Wood Shop

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

This seemed to be an unusually busy day, or maybe just many folks on hand working on many different projects.

Leg Work

Henry Vincent brought the donation of a new workbench, motor, and arbor which is to be dedicated to polishing and cleaning the many brass items needed during a restoration.  Here he is cutting 4x4 blocks to adjust the leg length and working height of the bench.

A Spinning Wheel

And in no time at all the unit was set up, the polishing wheel set installed and spinning, and Simon Harrison was hard at work buffing still more brass window latches for the Sand Springs 68.

Done

After some more sanding and finish work the new door for our station is DONE.  Victor Humphreys and John Faulhaber both worked hard on this project, as did many others.  Here they examine the door standing up, which should give you some idea of the size of it.

Let There Be Light

Pete Galayda and John Nelligan are continuing to make progress on the Charles City Western 300 steeple cab locomotive.  Pete completed work on one of the headlights and has installed it on the east end of the locomotive.  It sure looks like he has it wired up and burning brightly, but I confess it is only a trick of the camera reflecting the flash.

Brick

Lorne Tweed is moving right along on the project for the steam shop, to make a mold for casting a fairly unique piece of firebrick.  During the day, John Faulhaber did a lot of tricky profile sanding and did a very good job!

Box Trailer

George Clark always seems to make a lot of progress when no one is noticing.  Here he is at the side doorway on the Lake Shore Electric 810.

The Jig Works

John Faulhaber watches as Rich Witt tries out the 'universal' routing jig for passenger car windows.  It worked as intended and promises to be a useful timesaver on the four Glen Springs windows we are making, and on any in the future.

Really Smooth

The weather was not very conducive to doing outdoor work or painting so we proceeded on finishing work for the new station door, which is being made for our depot.  Kirk Warner, Victor Humphreys, and Lorne Tweed are at the ready as the door is passed through our large Berlin sander.  This is a heavy door and it made several passes for each side, requiring some work by these three to pass it back to the infeed end.  We generally take a very conservative approach in the set up for this work, preferring to run it a few more easy passes rather than risk any unintended consequence to the work or to the machine.

Done

The door sanding was completed without incident and Lorne, Victor, and Bob Kutella have it set down for final inspection and touch up.  Nearest to the camera you are looking at the top end of the door.

Careful Work

Dave Fullarton is working on the Cleveland PCC, CTS 4223.  He is carefully sanding and preparing the dash lights, and other hardware for finish painting prior to being mounted on the car.

Steam Work

We get to see and do a lot of different projects, each with their own challenges.  Lorne has a mockup of a custom made refractory firebrick needed in the steam shop.  There are also some loose pieces for us making a negative form box so that the brick mixture can be poured, in and then removed once set.  Also we made up splices for a special leather drive belt for one of the machines in the steam shop.

In the Freight Car Department we need to thank all the volunteers who helped with the inspections and repairs needed for clearing five cabooses for operations.  Especially key to rapidly completing the work was substantial help from the fellows in the Electric Car Department.  A missing piece of the air brake system was installed today on RI 19135, and it joins CGW 601, CB&Q 13572, UP 3786, and MILW 01984 as 'on the ready track' for public operations this season.

Depot Street

I will start off this entry with something off topic, the Depot Street Project by B&G.  There is steady progress on this major job, here rough grading completed from Barn 4 south to Central Avenue.  This indicates the majority of the underground work is complete for this segment.  If you come out for a visit to Union in the next few weeks be prepared to follow directions on signage, and be safe in the construction zones.

The JIG

We had recently developed a specialized jig for plowing out recesses in passenger car window frames, those to accept the lift hardware.  But every different window needed modifications or another jig.  Rich Witt has been working to develop and make a jig that is more or less universal, easily adapted to slight differences seen for each car.

Almost a Door

There was more work on the new door we are making for our station.  Victor Humphreys is sanding out some details.  If it were cold and rainy, we would have had this through the final sanding by now.  But as every summer approaches, outdoor work takes priority.

Glen Springs

We have finally resolved some of the details and needed materials for four new windows for the Glen Springs.  Lorne Tweed made some good progress on a total of 16 sides, tops, and bottoms.

Tricky Cut

We started out the day needing to make a very tricky cut on a piece of new letterboard for the D 13 dump motor.  This piece has almost nothing square about it, having various combinations of six angled or beveled surfaces.  We pondered the problem, conjured up a solution, and constructed a special jig.  As usual it took longer to make the jig to outsmart the saw, than to do the cuts.  John Faulhaber was happily grinning with the result, clever guy that he is, after he made the cut.

Assembly

The big project for the day was to do the final assembly and glue up of the new station door.  It turned out to be quite a job with a dozen interlocking pieces.  Rich Witt and John Faulhaber are placing the final stile.  That door is HEAVY!

In the Press

Finally it was moved to the glue press, squared up, and the clamp tightened.  There are still some finishing steps needed, but a real milestone in this project.

Buzz Morissette did some shop repairs and maintenance, and Rich Witt continued with a special jig for the Glen Springs windows.  Roger Kramer brought in some more wood for those windows, one new top rail was cut and the engineering laid out for four more stiles.

But it was FINALLY a fair weather day which begged not to be wasted.  Rod Turner and Henry Vincent moved five cabooses from the Barns over to Track 41 where they will receive their annual inspections, prior to being released for service this year.

Victor Humphreys helped with the station door and then moved on to paint trucks on the MILW 01984 which is very close to being completed with the repainting project.  Maybe another full day of work, will do it.  And John Faulhaber and I moved on to the work on the B&O boxcar, beginning the task of cleaning and priming the sides and ends.