Illinois Railway Museum Blog

All Hands on Deck

Henry Vincent is shown with a new shop jig we made.  The last assembly steps required ALL HANDS with Henry, Tim Peters, and myself doing the dirty work.

Windows

Yes, this is an all too common picture caption.  Buzz Morrisette has been making fourteen new sash for caboose ATSF 1400.  All of them are glued up and assembled in what seems an amazingly short time.  Maybe he has Santa's elves working now that the Holiday rush is over, or he just works that much faster than I am able to.

A Day in the Sun

Chicago Rapid Transit 1797 has been the subject of several recent switch moves to rearrange cars in Barn 4.  With clear skies and maybe 55 F it came out in the sum for steam cleaning of the underbody by Tim Peters and Frank Kehoe.  The vapor cloud can be seen under the car at the right.  Hard to believe but now, 24 hours later, the first snow of the season is piling up outside my window here at home.

Windows

Yes, windows again.  Lorne tweed worked to apply clear finish to several of the completed sash for Cleveland Transit 4223, and Simon Harrison also contributed his labor to the cause through the day.

In other work seen in the shop, Henry Vincent made some more progress restoring a large very old vintage photo mural of a PRR steam locomotive. Roger Kramer and I worked on mortising windows for IC 3996, and Victor Humphreys helped me milling stiles on the table saw as well as a hunting trip to our material yard to locate potential replacement trucks for ATSF 1400.

Perhaps one of the biggest news items concerns Chicago Surface Lines 3142, a true workhorse of our summer Museum operations.  Since its initial restoration that car puts on a lot of miles and we were well aware of the impending shortage of replacement cast iron brake shoes.  For two years this has been in the process, with many hundreds of hours invested in the shop and by members at home.  Remember that brake shoes are CONSUMED in operations and this is not normally covered by restoration funds.  In this case the tab could well run to $8,000, or we face the possibility of the car not operating this entire season.

Our efforts to date have come to several dead ends for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is the disappearance of small foundries suited to make these specialty castings in small quantities.  But we made a lot of progress this week.  Lorne Tweed has taught himself to use AUTOCAD and created a file for the brakeshoe pattern.  This was converted to a stereo lithography file and a plastic prototype was created using a 3D printing process in nearby Crystal Lake.

With this tangible sample in hand it was fitted to the car, and needed adjustments were defined.  The next steps will be to furnish this prototype to a foundry who will use modern laser tracing to mill a new pattern for the shoes and get them cast.  HERE'S HOPING - - -