Wood Shop

I am going to post these under the Wood Shop title rather than create many posts with perhaps only a single image for that topic.  The heat was withering again, at or above 100F so breaks were frequent and work moved inside our shops.

CGW X 38

Jim Leonard is beside the Russel plow and you can see work has progessed on the needlechipping and priming of the car body.  Dick Cubbage and Kirk Warner have helped on this.  For this project we continued to fabricate new framing timbers to replace those lost or damaged inside the body.

MILW X 5000

Buzz Morisette has taken on assisting those working on the dynamometer car and here is seen trying to lay out some curved wood framing for inside the car.

MILW X 5000

The engineering was successful and here Buzz is bandsawing the new stringers.

Motormans Seat

Work continues 'beneath the radar' on many projects and here John McKelvey has just finished reupholstering a new motorman's seat cushion.  The restored frame is beside him on the table.  I believe this is destined for Shaker Heights Rapid Transit 63, a relatively recent PCC car arrival.

CTS 4223

Dave Rogan and Rich Witt are at the table saw creating new white oak parts for a fuse box to be mounted on the roof of this PCC car.

CA and E 36

Whenever there are a few spare minutes, Al Reinschmidt turns to the task of restoring a door for CA&E 36.  From the progress made, he has spent significant 'spare minutes' on the work.

Another series of short reports this week, but do not despair, a lot was going on in the restoration shops.

Battery Tray

Frank Sirinek has been quietly going about the business of working on Shaker Heights 63, a PCC car which was originally built for Minneapolis.  New windows have been installed, and preliminary work under the car began recently.  Here he is working on a new wooden battery tray.  The new parts are in the foreground, the old thoroughly acid destroyed tray is behind that on the bench.

Flooring

Victor Humphreys is inside the B&O wagon top boxcar working to install a new section of flooring.  In the weather conditions this summer, it is a case of working short shifts inside the car, which does a good imitation of temps only encountered in a pizza oven.  Except the boxcar has less air flow.

More Signs

Henry Vincent is making and hanging a new interpretive sign fo Illinois Terminal 101.  I bet we have hundreds of such informative signs already around the property, and each one was the labor of a committed volunteer to improve the visitor experience.

I cannot blame any of our volunteers, but in this weather they burrow into the cooler wood shop areas - it almost like being held hostage by the brutal summer weather.  So here is a glance at some of the projects.

Seating

Frank Sirinek and Mike Stauber continue their work on Kansas City Public Service 755 PCC car.  Here they have gotten themselves into a painting frenzy on a seat frame and a lot of the loose parts to fix and remount it.

Floored

Victor Humphreys and Kirk Warner decided to dodge the rain by doing some repairs inside our B&O wagon top boxcar.  It appears that there was a hotbox on the number four axle on the right side in its past.  The inevitable result was that a goodly sized hole had been burned through the floorboards.  I assume the car was empty and had no lading, since if it was loaded there would have been no opportunity to reach the fire and extinguish it.  So, out with the damaged boards, and here Victor is seen with the new decking mostly in place.  When those guys came out of that steel boxcar for some air, they were SOAKED!!

Windows

Buzz helped earlier loading new lumber for three of the freight car projects, and then cooled off a bit in the shop painting new windows for the AT&SF 1400 caboose.  Behind Buzz, are three of the new doorposts for the CGW X 38 snowplow.

Ceiling

Yes, Chicago Rapid Transit 1797 can again operate under its own power and it really looks good from the outside.  Inside, let's just say that is a work in progress.  Tim Peters has several ceiling panels stripped, primed, and with the first coat of paint applied.