Sunday, April 24. 2011Wood Shop Update - April 23, 2011Meanwhile back in the wood shop and annex area, Mike Stauber and Frank Sirinek are working on two more of the wooden seats for Vera Cruz 19, the single truck open car. Here they are using heat guns to soften and strip many coats of old paint. Buzz Morisette was nearing the finish point for two new windows for our MILW 01984 caboose. The bay windows slide left to right and here they are painted, glazed, and hardware being ready to mount. Shelly Vanderschagen was hard at work on the next seat frame for the Passenger Department Santa Fe car. Clean it, sand old paint, and refinish. John Faulhaber was working on the new door for our depot. We use traditional mortise and tenon jointery as on the original. John is holding the middle rail and in front of him is the stile ready to accept it. These are not simple joints and close and careful work is required. Victor Humphreys is fitting together each piece as the work continues. This can be tedious work to fit each joint but slow and steady wins the race. This will be a heavy door and good jointery will help it survive use and abuse. Thursday, April 21. 2011Wood Shop Update - April 20, 2011A lot of the wood shop work is specific to the volunteer's favorite or currently active project. We do just as much or more work from a pool of interested and willing volunteers, who get to experience a variety of tools and techniques and learn in the process. The first section of this report deals with constructing a new door for our East Union Depot. John Faulhaber explains to Simon Harrison the geometry of a mortise and tenon joint and the steps to try to achieve a perfect fit as the door top rail is matched to the right hand side stile. Next John Faulhaber is using the table saw to nibble away and size the tenon for the middle rail of this door. At each step in the process the parts get to be assembled to check that everything is in order. I suppose that would not be necessary of we were making twenty or so identical doors. But for a one of a kind item it is quite an important step. By end of day, parts are dry fitted for the frame and top rail, and Victor Humphreys and John are working on the middle rail Steve Iverson has combined some vacation time with his latest trip to IRM for the Annual meeting. He has been working to help Frank Sirinek continue the progress on Kansas City Public Service 755, one of our PCC cars. He is making new wood parts while behind him to his left is a restored and painted ventilator housing waiting to go back on the car. Certainly RAPID progress as Tim peters continues on the epic restoration of a wood L car, Chicago Rapid Transit 1797. Timbers shown in last week's shop entry have been completed and painted, and here he is consolidating and repairing more wood parts for the car. With the addition of the new shop annex, some of our sawdust collecting system had to be dismantled. Henry Vincent takes on the role of 'tin knocker' as he hangs a new run of ductwork, to suck up sawdust and debris as fast as our volunteers and machines can produce it. Simon Harrison and Rich Witt have had enough of a bench vise that really offered as many problems as benefits. So they removed it, and are installing a different one from our 'stock'. We really never had ONE good bench vise and now seemingly we need THREE in working order considering the number of active projects in the shop. As a footnote, one of our members notes a reminder that our Member Photo Gallery on this site hosts thousands, maybe over ten thousand images. All of those used in my BLOG entries are hosted there, as well as a myriad of other images for virtually every piece of equipment, operation and activity on our campus. In our BLOGS you get to see those images along with some of the 'back story'; but feel free to explore the albums and images in the Member Galleries for your favorite topic. Sunday, April 17. 2011Wood Shop Update - April 16, 2011Tim 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. 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! 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. 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. 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! |
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Comments
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 [...]
Fri, 04-09-2021 19:56
Bear in mind that the Nebraska Zephyr is an articulated train set, so cars cannot be inserted at will. Although cars and/or a second engine could be [...]
Wed, 03-31-2021 11:37
I believe Silver Pony is currently on the back burner, and has been put into storage in one of the barns. The car needs a lot of work done to it's [...]