Illinois Railway Museum Blog

Engineering Department

Rich Witt served well as our Engineering Department while the crew proceeded to process parts for new windows for IC 3996.  There are always a lot of measurements to be made, and double checked before the cuts are made and sawdust is created.

The Slots

A new crew was trained and expertly took over operation of the mortising machine.  Here, left to right, John Faulhaber, Simon Harrison, and Lorne Tweed.  Since this is a fairly large run of windows, we were able to set up our vintage GREENLEE mortiser into more of a production mode for the first time.  Stop collars were set, blocks and stops added, and we saved an estimated 90 minutes of marking and lining out locations of the needed mortises.  In relatively short order 44 slots (mortises) were cut into the window stiles, two different sizes, all more uniform and consistent than if we were spotting them by eye.

Blocks

Henry Vincent made and is prime painting several custom wood block spacer/hangers for the shop air piping which will be extended into the new addition.

More Step Wells

Victor Humphreys finished the work on the step well end plate previously posted on these entries, and is now contemplating the badly deteriorated 'next' one to receive attention

Diner Trim

Buzz Morisette was sizing, sawing, and planing new mahogany stock to be profiled and used for new trim molding in the O Mahoney diner.