Illinois Railway Museum Blog

The Stack

Lorne Tweed adds one more glued up window frame to the growing stack on the workbench behind him.  He and Rich Witt continued work on this project, gluing up two more frames, dry fitting another frame and machining parts to complete the job.

Oh Well

Victor Humphreys works to complete metal repairs on another of the step well end plates for caboose ATSF 1400.  He also helped to load an old planer being removed from the wood shop and sort and pack away an assortment of wood shop machine parts located and delivered by the Signal Department.  Thanks, Mike.

Patterns

Buzz Morisette continued making the new patterns for the steam shop, to be used to cast shoes and wedges for the UP 428.  If you look closely you will see vertical surfaces tapered a few degrees from square.  This is the DRAFT ANGLE needed to make the sand molds and cast the metal.

Tim Peters was toiling on restoration tasks for the CRT 1797 and there was a lot of other activity.  Come on out and look around - Watchers Welcome.  Maybe we can coax you into helping if you like the smell of sawdust in the morning!

Careful Measurements

Rich Witt has provided a lot of engineering assistance on many projects in the wood shop.  Here he is measuring a part to be reproduced as we discuss options for milling and machining the rough stock.

Assmbly Line

John Faulhaber is applying the glue to another new window frame for the IC 3996 passenger car.  With eight windows now assembled and glued, it is what passes for an assembly line in our wood shop.

Set Up

Rich WItt is installing a special cutting bit in our table mounted router, to produce a milled contour for window beading, those small strips of wood that retain the glazing.

The Old Saw

After profiling the wood blanks, the next step is to carefully cut out the strips for the beading.  This can be a tricky job, made more so by our stingy ways.  It would be a lot simpler if we made only two strips out of a 2x4 blank and discarded the rest as waste.

That Glazed Look

Meanwhile at the other end of the shop, Tim Peters had been glazing a stack of new windows for CRT 1797.  He sure gets a LOT of work done, I wonder how he does it.  Either he puts in five or six days a week working on his project, or he hires out work to Santa's elves in their off season.

Steel in the Wood Shop

How did Roger Kramer sneak in some steel passenger car parts into the wood shop?  Cleaned and repaired, he starts applying some new primer paint.