Illinois Railway Museum Blog

It seemed to be a WINDOWS WORLD in the shop this week, with a lot done on many projects.  Windows are one of those car parts that take a lot of use and abuse on the cars when in service, and are one of the first things to rot out.  So, for the cars in our trolley car and passenger car collection, I seem to have lost count.  But so far this year it is something like 43 down, 9,751 to go.

Villa Falls

Rich Witt created a special jig for two new Villa Falls windows and plowed out recesses for the window lift hardware.

IC 3996

Lorne Tweed is doing the final checking on two new frames which were in the glue press clamp, destined for IC 3996 diner.  He and John Faulhaber did the dry fit work and these are ONLY the first two.

CRT 1797

And Tim Peters continued on his current batch of 18 new windows for his wood L car restoration.  Just building and milling the parts to glue one frame can seem daunting, and after that is done and sanded, a lot more woodwork is needed for hardware, lifts, etc.  Here he is working with a hand chisel to clean up some of those cuts.

On Deck

Pete Galayda has been quietly working on making some 50 new parts for decking on the Charles City Western 300 locomotive, and they are mostly done and now receiving finishes to ready them for installation and mounting.

Henry Vincent was seen doing some rebuild of electrical items for the TM D 13 work motor, work is progressing on electrical in our new shop space addition, and a handful of other projects continued.

First Sign of Spring

In what must be considered that it is now officially spring, Jack Biesterfeld was out to do more work on the B&M 1094 passenger car.  He brought along a beautiful one inch scale mockup of the kitchen area, complete down to cups and saucers, dirty dishes in the sink.  Rich Witt takes a photo as Jack points out some of the detail.