Illinois Railway Museum Blog

Today's track report starts with a trip to the Aurora Transportation Center to pick up Marcus. Marcus has not been out for quite some time, and was suffering IRM Withdrawl, so I agreed to pick him up at the ATC and bring him up. 

Proper track work requires proper sustenance, so the next stop was the Marengo cafe for breakfast.  After breakfast we ran to Napa for a case of antifreeze for the model 50 burro. Later we would realize the value of this stop for another purpose... more on that later.

Next stop was a conference with Julie on budgetary and trackwork for 2011. This conference turned into a long discussion that got slightly off topic but was fun even if not totally productive.  When this conference finished, it was time for lunch.  Yea.. long conference.

Upon return from lunch, we got the 50 fired up and yes, the tranny was frozen up again. Attempts to thaw her out failed, so we left her running and went to work on something else.  Almost on cue, Julie called and advised the block heater that Adam had ordered for the tie crane had arrived. Plan B was hatched. Marcus and I got the old heater off, and quickly realized we would have to re-use the mount since it had a hose mount off of it that was absent from the new mount.. not a big thing.  As we were working on this task we were joined by David Fullarton. He helped us finish off the filling of the radiator since we had a full case of new anti freeze from earlier in the day.

So we return to our idling 50 and find the tranny is finally ready to work.  We put Marcus in the crane, swing over and pick up the scrap gon, and go mag some diamond parts.  About half way through the pick up, we put David in the hot seat and had him work the magnet.  I hung off the side of the cabin, for the first few pics talking him through the steps. David picked up running the crane fairly quick, so I got back on the ground to help with the picks since some of the derbis was frozen.  After about a half hour we had the pile picked up. The last pick a big chunk did not want to fall off the magnet. So we talked David through scraping the mag across the top of the car to knock it off.  After that David ran the crane back to the crane's home and put her away.

Last thing of the day was to check on the block heater of the tie crane.  We confirmed we had heat from the new block heater, and attempted a start. No joy, still too cold. I'm guessing with a little more time on the block heater, and a little time on a battery charger, she will fire right up.

We cleaned up for the day, then Marcus and I made a run to the Roundhouse in Aurora for dinner, before Marcus caught a train back to the city.

Photos of the days activities are here: http://www.irm.org/gallery/album266

Frank D.