Illinois Railway Museum Blog

It has become an annual tradition in the Wood Shop, that there is a pot luck Christmas Party held each year.  It is a great opportunity to recognize and thank all the volunteers for their hard work, and a way to meet folks you might not see every day.  Here, thanks to some images from Rich Witt, is a peek at what you might have missed.

Ready, Set, GO

The food and fixings were set out with care.

The Line Up

The food line opened quickly and we see Gerry Dettloff, Henry Vincent, and Bill Greenhill moving methodically and making their best selections.

An Elegant Table

One of our workbenches serves as a table to allow efficient consumption of the goodies, shoveling it down the hatch.

Santa

Santa, Pete Galayda, did most of the 'heavy liftng' organizing the get together this year.  John Nelligan, on the right, just congratulated him on a job well done.

Whew

With full tummies the major activity shifted to recounting the year events and perhaps telling a few stories.  John Wosniak, Gene Mackowiak, Buzz Morisette, ?, and Victor Humphreys are busy solving all the problems.

Due to some physical problems I missed the event this year, but I would like to thank all those that did work in the Wood Shop, the Freight Department, the Electric Car Department (the list goes on) in 2010, and to wish you all a

  MERRY  CHRISTMAS !!

Fitting

A fitting end - OR - the beginning of the fitting.  Rich Witt was fitting together the mortise and tenon joints for two new windows for B&M 1094.  Seems simple enough when sliding the finished parts together, but somewhat more complex in the flesh when trying to get a good tight joint for a strong frame.

The Result

And at the end of the day the two new frames were assembled, glued, and in the press.  Rich Witt and Victor Humphreys have just checked  for squareness and Rich is cleaning up any glue that has squeezed out of the joints before it sets up.  These wide (over 50 inches) 'picture window' frames stretch the limits of our gluing press, but as you can see they were fitted into the press, just barely.

Painting and Glazing

Buzz Morisette has the next three windows on the bench, these for the MILW 01984 caboose.

Saddles

Victor Humphreys took advantage of some open time in his schedule to continue finish sanding the contours and curves on new roof saddles for CA&E 451.  I managed to rough out some more blanks on the big Wright bandsaw.

Windows

Always more windows.  Roger Kramer had some more of the rotted windows in the shop from the IC 3996 heavyweight diner.  There have been some comments about what the issue was if the car is finally inside a barn.  Here is the evidence that replacements are needed, and they need to be made new.  These parts have rotted to the pont where they cannot be salvaged and reassembled, and this is one of the GOOD ones!  Roger brought in some wood he has been accumulating and we will see what can be done with this.  We hope to start making sawdust on this project soon.

Pete Galayda and Jerry Dettloff went out to the South End to get some more lumber for the Charles City Western 300 decking, and Pete was cutting and fitting the first of many pieces.  George Clark continued on the Lake Shore Electric 810, and new steel was delivered for repairs on our B&O wagon top boxcar.  Of course that will have to wait for better weather next year.

We also visited with Bill Greenhill who is making steady progress toward the painting of Cleveland Transit System 4223, a PCC car now in Barn 2 for the painting process.