Illinois Railway Museum Blog

Our task this past weekend was to construct the new 11-4 track inside of the Barn in yard 11.  We had a really good group out Saturday to work taking time from their normal tasks to help us out.  The crew was the regular track gang, Frank D, Tom H, Steve L and Adam R and we were joined by Jamie K, Pete P, Warren L from the diesel dept and Erik M, a long distance volunteer from Nebraska. 

Friday Frank D, Andy C and Erik M came out to prep for the day.  They spiked up the remaining ties from last weekend and got tools, machines and material ready for Saturday.  When we arrived Saturday we split into three groups.  The first group used the Model 50 Burro crane and shuttled panels into the Barn and set them into place.  That group consisted of Tom H at the controls of the Burro and Jamie K and Warren L hooking, walking and setting each panel into place.  The second group consisted of Frank D, Pete P and Erik M hooking each panel up and inserting ties under joints.  The last gang was myself, Adam R, on the X-17 Model 30 Burro topping off the ballast cars from our ballast pile out the Barn door.

By lunch we had all but three panels set, and both ballast cars loaded (kinda overloaded...) ready to be dumped.  It was very hot out so we kept cool with a cooler of ice and water.  Dave Diamond also came over to help realign the track at the Barn door sill with the backhoe.

After lunch we regained our strength and finished up building the entire track to the west end of the Barn!  Bob Olson and myself ran into the material yard for a quick trip to locate more joint bars while the Erik ran our hydraulic rail saw cropping the ends of the rails and getting the last short panel set.  The next step before ballast was to finish up the Quality Control work and spiked up all of the joint ties with the air compressor suspended from the Burro crane and spiking gun.  Steve L did a great job nipping the ties while Frank D and Jamie K preset the spikes.  Adam R ran the spiking gun and Tom H kept the air compressor moving along in the Burro Crane. Once we cleaned up our mess from the construction it was time to do a rough alignment of the track to make surfacing easier later on.  We hooked a chain to the Burro and at an angle and tugged on the track to drag it into place, 15’ from 11-3 track.

With a motivated crew, we figured the next reasonable step would be to dump ballast on our new track.  Jamie K and Pete P grabbed the USA 8537 to dump the ballast.  An attempt to move the cars with the Model 50 burro proved to be too much on the tough grade into the barn.  Adam R, Pete P, Tom H and Steve L ran the four ballast doors while Frank D and Jamie K ran the move.  We dumped the entire track with a car and a half of stone in a matter of minutes.  Our last task, due to the dwindling light, was to plow out the ballast with our new Amtrak Ballast regulator to prep for the tamper.  This was the first time we’ve used this machine and I think we can all say it was an amazing success.  A few minor tweaks and lack of use issues came up, but we did manage to run the machine down the entire track without any real problems.  It will be a good machine once we get it through ‘our shop.’ 

With this said, 11-4 track is completely built! This Saturday we will begin the process of getting the Amtrak Jackson 6000 tamper adjusted, lubed and running and hopefully continue to reload our ballast cars.  Until the electrical portions of the building are complete, we will work on raising 11-4 track inside the barn and tamping the approaches to the doors outside of the barn.  This will be a process of raising, dumping stone, regulating, raising…and so on.  We need to raise the track up nearly a foot in some places and that will take time. 

Congrats to everyone so far who’s helped on this project.  The help from within the museum really makes things easier for everyone working and shows the commitment they have toward the museum.  To find more pics on the Yard 11 project Frank D regularly updates his page here: http://www.irm.org/gallery/album182 Check ‘em out. Thanks,

 

Adam Robillard

IRM Roadmaster