Illinois Railway Museum Blog

Despite the cold and snow the last few months the Track Dept has continued to press on.  Since the museum has been closed after the Santa Trains in December we've been spending time on the mainline cutting brush along the Right-of-Way.  The primary focus of this is to clean up the railroad to increase visibility for train crews and prevent brush from coming in contact with the sides of equipment...  We have a majority of the railroad cut west of Johnson Siding and as weather and time allow we will continue eastward.  This is a very slow process due to the number of line poles along our railroad but we've made significant progress.  We are pushing to have the railroad fully cut before revenue operations begin as not to tie up the line during the spring. 

Other cold weather projects have been happening in our shop area inside Barn 2 on Track 24.  We've spend time giving a number of our track machines oil and filter changes and repairing them as needed.  A short list of those projects include reattaching any missing hoses on the broom of the ballast regulator, cleaning and maintaining our work area in the shop and prepping the engine in the switch tamper for removal and repair.

This past weekend the warm temperatures brought us outside to begin work on the line.  Saturday Frank Devries and Adam Robillard were out and the first order of bussiness was to help the Signal/ DC Line dept replace a bad impedance bond on the far west end of the railroad.  We brought out the tie crane, loaded up the new bond on a track cart and Frank ran the crane to West Schmidt.  I met him out there and we had the new one installed fairly quickly.  Returning from the field we switched track 24 getting the switch tamper in order to allow the engine to be removed during the week.  The clean work space in Tk 24 made this task a lot easier.  After finishing up we headed over to the Model 50 Burro Crane in Yd 11 to troubleshoot the travel.  We began having problems with the transmission nearly two months ago and were now unable to get the crane into reverse....  It turns out a 3/8" X 1-1/2" bolt had been replaced in the past with a smaller bolt underneath the machine.  This smaller bolt allowed too much play and prevented the piston from engaging into reverse on the transmission...  A quick exchange with the correct size bolt solved that problem and the travel works, dare I say, reliably.  We still need to change the hydraulic filter and troubleshoot the outriggers, but the crane is back in service. 

Sunday Frank and I were joined by Steve Lewkowycz and we decided to tackle the first of many switch timbers that need replacement along our streetcar line.  We got materials and tools out from their winter hiding spots and began by replacing a 16' timber in the switch leading to Yard 10 on the south end of the carline.  We used the tie crane for the hard work and air compressor to spike it all up.  The job ran quicker than any of us expected it too and next we tackled two head block ties in the switch leading to Yard 4 West near Depot Street.  The existing ties were in horrible condition and were unable to hold the switchstand in place.  The ties broke into 30 pieces when we attempted to pull them proving their ineffectiveness.  A few hours and a few slices of pizza from Rosatti's later we got the two new 15' ties installed and spiked up.  We needed to regage about 15ft of track off of the points to bring the switch back into gage.  The switch stand was reinstalled and we called it quits after that.  Kudos to Steve for venturing out for the day and helping with the work.  We have many carline switch timbers to replace this season so any help would be much appreciated. 

The next few weeks will include more brush cutting on the mainline and machine maintenance.  If we can get a good crew together and a few nice days we can continue replacing ties.  There is more than enough work to keep us busy before operations make our jobs much more difficult.  We will begin inspections in early March.  This includes a complete walking inspection of all revenue tracks (mainline, carline, sidings) and building a list of defects we need to fix before operations begin in April.  Typically we will find enough work to keep us busy for two weekends repairing the defects.  Help is always needed during this time to ensure the line is open without speed restrictions or Out-of-Services for the operations dept.  If you'd like to help us out in the Track Dept. feel free to send me a line at lzeje657@msn.com.  Did I mention the good exercise you gain from working with us?  Check out updated photos of our work at my photos folder here.  http://www.irm.org/gallery/lzeje657 

As I learn more about this blog i'll incorporate pics in the future..

Adam Robillard - Roadmaster