Illinois Railway Museum Blog

Riding on the success of yesterday's progress today our two goals for the day were to clean a few machines with the pressure washer, and unload the ties loaded onto the flatcar yesterday along the mainline.  The short version of the story is that both jobs were completed but not without a little excitement in between.

The crew today was myself, Tom Hunter, Jeron Glander, and a new volunteer, Patrick Shea. We started right away with the rented 3000psi heated pressure washer and cleaned up the tie crane, regulator and Model 50 Burro crane.  After cleaning the radiators on the burro it ran significantly better now that it has proper air flow drastically minimizing the possibility of overheating the engine.  We picked up our loaded flat car of ties and the EJ&E 529 caboose and headed out onto the carline.

The rest of the day was spent unloading around 400 ties along the mainline.  Tom expertly ran the crane while Jeron, Patrick and myself hooked and unhooked the bundles along the line, mostly between Seeman Rd and Four Mile Siding. We'll come back out with the tie crane sometime soon and distribute the ties where they'll be installed.  It was an incredibly productive day and called it quits after tying up shortly before sunset in Yard 11.  This week the rest of the ties (~250) should get loaded onto the flatcar which should allow us to repeat the job again next weekend.  Thanks again to Patrick for joining us for a second day in a row. Hope we didn't scare him away.