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Sunday, March 20. 2011Weekend Track Report
Long Days and tons of work done... well how about one long day and a day to watch thunderstorms and do some flat car planning...
This weekend we continued where Adam and Jeron had left off the week before, we set up the crane train and set off the last of the tie bundles. It was a long day of hard work - and we were joined by more new folks - and Patrick who it appears that we did not scare off (yet). We were also joined by Mike Potter - it was good to see him out for a day, and good to have him along to make the cuts and couple back up every time we have to set off a bundle close to the crane - as you cannot raise the boom under the wire - For the gang we had Adam for his last day of spring break, Frank, New guy Bill and Patrick - we also had Greg from the electric car join us and of course Mike Potter. At the end of the day Steve joined us as a ground man fresh from the new CP UTU rank. While the gang unloaded the ties between Johnson and the Farm Crossing - Adam spent the day spotting the ties where marked - about 400 of them. We have about 300 more to spot. Frank started marking the rest of the bad wood - and Jeron will dig into the tie crane to spot the rest this week. We hope to get the tie gang out in a month or less to get this done - then we have all the mess of the old ties to pick back up. As soon as we had the last ties off the car, we took a bit of time to set some signal heads with the crane while we were out at Johnson - have to use all the equipment as much as we can for each other. We worked so hard that we did not take any lunch time until after 3P - as we wanted to get all the ties out and give the railroad to the electric car department to train on the CA&E trains. After lunch we set the TTX car back on the interchange and a few of us finished the day off with some scrap loading into the gon with the mag to pick up some more of the scrap around the place. Sunday tuned out to be really rainy with thunderstorms - as we had so much under our belts by then, Frank - Jeron and I just spent some time talking the rest of the summer plans watching the show from Barn 2 - Next weekend the inbound CN OTM car unloading will be the show (if it is here). Be Safe out there Tom Sunday, March 20. 2011Wood Shop Update - March 19, 2011Let's start off with window work, what else?  Careful - Rich Witt has his hands full trimming one of the Villa Falls windows using our table mounted router.  Final Inspection And next, he doing the final finish work and sanding to complete the 'order' for two new frames for this Pullman passenger car.  Glue Chemist Lorne Tweed continues the task of custom fitting sets of rails and stiles together for each new frame destined for the IC 3996. In this photo he is donning the role of chemist, mixing two part waterproof glue for the next frame. Two more frames were finished, glued up, and placed in the press.  Artwork Buzz Morisette is also the talented guy doing a lot of the artwork for lettering cars that are being restored. Here is one of the new Chicago, North Shore & Milwaukee vinyl 'decals' that were produced. He brought along some other finished decals for the North Shore cars, and for CRT 1268.  New Cabinets Henry Vincent was assembling some new steel cabinets in the relatively open space of the new shop space annex. I do not understand - I thought I was taking a good photo but Henry claims this is NOT his best side. Victor Humphreys continued with repair and restoration of step wells for the ATSF 1400 caboose, and also did the first maintenance and inspection work of 2011 for the Freight Car Department. He managed to drag out the air lines and test set, and exercised the brakes on caboose IT 988Sunday, March 20. 2011Patternmaking - March 17, 2011I was not sure how to post the images from yesterday and decided to put these separate under the Steam Department category.  Planing Buzz Morisette has volunteered to make some new patterns for the Steam Department. Here he planing some thick hardwood stock, which will serve in those patterns.  The Fussy Part Then Buzz works to design and assemble the pieces into useful items that can be sent to a foundry for casting. In this case there are two items, SHOES and WEDGES, which are parts that hold the driver bearing boxes in alignment, and allow some adjustment as wear happens. In a previous BLOG entry you saw that two driver sets have been removed from our 2-8-0, UP 428. These patterns are for new shoes and wedges for that locomotive, and will be cast in bronze alloy. Buzz is working from a copy of an original Union Pacific drawing dated 1901! Doing this work, Buzz uses a special item called a shrink ruler. It looks like a regular steel scale with inch markings. But beware you do not pick this up to make your new project in the wood shop, since all markings have been adjusted larger by a percentage, because the metal castings shrink upon cooling and come out smaller than the pattern. There are separate sets of such rulers depending on the metallurgy of the part - brass, bronze, cast iron, steel, aluminum, etc. While this work is being done in our wood shop, rest assured there are crews working in the steam shop every weekend to move forward on the other rebuilding tasks. For other wood shop activity this weekend, see the following BLOG Entry. |
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Comments
Thu, 03-06-2025 16:28
Yes, there is a wye. Those two have been MU'ed on diesel days a year or two ago.
Wed, 03-05-2025 14:04
7009 number boards look good. Is there a way to turn a locomotive around at IRM? In case you ever had a mind to connect 7009 and 6847?
Fri, 03-29-2024 21:26
We're slackers and spend more time working on the equipment in the shop than keeping all you readers updated. We'll work on it, but I'm sure updates [...]
Thu, 03-14-2024 08:02
What happened to the Department Blog? It's been over 2 years and I still regularly check for updates, but nothing comes...
Mon, 12-27-2021 16:28
Happy New Year to all the Departments at the Illinois railway Museum! Thanks for all the good work you do in railroad preservation. Ted Miles, [...]
Wed, 10-13-2021 13:33
Was the CB&Q 1309 every transported to IRM?I’ve been reading old issues of Rail&Wire and the car was mentioned several times.
Mon, 06-07-2021 22:40
I was wondering if in the model layout display what scale would you guys be using and would you be displaying model train history as well? Just [...]
Wed, 06-02-2021 17:27
Nice to see 428's cab back on. Looking forward to when it is operable!
Tue, 06-01-2021 16:47
I hope the work will continue on the UP #428. Now that they are the museum's connection to the national railroad network; she would be very [...]
Sat, 04-17-2021 23:07
What is the status of 126, the Milwaukee Buffet car that is in S. Dakota? Any guess on when or if it will get to IRM?
Wed, 04-14-2021 21:09
Perhaps it is time to scrap the remains of the c, B & Q 7128 to make room for the Villa Real. Ted miles, IRM member
Wed, 04-14-2021 15:26
Hi IRM my name is Jason and I was wonder If you guys would be willing to save a CN Dash8-40cm they are currently being retired by CN and being [...]