Illinois Railway Museum Blog

PHOTO BLUES:  I resorted to a factory reset of all functions on my camera and there is some improvement in some of the images.  (I tried to take a lot of photos in differing situations to get a better handle on the problem.)  Seemingly there is better focus in the foreground of these frames but not good elsewhere.  The autofocus frames are displayed in the viewfinder before snapping the shutter, but the software does not seem to be tracking those and instead setting focus elsewhere.  HMPHH!!   So put on your Mr. Magoo glasses and suffer the poor images.  The glasses will not help the images, but with EVERYTHING fuzzy you may not notice the difference.

Jointing

The largest effort in the shop today was to produce new interior window sills for the Spaulding Tower.  Buildings and Grounds, under the leadership of Dave Diamond, continues to invest in the maintenance and repair of this historic structure.  In recent months the badly deteriorated double hung windows on the second floor have been replaced.  The job started with Dave Rogan, Rich Witt and John Faulhaber running large planks of untreated southern yellow pine through the jointer.

Planing

The jointed planks were ripped to the correct width and then planed to thickness - John Faulhaber, Dave Rogan and Rich Witt on the job.

The Square Deal

The next steps involved squaring up the ends and cutting to length; Rich, Dave, and John wrestling the long boards extending between some of other machines.  Then it was on to the router, four cuts with three different bits on each of the eight new sills.

Relief

The last operation was to make a relief on the bottom side and trust me, it was getting late in the day and the workers were 'relieved' to complete the job.  A lot of the crew rotated in and out for different parts of the job, some required more hands than others.  At the end we still had Henry Vincent, Rich Witt, Dave Rogan and Simon Harrison here posing in front of a pile of the completed sills.

Detail

Here is an end view of one of them, so you may see the old time profile we reproduced and some of the other details, seemingly simple, but not so simple in the fact of doing it.

Molding

Other work was ongoing on almost every benchtop.  Jim Leonard sanded and primed more than a fistful of quarter round molding destined for the Chicago Great Western X 38.  And we assembled and glued the last two of the eight new cupola windows for the plow.

Glazing

Victor Humphreys completed glazing the first three new windows for the X 38, and later was seen working on new curved grab irons for our Pennsylvania 'bobber' caboose.

Motor Work

Henry Vincent was working on the very stiff motor for the 'next' tablesaw needed in the shop.  Anyone here know much about one hundred year old three phase motors and how to disassemble then without breaking anything?  This one has sleeve bearings for the rotor ends, and it is clear that many decades of old oil and grease has mostly solidifed in place.

Extra Work

Buzz Morisette has been showing up extra days in the shop and earlier this week completed the first painting of three large sheets of solid core birch plywood.  These will be used for new ceilings in the private car ELY.

Building Blocks

Not the child toy building blocks, but Buzz continued making new blocking for the ceiling in the ELY.  Not exactly square, most one of kind different length, and tricky to install and fasten in place.

Picture quality remains poor, more on this at the end of this entry.  For now, please be satisfied with viewing the thumbnails where your eyes sharpen them up.

New Doors

We continue to work and make good progress on wood parts for the Chicago Great Western X 38 snowplow.  John Faulhaber is standing behind a host of new stock that has been roughed out to construct two new doors for the plow.  When starting with rough lumber, in this case heavy planks, there is as much brain work to lay out the parts, as physical work of sawing them up.

Windows

The crew assembled and glued two more windows for the X 38 cab cupola.  Victor Humphreys is making the final tweaks with the frames in the glue press.  That involves squaring them up, making them flat, and checking the pressure on the frames.  When you first tighten up the clamp, some liquid glue will squeeze out and you need to tighten it up a bit after ten minutes.

More Windows

Victor is working on three of the smaller windows for the plow.  Painting is complete and here new glass has been cut to size and dropped into place.  Well, not exactly "dropped'!

Yet More Windows

Tim Peters is moving fast on constructing SEVENTY TWO new windows for Chicago Rapid Transit 1024.  These are being made of quarter sawn white oak and will see stain and varnish in the finishing steps.

New Ceiling

Here is a pic of Tim Peters, Eric Lorenz, Victor (behind me) and Bob Kutella wrestling with large sheets of tempered masonite.  They are being sliced into 15 inch wide panels for new ceilings in the Cleveland Transit System PCC 4223.  My initial thought was that my feeble hands could not hold the camera still, and that contributed to the blurring.  Here, another younger member took the pic and no improvement.  On all of these, you will find good focus in some small part of the image, usually in the foreground.

Engineering

Rich Witt continues to be our Engineering resource, working diligently to plan the work, make good drawings, and assure the wood parts will fit as intended.  He continues here for us needing two round top windows for one of the Boston & Maine passenger cars.  One of the badly deteriorated examples is lying on the drafting table for measurements and examination.

PHOTOS:  As mentioned above I now think the problem may not be with my shaky hands.  I spent considerable time at home yesterday fiddling with the settings and maybe made some progress.  I greatly resist loaning the camera for others to take pics, but as my legs also do not work very well, I have done this three times in recent months.  I tell them the only button to press is the shutter.  So, I am thinking the original 'point and click' settings have been compromised and I struggle to set them back to what worked.  (I lied in my comment reply to Randy Stahl since the small print instruction book has 209 pages.)  It is cumbersome at best, poor illustrations and directions, poor troubleshooting.  Gone are the days of the corner photo shop where you could actually talk to someone and get help with such setup.  If you are getting as frustrated as I and want me to suspend these news entries, feel free to cast your vote.