Illinois Railway Museum Blog

End Beams

Tim Peters has two new end beams well in hand, destined for installation on CRT 1797.  In the past few weeks we were able to acquire some old growth southern yellow pine timbers from a salvage site, and this allows some key steps to once again move forward.  We invested a lot of money on this and other projects to secure this material, at about 15 cents on the dollar.  If you can help out here with a donation, there is still more wood left that would suit and be tailor made in size to work on a number of projects.

A Glazed Look

Buzz Morisette was glazing some of the new windows constructed for caboose MILW 01984.  Better be careful swinging that hammer around all those sheets of glass!

Saw Base

Victor Humphreys was continuing the prep work prior to prime painting our new base for the heavy circular saw we hope to place in service soon in the wood shop.  Rod Turner had completed some additional welding on this during the week, thanks.

A New Door

Roger Kramer and Bob Kutella are working on a base rail for a new station door.  We had hoped to complete this last season, but other projects intervened.  Here we are sawing stop cuts to define tenons on this large slab of wood. Yes, we do something beside turn out prodigious quantities of new windows in the shop.

A New Window

That said, there seem to be endless quantity of new windows needing to be made.  (As an example there are 96 panes of glass in the Sand Springs 68, and it does not use storm windows)  It was good to see Henry Auchstetter out for the day, and he is discussing and examining a deteriorated window with Bob Kutella, the new ones to be destined for the Glen Springs.

All of the many projects underway rely on two things - dedicated hardworking volunteers, and a source of funds. Can you help?  We will teach skill sets and apply your labor, you will have to wrestle with your checkbook yourself!