Freight Car Department

Welcome to the blog for the Freight Car Department at the Illinois Railway Museum. Here you will see updates on projects, maintenance and repair schedules and news on pending or proposed acquisitions. Also, our department seems to be the defacto manager of the IRM Woodshop. Stay tuned for notes on projects that include making piles of sawdust.

Our department also does a lot of the artwork and lettering for our restored cars, and in addition to freight cars, has included electric cars, internal combustion, steam locomotives, and steam passenger cars. You may see some of this work posted in the blog.

The images on these blogs are 'thumbnails' only, but if you click on them with the left mouse button, you will see the full image. If there is a project you are interested in, please contact me and we will try to get pics/updates of work our dept may be doing in that area.

To take advantage of the info elsewhere on the IRM website you will also see links to other areas of interest.

Bob Kutella
Collection Curator

I continue to lag behind on these posts since I have been involved in other projects, including the location shooting for the upcoming Chicago Fire episode on NBC.  So this will serve to get you a peek at another major milestone in our restoration efforts.  Great Northern X-1390 was a company service tank car in relatively good condition, that was in great need of restoration.  At 20,000 gallons capacity it is our largest tank car.  Starting on September 23, a contractor provided services to clean and repaint the car.  None of these efforts are without DRAMA, but the job is now complete.  What follows is a sort of photo essay with captions providing most of the information.  Of course donations to cover the work and provide seed money for future indoor storage, you are all encouraged and welcome to send your support to fund RX1390.  Thanks.  (Did I say this would be a LONG report??)

I am having a difficult time getting pics formatted for easy viewing so bear with me.  OK I give up and will just post the pics centered in a long line.  Next - - -

And then  -  as the work proceeds in an unprecedented string of perfect weather days.  - - -

Paint is next - - -

The color makes a big difference.  This is our first look at the orange  - - -

We relocated the worksite to the south of south junction so the trolley power could be restored.  Always safety conscious, we turned that off when the painters were working under our overhead wires.

At last the car is painted, but hard to see the full impact with all the wrapping and masking still in place.  Ask and you will receive.  We will close with two shots of the train pulling the car along with DODX 12661.  Still wet, the car is to be placed temporarily inside a Barn.

Here is a short review and tour of one of our tank cars, restored perhaps over 20 years ago.

Tank car?  I don't see any tank car.  Yet this often the first step in any work at IRM.  US Army 8537 is lugging a string of cars out of Yard 14 so that the subject car can be pulled to a better location.  A great example of how IRM works and how it preserves so many aspects of railroad history.  This could have been a period photo from decades ago, in countless locations.

The left side of the tank shows the DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE lettering on the silver tank car body with black trim.  The car was used to haul heating oil and possibly other petroleum based cargoes to air bases and defense silos during the height of the cold war era.  I will guess this would have carried heavy oil products, since the car is equipped with interior piping and heating coils to thin and liquify a heavy product.

There is lettering on the right side of the tank defining an AAR warning.

Here is the dome with it long string of lettering.  You can see that decades of outdoor storage has resulted in the upper areas of the dome and tank suffering mightily from sun and weather.

The right side of the tank has much lettering and info, most of it mandated by RULE for cars in interchange service.

The end had the standard array of lettering containing the reporting marks, capacity, and other data.

For this era, of the restoration, a set of consolidated lube stencils were used.

As shown above the car has suffered from being stored outdoors, setting us up to doing another restoration of what was once COMPLETE.  The car is on our short list to repaint and I expect it may yet see some significant 'wear and tear' in the coming weeks.  If we are to repaint and letter it yet again, should not we work to store it indoors so the work will last?  Yes this is the commercial asking for donations to fund R12661.  Thanks in advance.

Just a short note to explain the lack of new posts.  I know many look for and read these, and I appreciate the support.  I am involved at IRM in two major efforts and it is basically a dawn to dusk effort for me for the past several days.  I have been taking some pics so prepare for several long posts in a week or two when we 'get over the hump'.  (NO WE ARE NOT BUILDING A HUMP!!)  Add to that computer problems generated by software upgrades.  UGH!!

Bob Kutella

The weather was not the best but the crew soldiered on through some periods of drizzle.

Jim Leonard was up in the bucket truck and working under the front roof overhang.  That surface was previously needlechipped and now it was more overhead work.  Jim wirebrushed large ares of this steel in the morning.  I bet his arms were hanging heavy by lunchtime.

And Jim followed through on the job with prime painting up there.  Nick Rindt finished needlechipping some more area on the right side plow wing, and that also got primed.

Victor Humprheys painted some more finish gray in the cab cupola in the morning and here we see Buzz Morisette wrestling with the restored operators seat on the right side.  Not much room to work up there, and not much room to stage a good photo.

The seat is in, and most of the cab painted.  Victor Humphreys is enjoying this setting as though they were ready to pull out for plow duty.  Come out Saturday for our open house from 1-3 pm and place yourself in the spotlight.  Paul Cronin and Kirk Warner tested the operation and both wings work.  Paul and Kirk also did some blacksmith work by straightening a floor mounting plate for one of the flanger cylinder rods.

We will close this entry with the last of the small diameter piping that had to be removed to allow the new windows to be installed.  Here is a gauge branch tee, two sets of window defoggers, and the whistle valve and piping.

You have to see it!!  In conjunction with Museum Showcase Weekend we are holding an open house for our Chicago Great Western X 38 Russell snowplow.  This has been on site less than two years yet an amazing amount of work has been done.  We have manufactured and installed eleven new windows, two doors, and relined most of the interior wood siding in the rear box of the plow body.  Most of the cab cupola has been restored and that includes a newly restored and upholstered operators seat.  Many body repairs have been done and the south side and rear end are completely repainted and lettered.  Most of the remaining body is quickly being restored and repainted.  Air piping has been repaired and is working.

Last year we did much this same thing to the delight of many of our visitors.  So stop by Track 40 from 1-2 PM and look over the progress. 

 

We will also include the opportunity to climb into the car and up into the cab.  Plan on staying there a minute and taking a turn at the controls to be able to personally operate one of the plow wings!  This will require physical ability to climb steps and a ladder and there are cramped spaces and a potential headknocker.  We will have a donation jar on hand so please fill it with greenbacks to help the work continue.

Come help us celebrate the 77th birthday of this plow.

Victor Humphreys has completed painting the first coat of finish paint on all the new wood lining we have applied, one careful piece at a time.  It really looks great.  We are planning a plow event for Saturday afternoon of Museum Showcase Weekend.  So come on out on the 14th and see what has been done.  A really remarkable lot of progress in the last year, thanks to the team members, not so much me.  Maybe we can shake a few quarters from your pocket change to help assure we can continue to buy the needed materials.  Or, send a check to fund RX38.

Last week we  showed you the train line air pipe going back on the plow after being worked on.  That was the good news.  The bad news is that it leaked air badly.  The culprit seems to be a BARCO ball joint which was designed to allow that pipe to be raised and folded back on the front roof when the unit was plowing.  So Victor Humprheys and Paul Cronin tackled the project.  First, to wrestle a scaffold into position and then to take the line back down.

The idea was to use the scaffold to make it safer to pull on some really large pipe wrenches.  But getting down for Paul Cronin meant Dave Diaz needed to act as anchor and counterweight on the other end.  Mission accomplished.

The old saying goes "In for a dime, in for a dollar".  Paul Cronin is torching off a broken L bracket used to anchor the train line on the front end.  With the pipe off again we might as well bite the bullet and make a new bracket.

Where have I seen that caption before?  Well, I guess it does not matter.  With the old bracket and blobs of weld torched off, Paul grinds the remaining nubbins smooth and will then fabricate a new bracket.