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

What is a THERN?  Well, the last part of our beloved GREAT NORTHERN name, now painted on the left side of the car.  Almost 60 F on Friday, and too good a day to sit watching TV when lettering can be applied.

No dimensions in this group of lettering but commonly referred to as such.

Always more ways to superdetail a model car, even if it is 12 inch = 1 foot scale.  Victor Humphreys made up two new tack boards and we installed them on the car.

The left side continued to see more lettering.  So for this long holiday weekend a total of ten blocks of new lettering was added - TWO COATS of paint for each!

Regrettably, the weather is really turning too cold to do much more of the final touches on this car.  And we were making such good progress.

Yet, there we were this weekend.  Victor Humphreys adds still more finish paint to the trucks, over the previously cleaned and primed areas.  Does this pose look comfortable to you?

Lettering was completed for the A end, and is now 100% done on both the A end and the B end.

And the left side continues to see addition of more data and lettering, one small item at a time.

In between other activity, work on the trucks continues and new lettering continues to be applied to the hopper car.

Victor Humphreys was in an uncomfortable position as he has worked his way under the car, here removing years of dirt and crud from the truck bolsters.  By the end of the day the bolsters on both trucks had been cleaned and primed.  Why you ask?  We try not to ignore the hard parts and these are quite visible through the open framing on the ends of this car.

Car builders often applied lettering to blow their own horns, and Pullman was no exception when these cars were built.

The Great northern was a classy outfit and stenciled a record of when the car received grease and lubrication.  The "Y" indicates this work was done in Superior, Wisconsin.

Rules required application of an IDT stencil.

As the fall leaves turn, so it was time to turn the car, end for end.  This presents the unlettered side for more work in its location.  And presented another rare opportunity for a photo.  This right hand side now has all lettering completed except for the 'medallion' graphics.

The B end also has all its lettering.  On Sunday I did not grab any more images but work continued with a second coat on some of the applied lettering, more lettering applied to the A end, and the left hand side.  I have been carrying around rolls of transfer patterns and stencils.  Now, several of them have been used as needed and are complete on the car.  So I gratefully now have a pile of 'DONE WORK' sheets.

The weather turned nasty this week, but we did get some lettering done before the bottom fell out of the thermometer in the afternoon.  This is one of the groups, a lot of letters to be drawn and cut out with two days of 'homework' earlier this week for me.

This almost completes the lettering needed on the end sheet for this end of the car.  We did some more on the left side, but tight quarters and poor light resulted in no images.

You did not think I would let you get away without some views of our hopper car restoration, did you?  I know it may not seem to be balanced reporting but this major effort by the Freight Car Department is near to my heart, and I could not help but take a lot of images.

Victor Humphreys continued work on the truck sideframes, completing the finish painting on the right side of this car.

I suppose modelers treat such notations with only passing interest as long as some generic stuff is shown on a car.  Not so with our restorations, seen here complete on the right side of the car.  There are a lot of letters and numbers painted here, each one having a meaning and significance to this car.

There were needed switch moves in Barn 8 and also Barn 4.  Our beloved hopper got outdoors for the first time since lettering efforts began and this 3/4 view from the B end shows much of the efforts to advantage.

A similar pose is this view from the A end, and yes, some lettering has been applied here also.  Keep hoping for good weather for this pace to continue.

This is a more traditional straight on view of the right side.  Amazingly, there are four more blocks of decorations to be painted on this side.

Too soon, the locomotive coupled up and the hopper was off to be put away.

This close up of the B end, shows nearly complete lettering for this end, some of it still wet from being painted an hour previous.

Today we managed to paint a second coat of finish enamel on the roof of the boxcar.  Cool weather, but the steel warmed up quickly in the sun.  Victor Humphreys and Roger Kramer are pictured.  Roger deserves a special thanks for his help on this.  Other BLOG posts from me will be sketchy this week, since I was up on the roof slogging paint with the others, and sometimes wondered if more paint got on me or on the roof.