Wood Shop

Here is a quick tour of some of the work we saw going on in the Wood Shop yesterday. You may notice the recurring theme of WINDOWS - good work in the shop during the winter, and we never seem to run out of them.

John Faulhaber has been under the weather lately but we welcomed him back and promptly put him to work on fitting the frames for the new windows for Illinois Central 3996.

Buzz Morisette continued making new windows for Santa Fe 1400 caboose.  Here he has manufactured small quarter round to be used in holding the glazing, and is painting them.

Victor Humphreys (pictured) and I worked to resolve the odd angles and many parts for new windows on the front of the cab for our Norfolk & Western 2050 locomotive.  These are really different and seemingly no parallel edges.  Tough work when there are only 'shards' of an incomplete original to work from.

Simon Harrison continued cleaning the aluminum sash for our Cleveland Transit 4223 PCC car.

Roger Kramer cleaned and primed several pieces of hardware destined for our Pullman FLOYD RIVER.  I believe this car has examples of open section berths, once so common, and found in a few of the cars in our collection

Here are four new bushings machined to order, here resting in the midst of their heat treatment.  A total of six new were made today.  Earlier in the week Gerry Dettloff did some fitting and grinding to mate the new pedestal liners to the truck frames.

Gwyn Stupar, Victor Humphreys, and Greg Kepka are working on a project to produce new cab windows for Norfolk & Western 2050.  We initially tried to trace the frame outlines on flimsy cardboard, used those to create working drawings, and now this crew is tracing and cutting thin plywood templates.  After those were made, they climbed up on the running boards and into the cab to confirm size and shape.  The result is some minor edits to the drawings, which should make these window just right.

Buzz Morrisette has made all new jambs and sash trim for the 14 new windows he is making for caboose ATSF 1400.  He painted the red finish color on all those pieces and on most of the new sash.

Then Buzz and Frank Sirinek cut twenty eight pieces of glass for the project and washed and cleaned those.

Buzz is looking over a new machine recently donated and added to our shop arsenal of tools.  It is a mechanized saw blade sharpener, I think able to take up to 20 inch diameter blades, and it has several settings to allow it to file different positive or negative hook angles on the teeth.  Anyone want to give it a run?

I resisted titling this image with the ubiquitous WINDOW caption.  But Roger Kramer is installing weatherstripping on some of the nearly finished shop made windows for the GLEN SPRINGS

Henry Vincent is project manager for our proposed model railroad display and he cannot wait to get to work.  He has hand made frames for many of the pictures from the layout in Milwaukee and they now provide 'shop art' in our new addition to the shop space.

Some view painting as a necessary evil at best, but it is a critical step to restoring and preserving equipment.  George Clark is painting the first coat of finished orange on new siding for Lake Shore Electric 810.

Henry Vincent is discussing a repair to a baggage wagon tongue with Victor Humphreys.  It looks they are enjoying this too much for words.

Last weekend Jon Fenlaciki caught me in the act of fitting new mortise and tenon joints, paring wood carefully by hand with a chisel.  Not really news, but here I am - guilty as charged.

I think I would like to start this report with some eye candy.  And I will lump together many projects in this one entry rather than constructing many of only an image or two.

Victor Humphreys is holding a stained glass window from a heavyweight Pullman car that Buzz Morisette has expertly restored.  This and a few others, were found in a forgotten dusty corner of an IRM storage boxcar by Roger Kramer, painted over and looking poorly.  Buzz stripped, cleaned, and refinished this to be glowing example of the carbuilder's design and craft.  Victor did some research.

Apparently these were stripped from a car we did not acquire, one in very poor shape and destined for the scrapper's torch.  It is a good thing these were saved, even if we had no car that needed them.  This is from Atchison Topeka and Santa Fe 1332, the SAN MIGUEL, built as a library buffet car in Pullman lot 4254.  The car was converted by Santa Fe to a coach combine, used as the caboose on some branchline mixed trains and regrettably was not saved.  But a STUNNING example for display someday at IRM.

In the most recent TMS Project entry I mentioned the work being done to renew and rebuild the trucks.  John Faulhaber is holding a brake lever showing the three new hardened bushings installed.  Thanks to some expert work and machinist skills from Rod Turner, all four of these levers are complete, and additional replacement of bushings continues.  Installing each one of these new bushings is not a trivial home hobbyist workbench project!

Lorne Tweed is cleaning and repairing window tracks for our PCC project, CTS 4223.  A dusty pursuit, and one requiring quite a bit of time and patience for each set.  30 plus sets required!

Buzz Morisette continues on 14 windows for ATSF 1400.  The gluing, sanding, and assembly is about done, ready to begin painting and glazing.

Ted Anderson stopped by, from our Pullman Library.  Any project usually involves a lot of input and effort from several different departments at IRM.  The Wood Shop is creating new windows for the Steam Department (N&W 2050), and Ted is using cadd files created by us to print full sized templates for the new sash.

Victor Humphreys is focused on cutting some tricky two tongued tenons for one of our current projects

Victor and John F have made the first assembly of a new door, to test fit and see how it is beginning to shape up.

Simon Harrison has moved into the big time now, doing WOOD WORK in the WOOD SHOP.  Just kidding, many different projects are done in all the shop spaces.  Here, he was cleaning out 36 mortises for the Illinois Central 3996 windows.

Buzz Morisette arrived in the shop carrying an armload of new hardwood.  He immediately set to work measuring and laying out the cuts for the work to be done.

Before long the sounds of machines operating filled the air and Buzz was making quarter round for the new ATSF 1400 windows.  I should note that special moldings like these, even 'common quarter round' in hardwood, are not to be found for sale.  So, with a table mounted router and correct profile bit, teamed up with the table saw, Buzz shuttled back and forth between them and produced an armload of the needed pieces.

We really are lucky to have such a well equipped wood working shop and it has made possible work like never before in IRM history.  But realize that the machines cannot do everything.  Victor Humphreys hand sands a profile to remove small defects, allowing us to use the router to plow out unneeded wood accurately

Another example of hand tool skills is the use of a SHARP chisel.  First you have to sharpen and hone the chisel, then it becomes much easier to pare small shavings in tight corners.  The PHANTOM managed to catch me in action, a rare event.

As seems to be the pattern right now, Saturday seems to be the busiest day in the Barn 4 Shops and there was a lot of activity on many projects.

In the previous post we mentioned that a prototype brake shoe had been made using 3D printing, but had no opportunity to get a picture.  Lorne Tweed and Alex Randow are examining it closely at the start of the day.

What would one of these entries be without WINDOW work?  Alex Randow and new volunteer Keith Letsche were hard at work on the aluminum framed sash for Cleveland Transit System 4223.  Keith was masking frames as soon as they were cleaned and ready, and Alex applied clear protective finish.

As each frame was coated with the clear finish, Alex placed it in this drying rack.  I think the count was sixteen at the time I snapped this picture, but the day's work was not done yet.

John Faulhaber and Henry Vincent were caught in a strategy meeting, discussing plans for a potential new building on Main Street.

We were delighted to welcome Andrea and Ted Anderson (of Pullman Library fame) to our informal lunch table.  It is always a treat to hear the stories from two such charming people.

Richard Schauer and a few others have been working to restore trolley bases for eventual installation on the CTA 2000 series rapid transit cars.  These parts are quite heavy, but Richard paused long enough to let me snap a quick picture.

There was work on a number of other projects.  Some of the wood work included John Faulhaber, Victor Humphreys, and I completing 36 mortises for a set of new windows we are making, these destined for Illinois Central 3996.  And of course the indefatigable Tim Peters continuing on restoration of several doors for the Chicago Rapid Transit 1797.

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.

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.

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.

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 - - -