Illinois Railway Museum Blog

Tuesday night, another in the seemingly endless repeats of severe lightning infested squall lines of thunderstorms passed over IRM.  Power went out early but Edison came out and restored service.  Only to have it fail for good about 5 AM.  Calls again were made and it was determined that the primary transformer, owned by Edison, fell victim.  We believe this unit was installed at IRM about 1987 and at that time, itself was previously used.  This supplies voltage and current to EVERYTHING on site, including to our rectifier sets supplying trolley power, as well as heat, light, water system, freezers and coolers in our diner, telephone system, office services and computers, waste pumping to the drain fields, all sorts of things you take for granted.

Volunteers on site and staff members worked most of the night, some with little or no sleep, and throughout a hot muggy day to do what was possible.  Portable generators were broken out and started to provide backup for some of the critical items.  Extension cords everywhere were the order of the day.  The grounds were open FREE for walk in visitors only, no barns open, no rides.

Victor Humphreys is shown with our recently departed transformer already disconnected in the substation yard.  To their credit Edison responded in force with several line crews, despite another 50,000 customers without power in our immediate service area, from the overnight storms.  By evening a new transformer had been located, transported to IRM, a crane rented to pull the old unit (4-5 tons weight) and the new one dropped in. The lights came back on!

You cannot buy the type of help provided by our people, in very challenging conditions.  Many came to our aid from their regular 'day jobs' and all the staff responded in kind.  Thanks go out to everyone, now take the day off for some well deserved rest.

Just to make it interesting the LEVIATHAN was on site as previously reported.

Here it is on the steam leads east of Barn 9.  The tender has been reunited with the locomotive and the stack is on.  Mechanics worked under and around it making connections and hookups, adding the headlight, pilot, steam dome trim, etc.

This is the engineer's side of the engine, clearly sporting the decorative paint and brasswork behind one of the service rigs that was used to transport it to IRM.