Illinois Railway Museum Blog

In the last BLOG entry for this car we identified it as an 8-1-2 Pullman car.  Many fans, members, and even serious students of railroad history may be uncertain of what that means.

                                                YOU ASKED FOR IT!!!

Plan 3979 A

For our car, the way to decode 8-1-2 is to refer to the plan and we find it means 8 OPEN SECTIONS, 1 DRAWING ROOM, and 2 COMPARTMENTS.  Entering the car from the left we first find the Men's Facilities - a lavatory and smoking room which has a door leading to a modest one hole hopper.

Then there are eight open sections.  An open section was the workhorse of overnight rail travel for decades.  There are two facing cushioned bench seats for daytime travel.  At night those two benches would be made into a lower berth, and an upper berth would be dropped from storage above, below the car roof.  Coarse curtains would be drawn providing the very minimum in privacy.  For your exercise you would enter the upper berth via a portable shared ladder.  You better have earplugs since there was no way to prevent the other sounds from your neighbors, their snores and snorts, passing traffic in the aisles from being heard and noticed.

This was by far the most commonplace and affordable method of experiencing overnight rail travel in a Pullman car.  Nowadays, you might be familiar with them only from the classic Hollywood films, many of which staged such scenes for both drama and comic relief.

Next in line as we move through the car was the one drawing room which was the most deluxe accommodation in our car.  Noticeably, it was close to the center of the car which provided the most comfortable ride, and the quietest, being as far removed from the trucks as was feasible.  And - it included a private lavatory!

Next are the two compartments, similar in furnishings to the drawing room, but on a smaller scale, less lavish, smaller floor space.

Finally there is the separate women's lavatory, about what you might expect as similar to the men's but with dressing table and mirror.

There you have it.  With enough resources we hope to repaint and repair the exterior to bring it a very presentable display in our barns.  And with enough dollar support (Fund RMCLOU) and hard spent volunteer hours, the interior can be refurbished, open for display, or occasionally operating in our trains.

Do you have your PULLMAN TICKET?

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

As a fan of the Great Northern I am always happy to report and to see work being done on this car.  Here is some history and some new images of current work sent in by Roger Kramer.

The John J. Mc Loughlin is a heavyweight sleeper car car built by Pullman to plan 3979A as an 8-1-2 configuration in 1929.  This was part of an order for 28 cars to inaugurate the flagship train EMPIRE BUILDER, and may be the only preserved example of new heavyweight equipment built for that service.  It is very significant to railroad history.

The car received mechanical air conditioning with an auxiliary brine tank in 1936, with the brine tank removed in 1947.  When new streamlined lightweight equipment for the Empire Builder followed WW II, the car was sold to the Illinois Central in 1948, and the IC leased it back to the Pullman Company.  It was withdrawn from service in 1962 and joined the IRM collection in 1998.

The Pullman Company Car Construction records indicate it was originally painted Pullman Standard Green and it carried the EMPIRE BUILDER name on the letterboards.  That is the scheme to be used in our restoration.

On the IC it was repainted into the Panama Limited brown and orange and in March 1956 it included a major shopping and repainting following an accident, spending 24 days in the shops.

According to Pullman records, at various times the car saw service on the Pennsylvania RR, the Texas and Pacific, Western Pacific, and Chicago and Eastern Illinois.

Setting Up

Mark Hoffman is setting up scaffolding, with help from Roger Kramer (photographer).

East End

The work is ongoing to needle chip all the old layers of paint from the east end and vestibules.

BRRAP

The needle chipper makes good progress in the capable hands of Mark

Cornering

With some of the flat sheeting done, Mark moves on to some of the corner work.

The plan, as mentioned above, is to have this car repainted and carrying the EMPIRE BUILDER lettering.  Of course this could be done in a year or two, with a few (more than one) hundred thousand dollars.  We would send the car to a contractor to do all this repair and repainting in his shop.  But that money is not on hand, so as with many projects, we rely on the IRM volunteers to squeeze every penny of value from the limited funds available.  And progress is being made.

So even though not a lot of money is being spent right now, we could use more for paint, supplies, materials, parts and tools that are needed; and here is the inevitable commercial message.  Please support the work with a donation to the restricted fund RMCLOU.  It will not be wasted.