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.

A lot is happening very quickly on this project.  As reported previously the next step is to do repair and rebuilding work on the dismantled truck now in our shop.  The immediate focus is on the pins and bushings which hold together brake rigging, the slack adjusters, etc.

Before we get into the details of that work we were pleased to note that an entire set of new pedestal liners has been fabricated and delivered.  These are wear parts to allow the journal boxes to slide vertically as needed, when the car is in motion.

Jeff Brady has been busily engaged for some weeks as the truck is dismantled, taking careful measurements, and tabulating the needed new parts.

Jeff created this schematic to help keep track and identify the complex connections and pieces.  Note that there are 78 bushings and 26 pins, needed for EACH truck assembly!

Greg Kepka was pressing out the old bushings from the various rods and levers.  It was somewhat disconcerting to hear screeching and clanking like breaking glass as the rusted old bushings broke free and became loose.

Here are some of the links, old bushings, and newly loosened bushings that Greg was working on.

Rod Turner was turning new alloy steel rod to size in the small lathe.

Here is the new small furnace/oven for heat treating newly fabricated pins and bushings to case harden them.  Four of the new pins are on the bench in front of the oven, having undergone their particular version of a trial by fire.

Work continues.  Perhaps the most visible and exciting thing to happen was delivery of new fabricated panels for the interior of the car.  Eric Lorenz went to work quickly to start installing them.  These are the panels which go below the windows and are pre-painted the correct interior color.  Why now?  Well, the puzzle of the car construction as designed by the builder requires these to be installed, to allow window post caps to be installed in the interior, to then allow installation of the window tracks, and ultimately the windows.

Alex Randow began the day stripping masking from many of the sash which have by now been cleaned and clear coated.

Alex pitched in on a few other tasks then went back to never ending job of cleaning the aluminum frames on still more sash.

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?

Progress in the Steam shop continued steadily over the last two weekends.

Jeff has continued the shop reorganization to the point that many of the large parts are now arranged on the East side while still allowing plenty of space to work on the super heater flues when they return. He is now moving on to the machine shop which, when complete, will free up a lot more space around the wheel lathe.

Bob and others made use of the space around the wheel lathe to work on getting this operational.

The McCabe was refitted to its modified timbers, which allow it to be lifted on the pallet jack.  Thanks to Bob Kutela for his help and use of tools for this.  The modified timbers will allow us to move this machine, although moving what we estimate at about 6 tons will never be easy.

The trouble with this machine is that it needs a lot of space around it when it operates but is used only infrequently.  However, what it does, in smoothly bending heavy boiler plates, is critical  It was used last weekend in a first test for bending the new corner patch for 1630's firebox.  This successfully demonstrated that we have the dies of the machine correctly set up to make the critical curve.

On 1630 substantial progress was made on the boiler cleaning. 

·         Having successfully tested the breathing system and sand blasting equipment, the next major job was to minimize the flow of dust into the shop.  The last time this was done the locomotive was pulled outside but we certainly do not want to wait for Spring to do this !!

·         Collin and I closed up the boiler with tarpaulins and set up ducted extraction from the chimney.  With fans on the footplate we can establish a flow from back to front and "most" of the dust is pumped out of the door.

·         The first blasting was very successful.  We largely cleaned the critical firebox top and side seam areas in about 20 minutes.  Glad to say it all looks good and free of any sign of cracks so far.

·         From this exercise we learned that the blast medium we were using works well, so we can order in a large quantity for next weekend.  We also learned that, while the ducting works pretty well, the missing firebox corner creates a significant leak that will need to be plugged next weekend.  Collin was very comfortable in the boiler with the new breathing system ..... the rest of the team, outside in the shop, were less comfortable than he was!!.

·         Cleaning of the boiler interior can now be moved forward quickly.

Getting the super heater flues back from sand blasting is proving problematic.  They have been ready since New Year.  Snag is that they must not get wet and need to be collected weekdays or early on a Saturday morning.  Each time we have set up a crew to take the truck on a Saturday, the weather has turned cold ...... and the truck does not operate reliably is really cold weather.

In other areas a good deal of machining was progressed for 428.

I am now away on business for two weeks so no update next week.  However, as the trip is to the UK, I may actually see some working steam next weekend.

Nigel Bennett

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.

Gerry Dettloff works on fabricating new rods for the rebuilding of the truck on TM 972, and my camera tagged this image as number 972!  Work continues on a regular basis for this truck.  Most of the dismantling is done and now the hard part is to fabricate pieces to reassemble it.

New ground for us is to fabricate and heat treat the hardened pins needed to replace time worn pins in the truck assembly.  Gerry is set up to cut some new rod, and Rod Turner has a new small furnace for doing the required heat treating in stages.  Very impressive for our restoration specialists!

Not exactly making them, but trying to make them new again.  Lorne Tweed and Eric Lorenz are going over a pile of them, trying to set aside the hopeless ones.  I think there are seven different varieties of these parts for ONE WINDOW, making the scope of this something north of 200 pieces.

On the carbody out in the barn, Eric Lorenz continues to install trim and more parts.  The headlight is now complete visually, although a new reflector bowl inside and the bulb and wiring remain.

The last of the two fold up steps to the roof have come back form the painter and are now installed just to the rear of the mid car exit doors.  Eric checks the last screws to be sure they are secure.

What would any of these posts be without the ubiquitous window work?  Keith Letsche returned to the shop and is working on reducing the large pile of sash that remain to be cleaned, and coated with clear finish.

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.

This car was last run about 2004, give or take. It was hoped to be used off property for the movie Flag of Our Fathers!   Well, upon wheel inspection it was found to have a thin wheel thus the Bad Order tag.   We have never fixed the problem by replacing the wheel set! That's the background.                                                                                                                                       

After that the conversation started going around to replace the newer seats with the correct walkover style and make it a real Santa Fe combine again. Work began by removing the more modern seats on one side then assessing the situation.  One thing rolled into another and Mark Hoffman began needlechipping the wall from sill downward to floor. After much sanding, grinding, primering by Mark, I finally topcoated the area with Sherwin-Williams paint that Shelly Van der Schagen had matched from old color samples. The below pictures were taken in May 2009 and are the results of the teams efforts.  In the meantime  Mike Baksic and Ray Moorman found the correct style of seat frame.  12 frames, I believe, have now been stripped and repainted to the matched color. Shelly has done a fine job repainting all the frames. They are now stored in the baggage section for future installation.  In 2010 work continued but this time removing the seats on the opposite side, Mike, Ray and Mike's dad, Wayne, joined in this task.   Mark,again, went through the process of needlechipping etc. The following pictures I took during and after the last paint job. Both walls are now painted.  

Side wall of ATSF 2544 after being  primed.  The same day it will be painted with 2 coats of paint. All in a days work, May 19,2009.

The first green top coat is still wet. Notice additional plastic to cover area not being painted. It takes more work to mask than to paint.  Again May 19 2009

Interior paint job completed!  All work accomplished in one day in May 2009.  Job well done by Roger! Now on to the next project of repairing the floor.

Now you say 'installation of seat frames can begin'.    NO not yet!!  Lastly,  Shelly, Mike and coach dept member John McKelvey are going to purchase new linoleum to finish and repair the floor.

When that's complete installation of frames will begin. Next...... new wheels.    I hope!    Roger

The snow made for a pretty quiet weekend at the steam shop.  Only a couple of brave souls made it to Union and Saturday.  I got there Sunday along with Tom, Jason and Brian.

Jason and Brian made good progress on cleaning and needle chipping most remaining areas of the boiler and the various pipes running along the outside of the boiler ready for testing. 

Needle chipping the firebox

Pipework ready for testing

The area remaining to be cleaned off is the one that everyone dreads - the underside of the barrel.  This is the real fun area requiring that you crawl under the boiler and brush / needle chip directly above where you are lying - gravity then ensures that most of what you remove lands on you!!.

I just about completed the set up for swaging ready to bring tubes in from the box car. 

However that will now be of lesser priority than getting the inside of the boiler sand blasted.  Potential contractors for sand blasting are not willing to do the boiler interior at a reasonable price so we need to do it ourselves.  Given that this will require several days use of a respirator helmet and  subsequent use for welding inside 1630's tender, we have acquired a suitable pump.  It is now the first priority to set the boiler up so that dust is generally contained within it and can be exhausted outside the shop.  The we can get on with the job.

I also got the help of Bob Kutella on modifying the timbers of the McCabe flanger so that it can be moved more easily.  Unfortunately this requires timber that we could not get on a Sunday so hopefully that will be done next week.

No report from me next weekend as I am in Florida for a week.  Let's hope that we have a lot to report in 2 weeks.

Nigel

Work continues on this exciting project, with the hope of having TM 972 back on its trucks and operating at IRM this season.

Norm Krentel and Jeff Brady are working on one of the trucks from beneath this car while the wheel and axle sets are out at a shop.  This is a golden opportunity to do what amounts to a substantial rebuild of the truck, while the wheels and motors are out for work.  The frame is inside our shop, so winter weather is not an issue.

Unlike a model railroad truck consisting of three molded pieces, there are literally over one hundred parts and pieces.  Over time, some of those become worn.  They may still work for a while yet, but the clock is ticking with every additional service mile logged.  So the prudent decision is to the repair or replacement of items showing substantial wear and which are badly out of spec.

Current efforts involve still more dismantling of the many pieces, but right now we are focusing on "pins and bushings".  The brake rigging in particular involves several levers, rods, and assemblies which must pivot and move when the brakes are applied.  Each of those joints usually is held together by a hardened steel pin which rides inside a hardened steel bushing.  The bushing is a press fit into the respective casting it resides in.

All of that work is well along the way.  Remember this an active project, and as with any project, unforeseen work may become apparent along the way.  In this case we have made the decision to replace many of the pins and bushings, assuring decades of relatively trouble free operation.  But that also means purchasing many of those parts, those we do not have as spares in inventory.  And this is the first truck, the other awaits the same treatment.  So we are not at the final cost and donations are still appreciated.  The restricted fund is  RTMS  and your generous donation and support guarantees you are PARTICIPATING in this progress.

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.

A good day of progress on a number of fronts.

On 1630

·         Success at last on the swager.  Tom spent much of last Sunday honing the damaged bores in the dies.  We spent most of the morning carefully refitting and aligning them in the machine but it looks like we have success.  Several old tubes were successfully swaged and the machine operated smoothly throughout.  Now we are ready to go into production.  Having gone thru the set up the objective will be to do the tubes for both 1630 and the Shay so between 400 and 500 tubes in total.  The current major problem is that all the tubes are in the boxcars and the diesel guys were not able to switch these before the snow arrived.  So we are now dependent upon a break in the weather to allow the boxcars to be switched to a position where we can move the large bunches of tubes to and from the shop.

What does swaging achieve?.  The tubes of a steam locomotive boiler are expanded by rollers into the tube sheets to make the seal.  Commonly the tube diameter in the firebox tube sheet is smaller than the general diameter of the tube.  This is a crafty piece of steam locomotive design.  For efficiency you want as much tube area as you can achieve in contact with the water.  The hottest, and therefore most stressed tube sheet, is the firebox end.  So narrowing a couple of inches of the tube where it runs into this tube sheet allows more metal to remain in the tube sheet between the holes.  So on 1630 (and the Shay) the tubes are 2 inch diameter but are shrunk by swaging to 1 7/8 at the firebox end.

The objective of the whole process can now be seen in one of the test tubes.

 

The process is first to heat the end in a furnace

 

then hammer it between the dies, that we have had so much fun with, for about 15 seconds turning it as it is hammered so that you get a nice even 1 7/8 inch tube end.

·         The dome cover was successfully removed to allow lapping of the throttle valve which is one of the key repairs to be carried out.  The fork lift made life a great deal easier as the cover could slid directly onto the forks and brought down to the ground.

The forklift makes this a lot easier

At ground level you can see how big and heavy it is

·         It is now clear that we have 4 or 5 stays on the back head where the sleeves are sufficiently worn to need replacing so that will start soon.

·         Mike continued with grinding out the rivet and patch bolt holes to enable fitting of the firebox corner patch.

On 428 an number of machining jobs were progressed

·         Bob and others continued honing the coupling rods to allow new bushes to be fitted;

·         Stu and Cameron continued with the packing glands; and

·         Tom and Cameron worked on the set up of a large piece for horizontal drilling.  (Looked very impressive but I did not like to disturb the efforts by querying exactly what it was!).

Around the shop Jeff continued the program to free up more working areas.

·         The space is now ready to safe end the super heater flues for 1630 which are coming back from sandblasting in the next week or so;

·         Some unused machines were moved out of the machine shop which will enable a really challenging move of a large turret lathe from the wheel lathe area to the machine shop.  This will allow the turret lathe to be activated and enable wheels to be stored away from the door and overhead crane;

·         We also lifted the McCabe flanger so that it can be properly mounted on timbers that will allow it to be moved.  This will free up space to handle large numbers of tubes that are to be swaged.

So another productive weekend.

Nigel