Illinois Railway Museum Blog

Toms report from Saturday and my report from Sunday-

Saturday-
Yesterday Frank and I got there so that we could help with the Electric Car folks with the first moves into Barn 11 - as no one was about in the morning, we dug into the list of stuff to do in Barn 2 - starting with the starter of course. As I noted below - Frank dug out that one from the 585, we did the switch with the 580 and got the 585 running. We let it run a while to warm up and starter in on the 6000. We changed out the broken pin on the right work head, and on the good advice of Frank decided to change the left one too since I bought two new pins... good thing as that one was broken too, hanging on but less the a 1/4 inch...yikes... So it goes to show - inspect your machine as much as you can... Both are now new.

After all that was done, Adam showed for the 2nd trick. We headed to Yard 11, to wake up the 50. It took a while with the normal trans oil and warm up, we had to thaw out the transmission air lines too - but it fired up fairly well for having sat for a month...

In the end it was not needed - so that ended a good day

(Seems the EJ&E folks installed the wrong starter in the 585 - one with too small teeth on its gear - that DID grind away some on the fly wheel, but after Frank removed the 585 starter and we went into the barn to see what was on the 580 (how cool to have spare motor cars huh?) and saw it was a lot bigger motor on the 580... sooo..switcho we did -)

Tom Hunter
--------------

Sunday-
Tom and I made up the gang and chose to clean off the CNW flatcar of 'stuff' gathered from along the RoW with the Burro crane we serviced Saturday.  Tom fired  up the Model 50 in Yard 11 and I went to retrieve wreck knuckes and such.  The CNW flat was buried in the middle of a string of cars on Station Tk 2 so we had to move a bunch of cars to get it out.  I do believe the Model 50 moved more tonnage that day than ever before!  We moved a very heavy six axle flat, eight axle flat and Rock Island coach uphill in one pull!  With a full transmission and full throttle it crept the cars upto
the main at a brisk 1-2MPH... It was amazing.  After making the switch we headed to yard 14 to unload a slew of line poles we had picked up from Schmidt Siding and then went to the diamond at South Jct to unload three old signal foundations from the old 151/ 152
signals.  Tom reported how heavy the things were to pick up.  6000lbs is not light. We finished the heavy lifts and ran the flat back to station 2 and put away all of the other cars.  We tied up the crane and called it a day.  I bought three sheets of 3/4" plywood for a little shelf project in Tk24.  I hope to start that soon. On another note it, the diesel guys plan on switching the shop on Track 24... That means we'll
have to clear out ALL of the track machines from the Barn.  Included is the old brush cutter in the heated portion of the shop.  If anyone is working on it, please let me know as it may be moved permanently out of the shop due to track space issues.

Take Care,
Adam Robillard
IRM Track Dept