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Tuesday, September 25. 2012News and Views - September 22-23, 2012As I mentioned previously in these entries, my time this weekend was almost totally consumed by IRM hosting a meet of folks interested in old wood working machines. Over 85 attended on Saturday and I would like to thank all the volunteers that contributed their time and effort to make it a success, led various tours, and to those who cooperated indirectly in deferring their work, or scheduling it around the clinics and demos in the wood shop area. That said, I managed to pick away at machining a new window sill for the X 38 snowplow and there was other work going on. We thought the brutally hot summer would never end, but mother nature knows differently. Nearby Sugar Grove registered a 32 F reading Sunday AM. Now the race is on to use remaining good weather days on our projects before Jack Frost settles in for the winter.  Side Repairs Victor Humphreys continues at warp speed on the repairs to the sides of our B&O wagon top boxcar. Here is the first panel with new steel welded in, the welds ground down, and body filler applied and sanded. Also you will note the new 'rivets' in place and the area ready to be prime painted.  Back In Barn 4 The Electric Car department managed to execute a long and complicated switch move to reassign space of many cars now that the Zephyr repairs are complete and the trips have been run. (Remember that the Zephyr occupied most of Track 41 to allow repairs to take advantage of the repair pit.) So the big news is that TMER&T 972 is back in Barn 4. Watch for developments on this project in the coming weeks. Sunday, September 23. 2012Steam Department Update 09-22-2012It will be a short and late update this weekend as I went on the Zephyr trip today. What a great day. Tremendous effort by the team. Well done guys for making it a such great experience for those of us who just had to sit back and enjoy ourselves. As regards Saturday at the steam shop hopefully all the bad things for a while happened this weekend!!. First, the most critical job now to be done is painting the interior of the boiler, which can only be done by a small number of our team who can fit thru the access hatch to work inside the boiler. Unfortunately one is facing a serious family health problem and the rest had other commitments so we were unable to progress the painting this weekend. So we focused on setting up to prepare the tubes for fitting. Each tube must be swaged (reduced in diameter from 2 to 1 7/8 inch at the firebox end), annealed at the smoke box end and then cut to exact length. The original game plan was to complete the set up and then try a few test runs before maybe doing the first few tubes. Sadly this was not to be. We brought the first tubes in without problem
However when we tried to start the Sullair compressor, to drive the furnace and swager, the starter solenoid stuck causing the starter to burn out!!. Having disconnected the battery and put out the fire, investigation revealed that the nose of the starter must have fractured a while back and just got into a position where it caused the solenoid to stick.
So we wait one week to rebuild the starter and hope we can start swaging next week. Anyway, the area is now ready and the first 40 tubes were brought in and set ready for work. Another piece of bad news was about the ferrules. As noted last week, we received ferrules but they were 2 inch ID versus 2 inch OD. The bad news proves to be that the supplier no longer makes 2 inch OD. Unless someone else makes them we will have another very tedious job. The alternative, if we cannot buy them ready-made, is to cut 150 5/8 inch long sections from 2 inch copper tube. A perfectly practical but dull and time consuming job. To complete our woes for the day, Ed and Bob were continuing to the fit of the pipe work. The simple job of heating a nut to remove it from the stud to allow the pipe bracket to be adjusted to the new pipe took a good part of the day. What first seemed to be an empty acetylene cylinder proved to be a regulator than had gummed up and will need to be reconditioned. On a more positive note we went thru with B&G the plans for grading in front of the shop and preparing to install the new air compressor to feed the new shop. This will allow us to rivet (and swage) without relying on the Sullair. We were also able to work with Jeff on the layout for the air supply in the new shop. So some overall progress despite a number of setbacks. Let's hope for better this week. Nigel Friday, September 21. 2012Wood Shop Update - September 19, 2012 Window Sills Next on the list for new wood for our CGW X38 snowplow is to fabricate three new windowsills. Rich Witt has cut out a template and is examining new southern yellow pine stock for the next step.  Routing the Profile We first routed two round overs for the outside lip of the sill, and then used the table saw to mill a groove to serve as a drip lip. Then back to the router. Here, Rich Witt, Jim Leonard, and Dave Rogan are taking turns at removing a 5 degree taper from the bottom of the sill stock.  Hot Work Here we see Mike Alterio working on new locking bars to be used to secure doors for our Chicago and West Towns 141 streetcar. Nothing like fire and red hot steel to grab our attention.  Clean Up Crew The real grunt job for the day was to do a very thorough annual cleanup of the shop area. This is in preparation for the weekend event where IRM hosts a meeting of a group devoted to Old Wood Working Machines. Several of those on hand pitched in willingly and with vigor and the shop space is cleaner and ready to go. As a reminder, shop work will be on a restricted basis Saturday and Sunday as attendees will be on hand conducting clinics and demos in the shop. |
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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 [...]