Visit to New Haven

This may not be the New Haven you were expecting, but on a recent trip to Kentucky we visited the Kentucky Railway Museum in the town of New Haven.  Since this was a weekday, no trains were running, but the museum was open for self-guided tours of the property.

The main building is a substantial brick structure, the original L&N depot in the town.  The interior has been completely revamped for museum purposes, but the building is certainly well maintained.

Outside the excursion train is stored, which currently only operates on Saturdays.

Inside is the gift shop and a number of displays of various sorts.  There's a video presentation which we did not have time to watch.  The people on duty inside the station were friendly and helpful.

And there is a substantial model train display, including a large operating HO layout.

Just one of the many displays:

Another view of the passenger train:

There is a long umbrella roof over one track in the yards, but that's the only covered storage...

Except for the shop building, which is fenced off and not open to visitors.  The L&N Pacific is partly disassembled and stored in the shop, I was told.

And more of the museum's collection appears to be stored on sidings along the main line.  Since we were short on time, we didn't go any farther.

There's a fairly wide range of steam-road equipment of all sorts.  I'm not even sure exactly what that first item is.  It reminds me of the underframe of an American Flyer caboose.

We talked a little to a volunteer who was working on the cab of this L&N 0-8-0.

He is in the process of replacing the tongue-and-groove ceiling in the cab.

And on other days he works on this big hook!

Finally, an item of great interest was the new turntable which has been recently installed (in the last three years or so).  I was told they now have it operating under its own power, although there's only one track connected to it so far.

Because of the lay of the land, the turntable "pit" has its floor pretty much at ground level, with the walls rising above the ground.  That must have saved quite a bit in excavation costs, but as a result a huge amount of fill will be required to add more tracks and the eventual roundhouse.  You can get a better idea of this from the picture above (the one with the "caboose frame").

Much of the fill that has already gone into this project came from the recent construction of a nearby distillery.  Some people have all the luck!

Be that as it may, we enjoyed our visit.  It's not far from several other attractions and historic sites, such as Lincoln's birthplace.  And it's very close to Optimist Park -- there's got to be a message to that somehow.

A Man For All Sports

From Cleveland, apparently. You'll have to forgive the warp.

LIVEat6&11

Inspection Season

Frank writes...

It's inspection season again. Time on the pit is in high demand, and on Sunday the lucky car was the 4391, which Jack, Richard, and Joel were all working on at one time or another.

A huge "thank you" goes to Jack for all of his help with getting the 36, 319, and 309 going and brought over to the pit lead. My priority was to get all of the motor armature bearings and axle caps lubricated, and I managed to do that with Jack's assistance. This is a job that is best done outdoors, for the daylight, and with someone's help, to hand the dipstick and oil can in to the person who has wedged themselves in between the top of the truck frame and the bottom of the car. Of course the rest of the inspection work on these three cars (or at least the 309 and 319, which are scheduled to run on the 30th) still remains to be done.

Another huge "thank you" goes out to Ray Piesciuk. He had some glass light shades from the Julie Johnson collection in storage and met up with me to go through them. We've been missing one of the glass light shades from the 18 (the photo above, taken last year, shows what these look like) since we got the car. Amazingly, there were not one but two of the correct type in the Johnson collection! So the 18 will now have a complete set of these.

And a final huge "thank you" to Richard Schauer for his help with the 18 windows in the wood shop. On Saturday I finally made it over to Sherwin-Williams and had a gallon of the correct "dark cream" paint for the 18 mixed. Unfortunately I ran out of time after painting just one window, so Richard got the other three in the shop painted. These are now ready to install on the car, and as time permits I can start painting more windows (and window posts) cream as well.

As for more general interest news, Sunday was the 1630's first day in revenue service since 2019, so that was nice. It was pulling its relatively new water car, an ex-IC tender. While this doesn't look as cool as the General American Falderol milk car, I'm told it's actually quite accurate because the Frisco evidently used very similar tenders in exactly this capacity. Either way, it's always nice to see the Decapod out on the railroad. Meanwhile Joel was racing about organizing and putting things away, Nick and Greg were fixing some insulators in the trolley bus overhead near the ladder track, and Jeron and Andy were both around as well. Even Doodlebug Bob made an appearance, his first trip to IRM in over a year I believe.

Tuesday Report

As mentioned earlier, the 2872 (or 872) is now in Barn 4.  But Tim wants us to admit that there was some false advertising involved: the car is actually in worse condition than it might have appeared.  Investigation is still underway, so that's about all we'll say for the moment.  But this will undoubtedly be as big a project as any of the wooden L cars so far.

Bill was helping with the 872 project.  Here is one of the battery-voltage headlights that were used on the Met's early cars.

Meanwhile, over on track 43, work continues on the 306.  The guys have cleared off the roof, but today they were working on the body again.

John is providing support as Gerry welds in some more steel.

By the way, you get a nice view of the Electroliner from up here.

I worked on installing the guards and baffles for the horns on the 453.  When finished, the #2 end looks like this:

At the other end, the guard required some bending to regain the right shape, and that took a while.

I also cleaned up and installed both of the trolley hooks.

Then, I decided it was time to drill the holes for the bases.  The bolts that hold the bases on these cars form a perfect 10" square, and thanks to my vast knowledge of geometry that was easy enough to lay out and drill.  Whenever the bases are ready for service and I have some help, they can be lifted onto the car and installed.

The bases are the same distance from each end of the car, of course, but because there's a slight difference in the spacing of the carlines, and therefore the saddles, at the #1 end, they don't look like they're placed the same.  At one end the base straddles a saddle, but not at the other.  But that's how it was.

Now I just need a small vacuum cleaner up there.

Sunday journal entry

Frank writes...

I was out Sunday afternoon and, though I didn't arrive until a bit later than usual, it was quite a productive day in the end. The first thing I had to do was go over to the west end of Barn 4 and check out the newest resident:

CTA 41 was on the pit and Jack, Richard, and a newer volunteer whose name I didn't get were working on inspecting it for much of the afternoon. In the meantime, I dragooned Nick E and Greg into helping me out on the 18. First, we installed and wired in the two marker lights that were rebuilt over the winter. Unfortunately they still don't work, so there's some issue in the system - possibly a resistor - that we'll need to chase down. Then, since revenue service was ending, we decided to take the car for a few trips around the streetcar line to check journal bearing temperature.

In general the car performed well, and it's obvious that the fresh paint will make a real difference in its appearance. The two bearings we repacked last year were #2L and #4R. The former ran cool the entire time while the latter ran a bit warmer than the others, but never got more than 20-25 degrees warmer than the rough average of the other bearings. So I'm pretty happy with that. There are some other minor issues we'll want to look at and we need to clean out the air compressor valves and the master controller.

Here's a look at the newly-reinstalled markers at the back end of the car. While all of the journals ran just fine for several trips around the car line, when we were putting the car back in the barn one of them started "singing" just as we got up to the barn. This is the same thing that had happened previously - this car just doesn't like backing up! So at some point we will need to run it back and forth and figure out which bearing is doing that, and why.

As we were putting the 18 back in the barn, the 41 got moved back to Barn 8 and two other temporary residents of track 41, the 415 and the 160, also go moved out. Then the Electroliner, seen here in the background, was switched over to the pit. I think they're doing some quick inspection work and then it will be put back in Barn 7 as work on it continues to progress.

And finally, I primed three windows for the 18 that my father had left in the wood shop a few weeks ago. I kept forgetting to do this but these are now ready for cream paint and then installation. A fourth window in the wood shop is already painted and ready to go back on the car.

Saturday switch move

Frank writes...

I'll have an update from Sunday shortly, but in the meantime, Bill Wulfert sent along some photos from the big switch move on Saturday. The impetus for the switch move was moving the 1754 out of Barn 4, now that work on it is substantially done save for the motor truck, which doesn't require the presence nearby of the car itself. And replacing it as the latest product of the Tim Peters Restoration Works is - drum roll, please - CRT "Met car" 2872! See below for more. All photos by Bill Wulfert.

It's been a few years since the 321 has been outside. It got moved from the west end of track 113 to the middle of track 114, where it is the first car following some track machines. At some point we want to put the 319's trucks under it and then reinstall the step wells and pilots, as much to get them out of the aisles in Barn 8 as anything.

CTA 6461-6462 are seen here. These cars have either never operated at IRM or only operated briefly, but were partly cosmetically restored in the 1990s for a calendar photo.

The 1808 was moved down to one of the south barns, I believe, to make room for the 1754 and to take the place of the Met car. It's operational but quite tired.

Here's the 1754 in its new home in Barn 8. It was actually stored in Barn 8 for many years, it just never looked this good! I'm not sure whether the car will be in regular service this year. It's operational as-is, just with the wrong type motor truck.

Here's one of our two Met cars, the 2888. Both of our two carswere built by Pullman in 1908 and were members of the last series of wood car built for the Met. In later years they were storage lockers of some sort, I believe at Kimball, so they've got some parts missing and their interiors are kind of a shambles. They also suffered pretty badly from outdoor storage and benign neglect while at CTA.

Here's a "before" shot of Tim's next project, Met car 2872. These are pretty distinctive 'L' cars with their exposed side sills and monitor roofs.

Another photo of the 321. It's too bad that while the paint on the car remained in good shape during its six or seven years of outdoor tarped storage, the roof failed pretty badly. If only it had been the other way around.

Another photo of the 2872. This car was switched over to the west spot on barn track 42 by the end of the day, though apparently it was quite a chore getting it to go around the curve at the west end of Barn 4. 

TM D22 made an appearance during the switch move. This car was painted by Jim Blower and lettered by yours truly probably about 20 years ago.

And another ex-TWERHS cosmetic restoration: box motor M1 got moved around too. My father and I gave this one a quickie one-sided paint job back around 1997 or 1998 (Jim Blower later painted the other side) because at the time it was the ugliest thing in Barn 7.

And finally, Jeron Glander sent in the following photo of the progress on the floor in 50th Avenue. Together with Tim's new ticket booth this will really be a big improvement.