Illinois Railway Museum Blog

The big project for the weekend was the extension of 40 track near the electric car shop.

Saturday's crew was myself, Tom H, Steve L and help from Jeron G. After a trip to Farm & Fleet, Tom continued to tackle the brush cutter in yard 11 replacing more fluids and filters as well as replacing the battery. The machine was almost entirely lubed and ready to use when the starter went out near the end of the day... Sunday Tom managed to get the starter removed and is getting a repair done during the week. Steve, Jeron and myself spent the rest of the day getting material ready for 40 track by locating and loading the rails, tie plates and joint bars. Thanks to Stan from the car shop the Amtrak flatcar was dug from yard 13 and placed with the Model 50 burro while two of us dug out the hydraulic power pack from Track 24. The flatcar was loaded up and by that time it was time to hit the road.Sunday's crew was myself, Tom H and Steve from the track dept as well as MANY more folks from the electric car shop. We had a bunch of help from from other depts including freight car, passenger coach and diesel as well as the day progressed. John B from the freight car dept helped us out from start to finish, thanks for the help and good meeting you John! At the start of the day, 40 track was cleared off by the shop folks using the Milwaukee Electric L7. After laying out the ties and getting our machines to the work area, we torch cut the rail to length, drilled holes in the existing rail, bolted it all together, laid out tie plates, spiked and gaged the track, raised leveled lined, dressed the track and to top it off we spotted the caboose in its final resting spot. In total we built 24' of new track and it took us till dark to finish it all up. The Model 50 burro crane got a good workout as the workhorse crane of the day. We used the forklift to set the ties, burro crane to set the rail, hydraulic power pack to drill the holes, air compressor to spike the ties and tie crane to nip the ties. Incredibly nothing needed to be jump started the entire day... Thanks to everyone for braving the cold including those who could only help out for a little while. It was all appreciated and very enjoyable working together with everyone. It was tiring but I think most of us can agree it was all very rewarding when it was all said and done.

The next big project will most likely end up being the yard 11 project. With or without stone there is a lot of work to still get done including the construction of the new 11-4 track and first pass with the tamper on the other 3 tracks. Until that gets underway we will continue to cut brush along the mainline and get more work done of other machines such as the Jackson 6000 tamper, switch tamper and EJ&E 580 & 585 motorcars.

I will eventually get some photos up on my Member's Photo page soon from the weekend. http://www.irm.org/gallery/lzeje657

Adam Robillard