guerra certainly did an outstanding job in rebuilding this car!

And here we are jacking the car up by hand, so it can be lowered onto shop trucks.

Hey, you!  Stop grinning for the camera, and work harder!

Update:  And here, from the next box, are some pictures of the same car taken just four years later, in July 1997.

36 Report

 Just like Wheaton!  Well, more or less....

Anyhow, today was pretty much more of the same.  Of course, the Museum was open for revenue operations with the 714 and 749, the coach train, and the 3142.  Back in Barn 8, I sanded down and applied filler as needed at the #1 end, then gave it a second coat of brown primer.  Next time I can can paint it blue, and that end will be done until we're ready for the final coat.  And I spent a lot of time stripping paint and sanding down the various surfaces at the #2 end.  There are plenty of nooks and crannies.

Norm Krentel and I took some time to take an inventory of various electrical control system parts we have in storage, which was interesting.  And I had a chance to check the tarp on the 321.  Are you bored yet?  Keep reading!

Now that the Zephyr excursion is part of IRM's proud history, everybody's getting excited about the swiftly-approaching Reign of Terror!  Or maybe that's Train of Terror, I can't remember.  In any case, you'll have a frightfully good time -- if you show up.  If you don't, we'll all know you're a sniveling, lily-livered, yellow-bellied coward.  And you don't want that, do you?

Chicago to Galesburg

Chuck Amstein sent us some photos of his trip from Chicago to Galesburg and back.... in 1962!  He writes:

I took #35, the Kansas City Zephyr, outbound and #12 (guess who) back.  There's a 50% chance I rode in the same car (Juno) 50 years apart (didn't record the car name then).  Unfortunately, no photos of the NZ because it was getting dark when it arrived.  I had a simple box camera with size 127 Ektachrome film.

#35 used the former Silver Streak diner-parlor-obs.

I walked over to the yard and the man in the roundhouse office gave me permission to walk around the yard, plus an employees timetable!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 #5620 on the scrap line.

 Freshly painted #5631 waiting to go to Sheridan, Wyoming.

CB&Q office car parked near the depot

 

#3006 had been on display for less than a year.  The gate had a lock on it with a sign "Get key from station agent", which I did...

 

 

Sorry about the dark pictures -- ASA 10 film, box camera, on a gloomy day, 17 year old kid on an allowance.

 

 

 

  As you can probably tell from the photos, I made the trip mainly to see the newly installed 3006.

 

 

 

 Used my one remaining flash bulb for the cab:

My return parlor seat ticket stub from the Nebraska Zephyr.

End to End

 This will be brief, there's not a lot to report that's new and different.  Mostly there was just more stripping and repainting on both ends of the 36.  At the #1 end, I finished all stripping, then sanded it down, cleaned it off, and applied a first coat of brown primer.  This part will be blue.

From there we move to the #2 end, where I stripped paint on the left side of the end, as seen here.

And I did some sorting of parts and cleaning up.

So step by step, inch by inch, we're getting closer to completion.  Once the Museum is closed to visitors, I can move the scaffold out onto the paving and start stripping the side.

Visit to Mendota

 On Sunday we went for a drive through the country and wound up in Mendota, site of the Union Depot Railroad Museum.  The prize of the static equipment collection is this O-1-A Mike, #4978, a 1923 Baldwin product.  It is nicely painted and looks great.
 

Behind it is this wooden waycar, also in excellent condition. The depot itself has a collection of artifacts, but it was closed by the time we got there.

 They evidently give rides on these speeders along a siding.  There's also a Milwaukee Road combine, a Pullman sleeper, and a pair of IC Electric Highliners.

We found a good restaurant across the street from the museum where we could have a romantic dinner by the window, watching freight trains roll by, until the Zephyr arrived.

 These photos may not win any prizes, but I'm out of practice taking pictures of trains at high speed.  Watching it go by was worth it, though.  We then jumped in the car, but chasing the Zephyr is hopelessly impossible.  They had reached Chicago by the time we got back to Naperville.

This whole experience was so enjoyable, I've decided my next project will be to rebuild the 321 into a generator car.  Then we can take the CA&E wood cars out on the road.  We'll visit Elgin and West Chicago, then follow the route of the CA&E as closely as possible east through Wheaton, Lombard, Elmhurst, and on to Chicago.  Tickets will go on sale soon. What fun!

Old Pueblo Trolley

 David writes....

On my recent trip to Tucson, I had a chance to drive by the "car barn" of Old Pueblo Trolley.  This non-profit group was known for running streetcars on weekends on the street in downtown Tucson.  Operations have been suspended while Tucson builds a new, modern streetcar line.  The group owns five cars, but only three were at the site of the car barn.

Here we see #1511, a tram from Brussels, Belgium.

Stored behind it is #869, from Kyoto, Japan.  This car is fairly "modern" in construction date.  However, notice the Brill-type trucks, similar to what is under Indiana Railroad #205 at IRM.

In the covered work area was this car.  Research indicates that it is #524, from Libson, Portugal  It appears to a Brill product.  The group also has a Toronto PCC and two car bodies from Los Angeles, along with several busses.  The organization also has a subsidiary, the Southern Arizona Transportation Museum, which is housed in the old Southern Pacific Depot, a few blocks away.  

According to the group's website, operations will commence again when the new, modern system is up and running, either as special weekend cars in-between the regular cars, or as charters.  

Ride Like the Wind

The West Wind, that is!  I was able to tag along for much of the Sunday Nebraska Zephyr excursion, and it was an experience I definitely won't forget.  Flying through the Illinois countryside with the speedometer pegged at 79mph is not something I had ever expected to do on our Zephyr, but the hardworking IRM volunteers and officials from BNSF and Amtrak made it happen.

I didn't take too many photos, and the ones I did take didn't turn out very well, but here you go anyway.  In the morning I arrived at Union Station early to help check in passengers for the trip.  The indefatigable Harold Krewer was running the check-in show with help from myself, Frank Nero, Mike Ramunno and Charlie Strong.  Following an authentic CB&Q announcement from Harold over the station's PA system we helped board the passengers and then clambered aboard the power car for our ride to Galesburg.  Though the trip through the western suburbs was slowed by track work that had removed two of the three tracks from service at Lisle, the train got up to track speed at Naperville and we never looked back!

At Galesburg I disembarked along with Frank and Mike so that we could check people in who were boarding for the eastbound leg to Chicago, and the Zephyr headed off for its trip to Quincy and back.  The train was on time until about half an hour before its scheduled return, when it started to get held up by traffic moving through Galesburg.  Some of it was pretty interesting, including the BNSF business train (below left) and a different Zephyr, Amtrak's California Zephyr, heading west to the Pacific (below right).












The Nebraska Zephyr finally pulled into the station at about 5pm and we got back on the train for the return trip to Chicago, which was every bit as fast and enjoyable as the outbound trip.  The customers and crew, made up almost entirely of IRM volunteers except for the Amtrak engineer and conductor, all seemed to be having a great time and it was nice to see how many people turned out trackside to watch the train pass through.  We returned to Chicago only slightly behind schedule; I headed home but the UP road switcher was already there at the station ready to couple up and tow the Zephyr back to West Chicago from whence it would return to IRM.  What an outstanding trip - and many thanks to all of the IRM people who made it happen!