Illinois Railway Museum Blog

Painting

Jim Windmeier was back on the job yesterday, sanding, priming, and doing other finish work on his project to produce replica stepboxes.  This is really high class workmanship.

More Nosing

Eric Lorenz was out another day, and was continuing to prepare and trim new rubber nosing for the new doors on CTS 4223, our Cleveland PCC car.

Nice Job

Later in the day, Eric had applied that new nosing to the four rear doors on the car.  It really makes a visual difference and prepares another area of the car to receive more finished paint.

Repairs

Part of the Museum work is to maintain and repair any and all of the cars in our operating fleet.  Dan Mulvihill was working on electrical contacts and arc shoots (used to contain and direct arcs created when the contacts open or close).  This was on the Illinois Terminal 415, one of our most used trolleys, and which sorely needs a rest for more in depth renewal.

In the previous BLOG entry by James Kolanowski he managed to get and post an image of the CNS&M 354.  The car was a city car which saw service in the Waukegan area, and some duty on city streets in Milwaukee.  I would guess it has been 15 years or more since seeing operation at IRM.  A substantial restoration was completed by Jeff Brady decades ago, but the purpose here was to get the car running again, to evaluate any defects or problems, and to thoroughly inspect the car.

There are some issues, and some will require some money to correct, but this is a very imporrtant first step to hopefully add another car to the regular operating fleet.