Most of our major projects ask for donations and in large part the members and friends respond. Often, however, accumulating the funds is slow and folks who made donations are wondering what has happened.
Many of you have been very generous on this project whose goal is to apply new tires to the wheels of two trolley cars, TM 972, and CNS&M 354. Yesterday we placed the order for sixteen new custom rolled steel tires.
WE ARE ON THE WAY!!
But it is not too late to help on this milestone project. Some matching funds have been pledged and remain on hand. So in effect, every dollar you may donate becomes TWO dollars toward getting these new tires installed on the existing wheel centers and axles. This is a cost effective method to renew the running gear for reliable operation on our railroad, especially compared to even finding new wheels, at any price.
Please help with a restricted donation to fund RTMS so we can all look forward to seeing these cars operate at Union.
Lorne Tweed is making some progress on the project for the Steam Shop. This is to be a mold to cast a specialized piece of refractory firebrick to serve as the arch or top piece in a rivet forge.
Pete Galayda is now making running boards which mount to the top of the hoods on the Charles City Western 300 steeple cab.
Randy Hicks is involved in repainting and repairing one of the cars acquired from the Trolleyville Collection. In this case it is Chicago Aurora & Elgin 36. While he is working on the body in one of our Barns, he was very considerate to bring over a window for the Wood Shop to attack. Most of the windows are in good enough shape that replacements will not have to be made. Here, Rich Witt makes short work of sanding and removing the old layers of paint from both sides. This is good work in our air conditioned shop if any of you wish to volunteer. Next steps on this frame are to repair it with epoxy filler, and then sand again and prime paint it.
Victor Humphreys examines new stock fresh from the planer. That is a machine that planes thin layers of wood from thicker stock, to produce a custom thickness, as needed for almost every project.
Thursday, July 7. 2011
Another nice day, almost no rain in the last two weeks! It is beginning to make the farmers nervous but a good crew toiled on with the boxcar project.
Victor Humphreys, Simon Harrison, and Kevin Tudor (up on the scaffold), continued removing the accumulated old paint and rust from the A end and the right side. You will now begin to see the primed areas starting to grow and join together on two of the side panels and the end.
This is not a lot different than the above photo except that Kevin's wife, Jenny, grabbed my camera and captured me in the group. Not that I was able to contribute much physical labor, but my heart was in it. You can see cleaned areas that are about to be painted with primer.
Comments
Mon, 09-08-2025 08:22
Good job on the Burlington Nortern 9976. OK.
Tue, 08-12-2025 12:56
No new news that I have heard of thus far.
Tue, 08-12-2025 12:53
I'll also be doing another update on it soon. Keep en eye out for that.
Tue, 08-12-2025 12:47
A little work was done to it for Diesel Days this year. You'll see photos floating around for the temporary short term job that was done to make it [...]
Wed, 08-06-2025 13:01
Is steam car CN 15444 going to be coming to museum several times it was to be moved to muesum
Sat, 07-19-2025 18:56
Yeah, sadly it's still there as of 7/19/2025
Thu, 06-12-2025 19:14
Its been 14 years guys, where is the unit? Like really? Did you guys misplace it? Or are repairs taking that long? At this point be might we will have [...]
Wed, 04-09-2025 17:40
Jamie Thanks for the update. She's gonna shine like every thing else you guys do! Smeds
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...