Illinois Railway Museum Blog

The day started with Brian Harp and Tom Hunter refilling the hydraulic tank in the Amtrak Regulator. It drank roughly 40 gallons of fluid severely depleting our 55gal drum of oil. We'll have to get more soon.. After I arrived and met up with Steve L. we prepped for a day at Four Mile Siding. Tom ran the crane with work train with Brian as the conductor and headed east to switch out the siding, while Steve and I switched Barn 2 to retrieve the Hydraulic power pack and motorcar. We followed east and began by moving trees with the crane. BIG trees. The biggest tree we had to slide down the track on two ties and teeter it off with the crane into a wide clearing. The tree maxed out the crane's capacity at near 10,000 lbs but Tom managed to set it off very nicely. A few more large limbs were moved out of the way as well before we had the room to begin building track. We cut, drilled and installed a stick of 112lb rail and gaged the track to set everything up for the first panel to be hooked up. We gage spiked a few ties under the new rail for the crane to roll onto to hook up the first panel Jeron Glander arrived via the North Shore 714 with a gift of bottled water and helped us out for the rest of the day. We lifted the first track panel out of the way first to clear the ground of limbs and sticks to get a relatively smooth foundation for the new track. Tom then set the new panel in place and we bolted it all up with relatively little difficulty. We cleaned up and headed back to the property around 4 o'clock. All that is left is the hookup of the next two panels and finish spiking 12 or so ties. One more day and we'll be ready for the regulator and brush cutter to begin their work. Thanks to Brian Harp for joining us this weekend. I hope he can join us again in all of the festivities before next year's annual meeting. On a bad note- the J585 refuses to start now. The starter problem has gotten much worse and it no longer spins the engine over to crank.. Flywheel replacement time? Looks like a return of the 580 is imminent.

Adam Robillard