Illinois Railway Museum Blog

A Clean Shop

John Faulhaber is one of several folks who have worked in the past few weeks to help REALLY clean the wood shop area.  As a reminder, the wood shop is closed to restoration work this coming weekend as we are hosting an annual event for us - this time about 100 folks from coast to coast all interested in old woodworking machines.  And we have them!

Patching Steel

Gerry Dettloff is working to piece in new steel and weld it all up on CRT 1797, the next wood L car restoration being done by Tim Peters.  That end plate was pretty much like a lace doily - I suppose you can expect that on a car over a century old!

Another Silver Car

Many of you have read of the exploits of our Wednesday Warriors, a group of fellows who volunteer on Special Projects.  They are largely invisible since they do not attend IRM on weekends, but their work is certainly NOT invisible.  This season they have been laboring on a lightweight smoothside baggage car from the CB&Q.  I think I will go with 983 although there has been some confusion with the number 963.  In this Photo, Paul Gasiorowski has been applying new silver to the north side of the car.  This is a rare photo with the other cars stored in yard five out for last week's showcase operations, leaving us an empty track.

More Paint

Wayne Bates is working on one of the sliding doors as Paul continues east with the paint roller.

Corner Repairs

Meanwhile, Neal Schwingbeck is welding in new steel to repair some wrinkles sustained to the corner.  If any of you saw this car a scant six months ago you would not believe it to be the same piece of equipment now!