Wood Shop

The holiday spirit was all around us and the smell of sawdust filled the air as a few souls put their other activities on hold and came out to work in the shops.

Defying Gravity

Tim Peters continued on his monumental quest to get new windows made for the Chicago Rapid Transit 1797.  While Randy Hicks stopped by to consult on his work for the CA&E 36, we caught this odd image of a new window sash defying gravity.  Actually Tim modified a commercial jig to drill angled mounting holes in the sash.  If you have been following these entries for some time, you may remember seeing a more elaborate home made contraption over a year ago, which was used to do a similar task for CRT 1268 windows.

Ripping Good Times

Roger Kramer, John Faulhaber, and Rich Witt made a lot of progress yesterday on our job to build nine new windows for Illinois Central 3996.

Production

Rich and John set up the various jigs and featherboard on the table saw and Roger and John continued to process the pieces.  Altogether 36 pieces of stock were handled.  The blanks were ripped to size, a roundover beading created on the table mounted router, and the rabbet cut on the table saw to accommodate the glazing.  Rich laid out the needed mortise slots on the stiles, and Roger squared off and cut all the top and bottom rails to length.  A good days work!

New Item

I have been working to build a new jig for window work, to square and size rails on any of our new window projects.  It is a bit of a challenge to make this out of hard maple, essentially to machinist tolerances, and to envision the needed adjustments and flexibility to handle whatever the future holds in store.  Rich Witt helped out by patiently listening to my tale of needed functions and closely examining some of the seven pieces seen here, and contributing suggestions and tips.

New Guy

We would like to welcome new volunteer, Keith Letsche.  Keith came out to help today and was put to work on the TMS truck rebuilding, and then given a taste of work being done on the CTS 4223 project.  Shown here, he is restoring one of the many aluminum window sash.  Thanks, Keith, it was a pleasure meeting you; I hope we will see in the future weeks.

Frosted

Tim Peters is getting frosted!  Or rather, he has been sandblasting window glass for the CRT 1797.  After glazing in the frames, it will be painted with the black field denoting the car number in the upper sash at each end of the sides.

Variety

Getting tired of all the window work?  Tim caught me in the act of goofing off trying to 'inspect' what he was doing.  He never goofs off, and is almost a non stop machine.  Here he has made several carefully fitted wood repairs to the motorman's door, and is sanding it down, to be ready to begin painting.

A lot of other work went on, parts being processed through our mortiser machine, and some new stock for window bottoms sawn and sized, these destined for IC diner 3996.

Lots of activity to be reported, so this will largely be images with only short captions.

Windows

I bet you are getting tired of the WINDOWS caption, but it what we are doing right now in the shop.  Victor Hunphreys is fitting the glass into the eight new windows for Norfolk & Western 2050

Windows

Buzz Morisette is mortising parts for many new windows for the ATSF 1400 caboose.

Windows

Ray Schmid is continuing to work on six window restorations for the Michigan Electric 28

Windows

Tim Peters has almost completed many new upper sash windows for Chicago Rapid Transit 1797 and he is fitting glass, ready to begin the glazing process.

Door

Tim also worked on restoration duties for the motorman's door for the 1797.

Springs

On the TMS project, Fred Zimmerman helped cleaning and priming two sets of leaf springs for the truck rebuilding.

Motive Power

On a perfectly clear winter day, here is a shot of the shop workhorse locomotive, Commonwealth Edison 4.  We rarely get to consider that these creatures work in the background while all the glamor shots are focused on our restored service cars and projects to complete more of them.

Peeking Out

The locomotive was used to switch several cars around, and to pull the Chicago and West Towns 141 over the pit area for truck work and side bearing adjustments.

Another View

Here is the C&WT 141 a little more eastward with more of it enjoying the clear weather.

Windows Everywhere

Victor Humphreys works to get green interior cab paint on eight new windows for Norfolk & Western 2050.  You can also see a whole lot of new beading strips that were made, and of course those all get painted before glazing the frames.  Some progress was also made ripping, planing and sawing pieces for two more new windows for the locomotive.

Work was finished on a new door for the C&NW 10304 caboose and the door installed by Victor.

Cab Parts

Pete Galayda has fabricated new parts to go into the cab interior for Charles City Western 300.  Now primed, look for them to get the finish gray enamel soon.  John Nelligan crawled into the far recesses of the hood and managed to extract a control resistor which proved to be good!

Other work in the shop included Rich Witt doing the finish work on two new window frames for the GLEN SPRINGS.  Frames have been fit to the openings, tails on the stiles trimmed, bevels cut on the bottom.  Rich worked to use a router with a special jig he developed to plow out pockets for the lift hardware.  Rich has scheduled surgery for a knee replacement after the first of the year and we all wish him a successful process, less pain, more mobility, and a speedy recovery!

Please note that reports with this title are not all about making sawdust.  It is a communal shop space and shared freely (sometimes).

Engineering

Rich Witt works on engineering the details for the next batch of passenger car windows in the shop cue.  It is always a good idea to have a plan and know what to do, and in this case Rich found a conflict and proposed a good solution.  Other window work proceeded for passenger cars.  Two new sash for the Glen Springs, were a loose pile of incomplete parts a week ago, and by today fitted, glued, and finish sanded.

ATSF 1400

Buzz Morisette is building new replacement windows for the captioned wood caboose.  AND - he has raised the money to buy those supplies and materials.  Of course it is not too late for you to help with a donation to this project.

CRT 1797

The twenty two new windows being fabricated for this car by Tim Peters move ahead.  All of those were processed through our Berlin Sander (along with two additional sash) in about an hour.  It does a great job, and saves an ENORMOUS amount of time.  A few years ago we would be considering it an accomplishment to assemble and finish two new windows in a two months.  Yet we moved significantly ahead on 24 in a single morning.  In the above image, Tim is trimming off the extensions of the side stiles.  Just as on the originals, the sash are assembled with these extensions to protect against handling and make the assembly easier.  Then they are simply and quickly trimmed back using a jig and the tablesaw.

Molding Cutters

John Naglich brings over more molding knives while Victor Humphreys begins to clean a cabinet to store them.  This collection of railroad molding profile knives has been in the museum for years, but is now finally taking its place in the wood shop.  Victor also painted four new sash for the N&W 2050 steam locomotive.  There is a separate entry for a lot of work on the Cleveland PCC and oddly enough for early December, temperatures were mild enough to allow some more lettering work on our GN hopper.  Mike Stauber and Frank Sirinek continued on restoration work on one truck for our TM 972 streetcar.

Stanchions

Frank Sirinek and Mike Alterio have been working to reconstruct a fairly elaborate system of stanchions and railings on the two Chicago & West Towns 141 platforms.  Frank has a handful of very special fittings and each pipe is custom cut and threaded to fit.

Windows

Tim Peters with some of the recently completed windows for CRT 1797.  Of course no window is really complete until painted, glazed and installed in the car.  But he continues to fit and fine tune, add details to these sash.  Maybe I should just use the word WINDOWS to caption each photo - I think there was work on windows for no fewer than seven different car projects in the shop yesterday.

Framed

Henry Vincent continues to lead work on creating displays.  Here he is painting some trim molding to frame one of his recent constructions.

Mortising

John Faulhaber is doing the mortising for two new windows for the passenger car, GLEN SPRINGS.

Framed, Again

In almost record time, Rich Witt and John display two fitted frames, ready for gluing.  And in fact, that happened and was accomplished by the end of the work day.

Windows

Victor Humprheys was painting the interior sides of four new windows for N&W 2050.  These were fairly tricky to make for us, although I am sure a journeyman cabinetmaker of a century ago, dealt with these routinely.

Parts

Parts for windows, that is.  Simon Harrison, Roger Kramer, and Richard Witt are thickness planing a large pile of parts - for windows!  These are destined to become nine new sash for a passenger car, Illinois Central 3996.

Pullman Window

Roger Kramer has completed a sash for our Pullman car INGLEHOME.  It sure will look good installed in that car.