Illinois Railway Museum Blog

Last weekend Howard Geier came out and worked all day Saturday buffing the Seattle 633.  It looks fantastic!  We are almost finished doing a cleaning of the interior also, so we finally got rid of 30 years worth of accumulated desert dust.  Jerry Saunders worked on finding replacement wheels for the street side rear since that was the tire that blew a couple weeks ago.  He found 2 for that side, we still need to search a little more for the curb side, which is still missing one.  As soon as we have a complete set of wheels, we are going to need to buy a new set of tires.  That’s another $1,500 – donations to the Trolley Bus Department are GREATLY appreciated!

This weekend Richard Schauer and I went out to OERM to identify parts that will come with the other coaches and what is needed to restore the LA coach.  It was over 100 degrees both days and inside the parts boxcars was pretty toasty to say the least.  The OERM guys helped us out by moving the boxcars into their Carhouse 7, so at least we didn’t bake out in the sun.  Thanks!

Richard Schauer and OERM's John Smatlak pick out trolley poles that will be used on the LA coach.

Richard goes through some of the stacks of trolley coach parts stored in OERM's boxcars.

We believe that we have our Edmonton coach picked out.  It will most likely be coach 181.  Richard is in the process of getting all the shipping paperwork in order – we are anticipating arrival by Labor Day.