Illinois Railway Museum Blog

As usual there was a wide diversity of activity, so here is SOME of it.

Grading

Buildings and Grounds Manager, Dave Diamond, has made the re-paving of the Depot Street area his priority.  Here, Gerry Dettloff is running the skidster, while Dave is in the foreground piloting a shovel.  The north end of this project has all the underground infrastructure in place, and backfilled.  Finished grading and compacting was being done.

The Vaults

Two large concrete underground electrical vaults have been set in the intersection of Central and Depot.  Max Tyms has placed forms and was pouring concrete for the conduit entries.

Brickwork

Lorne Tweed continued on making a set of forms for helping the Steam Department to make new refractory firebrick.  This is a tricky exercise in negative space thinking for the forms, to produce the correct positive shape of a new brick.

B and O Boxcar

Ray Pollice was able to come out and help for a day in the Freight Car Department, and we really appreciate his help on a grueling job.  He is stripping off old paint and corrosion from the end of our B&O wagontop boxcar.  Note the relatively unusual flat ends used in this car construction versus the corrugated ends seen on most boxcars, contemporary to this period.

An Old Saw

The Electric Car Department received the donation of a very nice metal cutting bandsaw and it has a new stand fabricated and is being cleaned up and readied for use.

                         STILL ON THE HUNT

We are still on the hunt for finding a way to get new brake shoes for our workhorse trolley CSL 3142.  It is increasingly difficult to find a foundry today that will accommodate a very small production run, using homemade patterns from IRM.  If any of you are familiar with gray iron foundries that might be willing to consider this job, please contact us.  Below are images of a set of two patterns, cope and drag, that were used to make new shoes a few years ago for our Chicago and West Towns 141.

Pattern One

Pattern Two